For Tyler Hamilton, Lance Armstrong’s former teammate on the U.S. Postal Service cycling team, it all began with a little testosterone pill, a “red egg,” from a team doctor in 1997, said Nathaniel Vinton in the New York Daily News. Where it ends, for both men, is yet to be determined. In a new book, The Secret Race, Hamilton tells an ugly story about doping in his sport, complete with blood bags in his fridge and a motorcyclist trailing his Tour de France team carrying performance-enhancing drugs in a thermos. And then there’s Lance. From the beginning, Hamilton says, Armstrong was as competitive about doping as he was about every other aspect of cycling. Armstrong didn’t just work the system, Hamilton writes; “Lance was the system.”
Armstrong’s take-no-prisoners approach is the reason Hamilton was caught by surprise at his teammate’s recent decision to quit fighting the drug allegations, said Bonnie D. Ford in ESPN.com. But he doesn’t think Armstrong will sit quietly for long. “I’ve never seen Lance throw in the towel before,” he says. “The day he puts up the white flag is the day he dies.” Though Hamilton is prepared for an assault on his reputation—he was stripped of his 2004 Olympic cycling gold for doping—he says it’s past time for cycling to come clean. “Before we move forward, we have to address the past,” he says. “It’s been addressed to a point, but people only wanted to go so far. The whole truth needs to be told. Cycling needs to be weeded out from the top.”
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
Quiz of The Week: 13 - 19 AprilPuzzles and Quizzes Have you been paying attention to The Week's news?
-
'Colleges warn of punishment for disruptions'Today's Newspapers A roundup of the headlines from the US front pages
-
Peter Murrell: Sturgeon's husband charged over SNP 'embezzlement' claimsSpeed Read SNP expresses 'shock' as former chief executive rearrested in long-running investigation into claims of mishandled campaign funds
-
Also of interest...in picture books for grown-upsfeature How About Never—Is Never Good for You?; The Undertaking of Lily Chen; Meanwhile, in San Francisco; The Portlandia Activity Book
-
Author of the week: Karen Russell
feature Karen Russell could use a rest.
-
The Double Life of Paul de Man by Evelyn Barish
feature Evelyn Barish “has an amazing tale to tell” about the Belgian-born intellectual who enthralled a generation of students and academic colleagues.
-
Book of the week: Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
feature Michael Lewis's description of how high-frequency traders use lightning-fast computers to their advantage is “guaranteed to make blood boil.”
-
Also of interest...in creative rebellion
feature A Man Called Destruction; Rebel Music; American Fun; The Scarlet Sisters
-
Author of the week: Susanna Kaysen
feature For a famous memoirist, Susanna Kaysen is highly ambivalent about sharing details about her life.
-
You Must Remember This: Life and Style in Hollywood’s Golden Age by Robert Wagner
feature Robert Wagner “seems to have known anybody who was anybody in Hollywood.”
-
Book of the week: Astoria: John Jacob Astor and Thomas Jefferson’s Lost Pacific Empire by Peter Stark
feature The tale of Astoria’s rise and fall turns out to be “as exciting as anything in American history.”