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United States and hadn’t heard much about doping in the sport, except that performance-enhancing drug use among cyclists was prevalent in Europe.
    He met Lance Armstrong in 1989 at a Texas triathlon after Borysewicz told him to look out for the budding cycling star. Armstrong’s all-out effort at the 1989 junior worlds in Moscow had caught Borysewicz’s eye. The coach convinced him to switch to cycling from triathlon because cycling was an Olympic sport, while triathlon wasn’t.
    Armstrong, arguably the hottest up-and-coming cyclist in the world, later landed a spot with the Subaru-Montgomery team. By then, Neal and Armstrong knew each other well.
    Nearly a dozen athletes in Austin—both men and women—still say they were closer to Neal than to their own fathers. He brought them into his family and gave them some stability. Lance Armstrong was just the latest athlete in need.
    Armstrong was relocating to hilly Austin from flat Plano because the area’s terrain was perfect for training. At a steeply discounted rate, Armstrong moved into an apartment complex owned by Neal. Near downtown—among tall trees, twenty paces from Neal’s office—it was a comfortable, safe place that Armstrong could call home. Later, Armstrong told the Dallas Morning News his apartment was “killer . . . s-o-o-o nice!” He and Neal met every day, sometimes several times a day, for massage treatments and meals. It gave Neal satisfaction to know that he could make a positive impact on the life of a teenager who needed some guidance.
    Neal’s first impression was that the kid’s ego exceeded his talent. Armstrong was brash and ill-mannered, in desperate need of refinement. But the more he learned of Lance’s home life, the sorrier Neal began to feel for him. He was a kid without a reliable father. Linda Armstrong was pleased that her son now had a responsible male role model in his life, and Neal lent a sympathetic ear to her as well while she dealt with the rocky transition between marriages.
    Neal soon recognized that Armstrong’s insecurities and anger were products of his broken family—he felt abandoned by his biological father and mistreated by his adoptive one. Armstrong didn’t like to be alone, so Neal often met him for breakfast at the Upper Crust Café, just down the street from Neal’s house, and for lunch at a sports bar called The Tavern. Armstrong ate dinner with the Neals three or four times a week. The Neals’ three children would be there, along with the occasional Armstrong friend or a student Neal was mentoring. It was nothing fancy—sometimes just slow-cooked beans eaten with plastic utensils out of mismatched mugs, as if they were on a camping trip. But they were a family.
    Frances, Neal’s wife, and Armstrong were the group’s jokers. They might chase each other around the dinner table. They might sing parts of the song “Ice Ice Baby,” by the Dallas rap star Vanilla Ice, a song that then sat atop the music charts. One would sing, “Ice ice baby!” and the other would reply, “Too cold, too cold!” On some days, they would bring their show to the Neals’ motorboat, where they would spend the day swimming or water-skiing.
    It was arguably the happiest, most uncomplicated time in Armstrong’s life. He no longer had to worry about Terry Armstrong, and his mother’s current marital woes were 215 miles north on Interstate 35, back in Plano. His world centered on Austin and Neal, who gladly opened up his home or apartments to national team cyclists—like future Postal Service teammates George Hincapie, Frankie Andreu, Chann McRae and Kevin Livingston—who wanted to train with Armstrong in the Texas Hill Country.
    The day after Armstrong moved into his new apartment, the Neals saw him ride in Lago Vista, thirty-five miles from Austin. Armstrong did poorly and admitted to Neal that he’d been up late the night before, drinking at an Austin strip club named the Yellow Rose. Neal passed it off as