I must admit to not having read most of the cycling memoirs in the Works. I may eventually but the local public library doesn’t carry any of them and never will so I’ll have to buy them or ask Frank to tote everything he has to Hawaii. I did get off my wallet and buy these two and it was money well spent. David Millar and Tyler Hamilton have produced two excellent cycling books, parallel stories in very general terms and times. The contrast of how two people in similar straits handle the truth and the divergent roads it puts them on is compelling.
Doping in professional cycling is still secretive enough that it is best told from someone all the way on the inside. Journalists will be lied to by cyclists. Federal grand juries do better at getting the truth but we usually don’t hear it. Cyclists who lived the lie and need to unburden themselves make a good conduit. I can’t begin to explain it as well as Tyler or David did; their inner world of professional cycling is nothing we hear much about. In the 1990s it was the wild west where the law was absent. Spanish “doctors”, syringes and mini-centrifuges ruled the day. It’s such a huge subject, too interwoven with passion and pressure, so much grey area. For a person like me who likes to talk about doping in black and white, I’ve learned how institutionalized and insidious it was (past tense, I hope). It’s not so simple. It’s tragic. To feed the young ambitious athlete into a system where there is no choice but to accept the drug system is criminal. When money is at stake and the UCI is complicit, as is team management, those are some criminals.
Racing Through the Dark-by David Millar. I’ll also admit to being a long time admirer of David Millar. He has always been well- spoken and not afraid to confront, two qualities I admire and personally lack, but they make a good writer. Millar is a military brat who found his cycling talent in the 10 mile British time trial club races. He ended up living his dream, riding on the Cofidis team, France’s well- funded but dysfunctional squad. He spent his first few years with Cofidis riding clean, yet watching how others “prepared”.
“In my youthful exuberance, I was telling anybody who would listen that I’d won in De Panne and broken the course record with a hematocrit of only 40 percent. I went to see Casagrande and his roommate, whom I refer to as L’Équipier (the teammate), so that I could show Casagrande the test results.
I stood there, a big grin on my face, expecting Casagrande to congratulate me and say something morale boosting. But he didn’t. After a pause, he handed the results back to me and then turned to speak to his roommate in Italian.
“Perché non é a cinquate?” Casagrande asked L’Équipier, puzzled, Why isn’t he at fifty?
No one talked about doping and no one talked about not doping. Eventually, after VDB self-destructed and Casagrande was busted, Millar became a team leader. And with that mantle came the responsibility to produce results, be a professional. And eventually he was implicated by a teammate, evidence was found, he was out of cycling, deeply in debt, and drinking his way to the bottom.
For some interesting video here is a recent Spanish documentary from the inner ring.
The Secret Race-by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle. Tyler Hamilton and I grew up in the same end of Massachusetts, he went to the same prep school @rob and I dropped out of, so I always felt slightly connected to him. So I was a fan boy and stood by his fantastic excuses for too long.
The whole wretched story of doping in cycling is right here. Tyler Hamilton cheated and lied for so long, it took until 2011 before he could tell his parents the truth. And despite his decade of lying, this book rings true. His reward was getting out from under the lie. I think he would have written the book for free just for the unburdening. He states many times the lightness of being after testimony and though he knows it’s very unlikely, hopes Lance can feel the same lightness that comes from telling the truth. This book is Tyler Hamilton’s story but it is closely linked to part of the Armstrong saga.
Like Millar, Hamilton was unaware of systemic drug use until he had joined the professional ranks. US Postal drugs were at first team- provided and paid for. Once you proved yourself as one of the best riders on the team, as someone who could help Lance win the Tour, you earned the right to use EPO. It is fascinating reading, it’s horrifying, it’s depressing. Most unsettling is Lance Armstrong’s behavior. There are many revelations regarding Armstrong’s psychotic need to win. I’ll share just this one.
Tyler was eased out of US Postal because he was too strong a rider and perceived as a threat to Armstrong. So Tyler left and signed with Phonak in 2004. There was a time trial up Mont Ventoux in the 2004 Dauphiné Libéré weeks before the Tour de France. Tyler beat Lance in the TT. Later during the Tour, Floyd Landis, who was still riding for US Postal rode along side Tyler.
“You need to know something”
I pulled in closer. Floyd’s Mennonite conscience was bothering him.
“Lance called the UCI on you,” he said. “He called Hien, after Ventoux. Said you guys and Mayo were on some new shit, told Hien to get on you. He knew they’d call call you in. He’s been talking shit nonstop. And I think it’s right that you know.”
This little story is amazing for many different reasons and the only good one is Floyd Landis telling it to Tyler. I’m guilty of saying some negative things about Floyd, mostly because he was such an idiot liar. But at a point, when he has nothing to gain and he has lost everything else and he starts telling the truth, he gains back my respect, just like Tyler Hamilton has.
I ended up reading these books one right after the other. As I said before, I recommend them both. David Millar is a better writer. He actually has more demons to battle than Hamilton so his story of redemption is inspiring. Tyler Hamilton’s story is more depraved (in a doping sense) but both books are important. A lot of people in cycling are now admitting to past deeds in very unspecific terms. These two authors are both shining lights into some dark corners and making the inevitability of drug use in cycling more human and understandable. Also, in reading these books back to back, it highlights the contrast in how these two people dealt with their fates.
Both had the bad luck to be nearly singled out as dopers when a large percent of the riders were dopers. Millar realized it was the doping that killed his passion for even riding a bike. He took no joy in his EPO-assisted victories, only a temporary satisfaction that the task at hand was completed. He decided to come clean and to become an advocate for clean racing and changing the corrupt system.
Hamilton could not admit to anyone but his wife (who already knew) that he had been a cheat. His lie was so crushing he couldn’t even see a way out. He then spent all his money and energy protecting the lie for years, for nothing, obviously. It was the threat of perjury in that finally broke open the dam. It’s a cruel lesson to learn; the truth will set you free, even if it takes forever.
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@Oli
My correction is, "in his last year." My opinion is still that Mig, as well as a few others that ended careers in the mid 90s, got shelled by the EPO generation. Was Riis really that good? I am not convinced. I am going to run a few points on this one, so...
The Prophet retired in March, 1978 at age 33. At that time his last win was in July 77, soon after his 6th at the Tour. That's about eight months, most of which was the off-season (Did Eddy have an off-season?) I would say 4 months of actual racing happened in that period. Keep with me on this. Others that retired in the 90s (and victims of the EPO explosion IMO - Steve Bauer, 37 years old (OK that is old for a racer) retired in 1996 after the Olympics. He finished 41st. He didn't add much to his palmares after 92. Andy Hampsten, age 33 at his retirement (he was 10th overall at the Giro to 58th the next year?) LeMan (cringe) retired after a horrendous last few years at 33. Yes, he himself blamed other health issues, but he was already getting left behind in 92. And Mig, was 32. And yes, he was still winning and performing at a high level, but I think he saw the writing on the wall and left the game early. What else might have been attached to the 4.5 million euro Saiz was offering. One can speculate with Saiz. Hell, even Pharmy came back to a top ten after his first retirement.
What I am trying say with the comparison to The Prophet, is that all these guys were relatively successful in racing, but instead of finishing with panache, they were left behind. Yes, dropped like a Joey Tribioni spin-off. And probably saw no way to stay other than a little hi-test to keep up. I will leave with this as my Parthian shot...
http://www.velominati.com/the-hardmen/awesome-belgian-guys-edwig-van-hooydonk/
@Dan_R So you are saying that a guy like Le MOnd - who actually did say he was getting left behind by EPO and retired in 94 but whose last few years were relatively poor - is in the same boat as Mig who dominated that same era that left LeMonbehind?
@Dan_R I think some of your thinking is right, but some of the conjecture a bit out. I take your general point though.
@frank
I think that is the key question; "What would you do?"
Hamilton comes across as a fundamentally decent guy. He even refrains from making generalisations about Armstrong. What he does do is to refer to specific instances of interactions with him that don't paint Armstrong in a particularly positive manner, but there you go.
What would I do? I'm imagining a hypothetical situation where I'd busted my ass to get to a reasonably successful position in a sport that I loved to find that the rules had changed. Where I could no longer be competitive unless I got with the program.
If I were in Hamilton's shoes, I would likely have done as he'd done.
It would likely be a different answer if I was just starting out as a stagiare and that was the stark choice. Dope or don't start.
Certainly there are many shades of grey in this picture. It has indeed changed the way I view cycling, even today. I can no longer hold the view that cycling is totally clean as I don't believe that there has been sufficient structural change to make doping go away. It doesn't mean I love it any less but I'll be a bit more circumspect about it.
It gives me much more respct for Vaughters than I had before, for example.
@Marcus@Oli
I'll just say that Mig was a few years younger than LeMond. And yes, I think that if it had not been for Delgado, Mig may have challenged LeMond for the overall - it was not as if he really came out of nowhere. Mig was a contemporary of LeMan, he turned pro after teh 84 Olympics, just as Bauer did, and started winning soon after. I think that LeMond tried to fight too long, which some will chalk up to the falling star syndrome or his onset of mitochondrial myopathy (I had to look that one up). Mig was most likely aware that EPO was rampant by 96 and thought it was too much. When I see Mig's last season, to me, it is clear that the peloton just left him behind by the end of the year, with the OLympic TT being his swansong.
I dunno, I just always put him in the same club as the other guys I mention. They all demonstrated being able to ride well in their early 30s, but not to the same degree as just one previous season. I have always thought that as difinative of who "did what it took," to stay in the game. Many other riders from the late 80s early 90s continued well into the late 90s, yet the best of the crop fell to the wayside.
I trust you guys see the beer on my desk....
As I say, as a Big Mig fan since the 80s I disagree entirely about Indurains being "left behind" in '96, despite him tanking in the Tour. The reasons for him quitting are a whole other issue, and you may well be right about the EPO part of them, but when you see that just this year he tested to such a level that he could be competitive in today's peloton I really think it was more to do with his head than his legs.
@Dan_R, @Oli
I don't think any of us are in a position to definitively state if he was on EPO or not, but the timing is right, and to my mind he didn't really show GT capabilities until he started winning it - though he won stages and Paris-Nice.
To my feeling, he became very good very quickly, right when EPO came in, so it seems likely he was on it. But I definitely agree with Oli that his fall in '96 seemed more due to weather and prep than to drugs or not - the drugs had been in the peloton pretty full-bore for years already by that time.
His dominance also bore a significant resemblance to Pharmy's, if you take my implication...
@Deakus
It's a great read. Anquetil decimates everything in his path. Women, food, bikes, Pou Pou, women, champagne and various meats served alongside with frites.
mweston@absolute.com
Uncle.
Well, I just finished The Secret Race....quite a read. I couldn't put it down. I agree with @mouse that Hamilton seems like a decent guy and it was shocking how...normal it all seemed, how easy. Maybe I'm just gullible, but I really believed Hamilton on most accounts. Two things stuck out to me 1) I always thought Lance doped, but I didn't hate him really (I didn't know the full story I guess). After reading that book, I understand the COTHO title! Hamilton didn't even go after Pharmy as aggressively as he could have, for the most part he let Lance's douchery speak for its self. 2) If put in the same situation as Hamilton I can't say that I wouldn't have used EPO, I'd like to say I never would have but it's easy for me to play the role of moral superior from the couch. I do view doping as cheating, but I don't condemn the dopers as humans, the issue is too complex. I finally understand Lance's COTHO crown isn't from doping, but from being a twat.