discovery that he still had an audience of
fans, gave him the confidence to start Wedu
in May 2016. The sponsors, Armstrong told
himself, “are not coming back. So I’ll just
create my own thing.”
In 2017, with The Forward generating
buzz, Armstrong began selling T-shirts and
trucker hats featuring Selman’s design: a
forward arrow with a crick in the middle.
He also launched his second podcast, The
Move, beginning with daily coverage of that
year’s Tour de France. The episodes fea-
tured Armstrong and longtime Austin radio
personality JB Hager. The crew eventually
included Bruyneel and George Hincapie, a
teammate who later turned accuser. “We
went through a period where we didn’t talk
much,” says Hincapie, who in addition to his
podcast duties co-owns Hincapie Sportswear
Inc., an apparel company, and the cycling-
themed Hotel Domestique in Travelers Rest,
S.C. (In cycling, domestique, French for “servant,” refers to a
lesser rider who fetches water bottles for the team leader.)
The same year, Armstrong and Higgins held two Wedu
rides: the Aspen Fifty, near Armstrong’s Colorado summer
home, and the Texas Hundred, held in the Hill Country north
of Austin. The events, which cost participants about $200
each for the Aspen race and $100 for the Texas one, are proof
that Armstrong still has committed fans. At last year’s Texas
Hundred, some 500 riders showed up, including a Seattleite
who rode a vintage U.S. Postal bike. After finishing, Armstrong
changed out of his Wedu Lycra and mingled for an hour or
so with the attendees, taking selfies and signing autographs,
including one on the frame of the superfan’s bike. Before leav-
ing, Armstrong noted the turnout—the race had attracted 70
more people than the previous year’s edition. “Moving in the
right direction,” he said.
In addition to the event revenue, apparel sales, and adver-
tising, Wedu makes money through an NPR-style membership
program, where superfans pay $60 a year to get a T-shirt, some
stickers, early access to gear, and special members-only pod-
casts. So far, Higgins says, thousands of people have signed up.
It’s all modest for now, but as the brand gets better known—
and as his moral failures fade into the past—he expects mer-
chandise sales will improve. “We were very conservative on
merchandise,” he says, referring to the modest selection and
limited quantities Wedu sold initially. “We won’t be conser-
vative again.”
Part of the appeal of Armstrong’s podcasts is that he’s strangely,
unexpectedly vulnerable. During his career, he tended to treat
press conferences like depositions and was prone to angry out-
bursts. (“You are not worth the chair that you are sitting on,”
he once snapped at a British newspaper columnist.) While he
was speaking at the Volatility Summit, 30 minutes or so after
meeting me backstage, Armstrong gave me a somewhat awk-
ward shout-out from the stage. “I hate the media, I’ll just be
honest,” he said after mentioning me by name. (“I felt bad say-
ing that,” he says later.)
Of course, now, in addition to hating the press, Armstrong
is the press. He says he tries to avoid adopting any kind of
adversarial position in interviews, but he sometimes finds him-
self rooting for controversy despite himself. During the 2017
Tour, when a top sprinter, Peter Sagan, elbowed another well-
known rider, Mark Cavendish, who fell and broke his shoul-
der, listenership to the podcast spiked. “That’s what’s f---ed
up,” Armstrong tells me. “You wake up and think, We need a
crash or something.”
On The Forward, he seems especially drawn to exploring
shame, both his own and his guests’. In an interview with Mia
Khalifa, a former adult-film star turned social media influencer,
Armstrong likened the stigma of sex work to his own struggles.
“I have a ton of empathy for you,” he said, after Khalifa talked
about her efforts to put the past behind her. “When I open arti-
cles about you, every one of them starts ‘porn star.’” He went
on, saying he, like Khalifa, was trying to reinvent himself. “If
you put my name in Google, and pull up 10 articles, every one
of those articles starts ‘disgraced.’”
If Armstrong believes he’s rebuilt some part of the sports
business clout he lost from Nike with Wedu, losing his status
as a great cancer warrior still seems to genuinely sadden him.
He’ll sometimes record video messages for patients who fol-
low him on social media, but he’s less certain about his pros-
pects as a philanthropist. “Livestrong is never going to reach
out again,” he says. “And it almost feels like since they’re out,
nobody else will either.”
He says that’s OK. “I’m happy doing what I do, and I’m
happy with what I did,” he continues. “The bank is full in my
heart.” <BW>Bloomberg Businessweek August 5, 2019
49Armstrong taping with The Move co-host Hager