“More than anything else, Armstrong is very smart.

He allows few people to get

close. He leads a separate life; he changes masseurs every one or two years to
protect himself. Since 1998, Emma O’Rielly, Freddy Viaene, and Ryszard
Kielpinski followed one another. He organizes his schedule so no one can guess
where he will be. He’s an intelligent guy. He knows he’s being watched. Within the
team, he likes to be considered the boss, to be taken for God. The only time he is
pleasant is in January when he’s not on the bike. He doesn’t tell you things
directly; he’ll go through somebody else – in most cases Bruyneel. That’s the
middleman. For example, in the Tour de Suisse that he won, he found himself
without teammates in the final part of the first stage. The next morning we had a
terrible meeting. Bruyneel gave us the real going-over. Armstrong was sitting
there like us, not saying anything. But everything Bruyneel was saying had come
from Armstrong.
He’s also a perfectionist. He leaves nothing to chance. He is also paranoid,
particularly so since September 11 attacks. He’s got a bodyguard to make sure a
Bin Laden fan doesn’t slit his throat. But maybe the biggest thing is his ability to
intimidate. In cycling, if you want to win races, you have to crush the others.
Armstrong taught me to be nasty. He runs on aggression, anger, intimidation, and
the fear that he can strike in others. He doesn’t kick up a big fuss but he goes into
a state of cold, suppressed anger. He wants to impose the law of the strongest and
most of the time it works.”
-Cédric Vasseur, 2003
Source : From Lance To Landis by David Walsh