The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs

Great read. Exposes the dark side of pro cycling.

From the outside, the revelations about doping in cycling tend to give a picture of unscrupulous, ego-driven, win-at-all-costs cheats. And, while I think that picture may even be largely valid, there's a missing perspective that Hamilton's book goes a long way to provide.The cheats don't usually start out that way. There's a common script for Hamilton, similar to the one David Millar recounts in his Racing Through the Dark. The young, immensely talented cyclist achieves early successes, gets to the big time, and realizes that he can't go on, he certainly can't progress, unless he becomes "professional", unless he does what it takes to win or even to support a winning team at the sport's highest levels. Then he has the choice. But by that time, his choices are defined by his profession and by his teammates and by the very ambitions that make him who he is as a cyclist.Hamilton says it is in fact a common pattern -- the "thousand days" between the beginning of the cyclist's professional career and the day he has to make his choice:"First year, neo-pro, excited to be there, young pup, hopeful. Second year, realization. Third year, clarity -- the fork in the road. Yes or no. In or out. Everybody has their thousand days; everybody has their choice."There isn't so much angst as you might think at that point, in Hamilton's story -- he just goes on and does what it appears he has to do. For him, it was even a mark of achievement. Not every member of the team gets the "white bag" containing the drugs. Only the elite members of the team get it, partly because only they are needed to support the team leader in the biggest races. Getting the bag means you have arrived.The script is self-serving. It allows its central character to be the innocent -- he didn't know what he was getting into, and once he reaches the point of choice, he seems hemmed in by circumstances and by the criteria of success in the world in which he lives.As self-serving as it is, I think the script is mostly believable. Cycling is an incredibly demanding sport -- unless you are all in, you aren't going to make it. Certainly some have chosen not to dope, and most of those knew that, in doing so, they were abandoning hopes of succeeding at the highest levels, or even being able to stay on a team at the highest levels. That's one of the realizations for me in reading Hamilton's book (and Millar's as well). Not all cyclists cheat in order to win for themselves -- many cheat because their team needs them to, in order to provide the help (setting pace, taking the wind, chasing breakaways, . . .) the team leader needs in order to contend in the biggest races. The pressure to cheat may come (in fact in most cases probably does come) from the outside, from the team. If he doesn't cheat, his value to the team diminishes -- then it's his career, not just his chances of winning, that's at stake.Any book about doping in cycling these days is inescapably a book about Lance Armstrong. Hamilton was a friend and loyal teammate to Armstrong before they fell out, partly owing to competitive tensions and then due to Hamilton's tell-all. Here we are getting Hamilton's story about that relationship, and Armstrong certainly doesn't come out of it looking very good. He's petty, vindictive, and driven by an absolute need for success seemingly without even the least scruples -- doping, friendship, or any other potential limitation. He cheats, he threatens, he exacts petty revenge, he manipulates, and he seems to do it all without conscience. In a way, though, even Armstrong is just a hugely magnified version of every other cyclist -- and by now he's thoroughly trapped inside the story he's built around himself. Almost a sympathetic character if you squint hard enough.The revelations about Armstrong and the Postal team in this book are a bit anti-climactic by now, although still pretty striking for the matter-of-fact quality about doping on the team (and, to be fair, on other teams as well). But the book still stands as Hamilton's story.I don't regard Hamilton as a "hero" -- after all, he made the choice to cheat, and he knew what he was doing. And he didn't decide to come clean by the pure strength of his own conscience or desire to do the right thing. He told his story only after he got busted. Still, I find his story sympathetic, and I like him -- when he asks us to consider what we would do under the same circumstances, I wish I could say, "No, I wouldn't cheat." But that's too easy to say when nobody's actually asking. The truth is, I don't know. I wish I was a good enough cyclist that I would be asked, but wishing that already makes me feel a little uncertain about myself.

Strongly recommend. Well-written and well documented. The specifics of the how, when and where of the all-encompassing doping program at the US Postal Cycling team make for very interesting reading. Entirely believable. The book is filled with extended quotes from other Postal riders, Landis, VandeVelde, Vaughters, Andreu, confirming portions of Hamilton's account. What strikes me is how pervasive the ethic of doping was throughout the Peloton. Literally everyone who was competitive in the mid-1990s to 2006 (and anyone on a competitive team) had to be on some kind of program -- whether EPO, transfusions, testosterone or something else. And everyone knew about it -- all the team members, all the staff, all the spouses/girlfriends -- including Hamilton's ex Haven and by implication Kristin Armstrong. [The only wife who was intolerant was the brave and principled Betsy Andreu.] The UCI repeatedly turned a blind eye, whether because of outright corruption (promised payments by Armstrong after a positive test at the Tour of Switzerland) or because of the need for the public perception of a "clean" sport. Therefore unwritten rules governed the ethic of doping within the Peloton. The testers would only show up at certain times. Don't get caught with a hematocrit over 50 and regardless of how suspicious, there would be no violation. As Hamilton says, the dope testing regime became more of an IQ test than a doping test. If you were clever, had the right doctor, or had enough money to cover the logistics of a sophisticated doping program, you would likely not get caught. (transfusing, storing and reinfusing blood before and during the course of the Tour without the blood "going bad" was a complicated process--with life threatening consequences if there was a mistake). And Armstrong and the Postal/Discovery squad had the best doctors (Ferrari), the most money, and the best logistics. As Hamilton says, the mistake the former Postal riders made when they left the team was thinking that they could easily find an equally effective replacement program. Once they left, they usually made a mistake of some kind - -hence Heras being caught, Landis, and Hamilton. Hamilton hypothesizes that his Spanish doping doctor Fuentes mixed up Hamilton's blood bags with those of another rider and that is why Hamilton tested positive for someone else's blood in his system. The book does make one sympathetic for the circumstances under which riders (almost every one) made the decision to dope.It does not make one sympathetic to Armstrong. To the contrary--Armstrong comes across as a vindictive narcissist. Rather than merely defending himself, he has to threaten and attempt to destroy anyone who mentions the truth -- hence his attacks on Betsey Andreu, Hamilton himself, Landis, and scores of journalists. [after first having encouraged Landis to deny doping after Landis' positive test, Armstrong then emphasized Landis' initial denials of doping to publicly proclaim that Landis lacks credibility]. But perhaps the most damning condemnation of Armstrong is that his urge to win and to destroy was so great, that he felt the need to inform on riders who were achieving independent success (and thereby threatening Lance's domination). By 2004, Hamilton had left Postal and then CSC and joined Phonak (while maintaining his own doping program). In the Dauphine Libere that year, Hamilton beat Lance in the Mont Ventoux time trial by a lot. Soon after, Hamilton got a call asking that he visit the UCI headquarters in Switzerland. There he was told that his blood values were suspicious and the UCI would be watching him. According to Floyd Landis, Armstrong had dropped the dime on Hamilton. Armstrong simply could not conceive that with a level playing field (everybody doping), he could lose a race. So Hamilton must be doing something very different and must be stopped.Anyway--a great and sobering read. It generates some sympathy for the dopers. It generates contempt for Armstrong. A liar and a bully with unlimited drive, significant wealth and few scruples can go very far in this world. Armstrong was the enforcer of the Peloton, the best and most sophisticated doping practitioner with the most resources and most cutting-edge techniques. He also had the most to lose if caught and therefore fought the hardest and destroyed the most people in perpetuating the fantasy of his supposedly dope-free seven Tour wins. Had Armstrong been revealed as a fraud earlier, any number of clean riders might otherwise have seen success. Who knows how many did not receive contracts or lost sponsors because they declined to participate in the institutionalized doping system that the US Postal Team had perfected under Lance Armstrong's leadership.

I only have to thank the author and editors for the great work and shedding a light into something few have the courage to.

An extremely compelling and ultimately depressing read. When it arrived I picked this up to have a brief skim through and practically read it from cover to cover unable to wait to find out about the next sordid doping detail and the extraordinary lengths these people went to. Some of the revelations are staggering as are the risks to their own health these people subjected themselves to.Hamilton tells how he rented an apartment in Monaco for several months just so he could have somewhere relatively nearby to transfuse blood during the Giro and later how he transfused a bag of 'bad' blood.It doesn't paint a very good picture of the professional peloton of the time I'm afraid with the inference that practically everyone was in on it, from riders to team directors and doctors to masseurs. I was also quite shocked at how complicit his wife was in this doping.The worrying message was that dopers were always ahead of testers which is uncomfortable as it probably still is the case. Still at the end of it all Hamilton insists he had no other option and that he had to dope just to compete with all of the other dopers and he asks others to put themselves in his shoes and asks what else could I have done.You could have said no and walked away Tyler.

One of the best sports books I have read for sure.The book quickly charts Tylers rise into professional cycling and initial "harmless" bits of doping such as the odd testosterone pill or patch to get him through a ride. Tyler seemed a solid domestique but was going nowhere new the podium.EPO and blood doping slowly became a part of his routine - there is some decent basics bits of science in here for the uninitiated on how it works and the typical cycles. Lance is always coming and out of the story and Tyler's close relationship with him. The constant struggle to keep hematocrit below 50.I really enjoyed some further insights that Tyler still believed the most important thing was to be really really skinny and really really fit moreso than fully doped up.A very enjoyable page-turning read.

I’m a massive cycling fan and like many, felt stunned, saddened and angered by the almost continuous allegations of doping within the sport. It made me resist reading any of the books from the riders of the past few decades.I finally decided to pick up this book and I’m so glad I did. Tyler provides an interesting and very human insight into the culture within professional cycling in the 1990s and 2000s, and offers an understanding of the challenges riders faced in that era. It is a must read for any cycling fan.

The book lifts the lid on the Lance Armstrong era of cheating in cycling. It would seem that pretty much all professional cyclists were forced into drug abuse in order to achieve any sort of competitive performance. It was very much drug up or leave the sport as you just could not compete with the cheats. It leaves a bad taste in the mouth and casts doubt as to whether it is still going on. The book is well written and, I believe, an honest narrative