“It’s rip Lance time,” Lance Armstrong used to say when he felt he was being criticized unfairly. (If he ever felt he had been criticized fairly, he never told me.) After I wrote in 2001 what I thought was a somewhat anodyne article contrasting him with Greg LeMond, another American bicycling champion, Armstrong remarked, “I see you’ve joined rip Lance time.” He sounded angry, vengeful and — touchingly — hurt.

Why touchingly? Because he had no right to be hurt. We were not friends, just friendly. Much more than acquaintances, though not intimate. A rule of journalism is that reporters should not become friends with the people they write about because it colors their judgment, distorts their priorities.

From the start, our priorities, his and mine, were the same: Lance Armstrong. He sometimes used me and I sometimes used him. The prize for me was always access, which I had to an astonishing degree until he began to reel off those seven consecutive victories in the Tour de France and began traveling in higher circles, surrounded by bodyguards.

“I hear that you’ve written a book about Greg LeMond,” Armstrong told me when we first met in 1992. “You going to write one about me?” We had known each other about five minutes. “Yes, I will,” I replied, “if you ever amount to much.” The book appeared in 2000.