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their years as a family. He wondered, “Linda was a single mom? Her first two marriages were quick ones? Lance and his mom always had their backs against the wall?” He was sensitive about mistakenly being called Lance’s stepfather, not adoptive father, by news outlets, including CNN.
    Terry tried to fight back by writing those outlets to say that they had the story wrong. He sent copies of his marriage certificate and divorce decree, showing that he had been married to Armstrong’s mother for fourteen years. He wanted to set the record straight, but a lawyer discouraged him because Terry “didn’t have the ink,” meaning Lance had the power of the press. Reporters, especially in the United States, were in love with the Lance Armstrong story. Then came Lance’s autobiography, It’s Not About the Bike , which cast Terry as a terrible father, and then Linda’s book piled on. Terry called the stories “a constant battery of mistruths.”
    He had planned to confront his ex-wife at one of her book readings in 2005. He said he waited until the last minute before walking down the center aisle to take a seat in the front row.
    Tami, Terry’s new wife, who had never met Linda, sat apart from her husband so she could ask, “Did you or did you not raise Lance yourself?” Linda said, well, you just need to read the book.
    Terry Armstrong said he held his hand up that day, waving it like a kid trying to get the teacher’s attention. But the author ignored him. Only after the reading, as Linda sat at an autograph table, did the former partners in marriage come face-to-face.
    “I really enjoyed the book,” Terry told her.
    “Really?” Linda said.
    “Yes,” he said. “I love fantasy.”

CHAPTER 3
    J ohn Thomas Neal was an independently wealthy real estate investor and massage therapist, a forty-eight-year-old husband and father, who worked as a soigneur in elite cycling. Soigneur is a French term meaning “one who cares for others.” In cycling, it is a person who gives the riders massages, prepares their lunches and water bottles, cleans uniforms and transports their baggage to and from hotels. A fixer, nurturer and wise counselor, Neal had worked with professional athletes on the beach volleyball tour and swimmers at the University of Texas. But his passion was cycling because he loved the sport and the travel.
    He had fled Montgomery, Alabama, after growing up amid the race riots of the ’60s. In Austin, his open mind and eclectic tastes matched the city’s liberal attitude. He once hosted a gay wedding at his home, originally a church on a hilltop overlooking the city’s skyline. Though he had a law degree, legal work didn’t satisfy him and he didn’t stick with it. Anyway, he could afford to quit because he married into money.
    Neal, who was maybe 5 foot 8 and had a very slight build, was a huge sports fan—University of Texas football, swimming and volleyball, professional tennis, cycling, you name it—and wanted to find a way he could work in the sports business. He couldn’t coach because he wasn’t the aggressive type, nor had he ever been an athlete. Massage therapy was the answer. The clinical aspects of it fascinated him. He also loved the idea of being trained to cure people’s ills.
    Neal was so serious about his new vocation that he traveled to China and spent several months learning Eastern healing techniques, including how to perform acupuncture on the inner ear.
    Back in Austin, he volunteered to work with the athletes at the University of Texas. In time, he had made enough connections and had cultivated a reputation in the Olympic sports world for being so good at his job that he was hired to work as a soigneur for the Subaru-Montgomery professional cycling team. Former United States Olympic cycling coach Eddie Borysewicz was in charge of it. Thomas Weisel, an investment banker who was a legend in financial circles, was the owner.
    When he first signed on, Neal worked races only in the