Halfway done reading Tyler Hamilton's book "The Secret Race." Here are some great tidbits I thought I'd share.

I recently finished this book. Couldn’t put it down. Made me realize all the bad press about lance wasn’t just haters, he was legitimately a psychopath.

Read it a while back, very interesting.

Really interesting. Thx.

Confirms what we know: Lance was the Alberto Salazar of cycling. It wouldn’t surprise me if these two are genetically related if you do one of those ancestry.com DNA tests on them.

The books is good and informative, but here is an interesting thing to consider about an item I think Hamilton is lying about: If you are halfway through, you will soon reach the chapter "Popped" where Tyler Hamilton tests positive for having someone else's red blood cells in his body and insists being innocent and asks rhetorically -- "Why would anybody use anybody's blood but their own?". In fact, he fought his positive in two arbitration hearings and used his own and other people's money to fight against the anti-doping authorities. Then think these earlier words he wrote a few chapters earlier ("Life at the Top"):

It's funny -- you often hear about cycling's omertà, which is real enough. But when you're inside, it's positively chatty. Riders are constantly talking, whispering, comparing notes. The reward were too big, the punishments too mild, so the hunt for the next magical product was too tempting. The peloton was Facebook on wheels -- and during this period, information was flying.

Then you remember how he wrote about his post-USPS period (2001-->) that "I trained alone or sometimes with Levi Leipheimer, a quiet, intense Montanan who rode for the Dutch team Rabobank", of which there exists even a photo from 2004:

You also perhaps notice that many of Hamilton's Phonak teammates (Santi Pérez, Oscar Sevilla, José Ignacio Gutiérrez) came from the Kelme team of which the bad-luck Spaniard Jesús Manzano was a member of (became seriously ill twice in infusion-incidents and busted the Fuentes doping ring in 2004).

Why is this relevant?

Simply because using someone else's blood was at least not uncommon in 2004 when Hamilton tested positive even when Hamilton claims to have been totally clueless about the existence of the method. In fact, his training companion Levi Leipheimer had used his brothers's blood for the 2003 Vuelta d'España, a year before Hamilton's positive. In addition to this, the method was used by some of the Kelme riders, and Jésus Manzano told in the media that the idea was that his girlfriend would take rHuEPO, and then would donate blood for the Spanish cyclist to use. It is interesting that Hamilton's teammate Santi Pérez also had someone else's blood in his veins in 2004, but chose not to fight the issue against the authorities.

There were also some other cyclist who either considered using the method or used it around 2003-2004 (Bo Hamburger, Michel Boogerd, Michael Rasmussen etc.).

It is evident that Hamilton did use primarily his own blood he had stored earlier, but the 2004 season was a very long one with the Olympic Games and Tour of Spain for which he didn't necessarily have enough blood bags stored if he used blood bags for every grand tour and important one-day race.

trolero wrote:

Confirms what we know: Lance was the Alberto Salazar of cycling. It wouldn’t surprise me if these two are genetically related if you do one of those ancestry.com DNA tests on them.

The cycling world has like 1,000 Alberto Salazars. I can't even keep track of the number of different Italian doctors that Hamilton talks about during his book. He talks about one who picked him up from the airport in his Land Cruiser, asks Tyler is he wants to try some Soviet steroid pill, and when Tyler says no thanks the doc tosses the pill up in the air and swallows it himself.

NOP is the running equivalent of US Postal. As I read that book I thought if Salazar used it as a how-to.

Lol, does he talk about his “vanishing twin”?

Lance = Trump

Good book. Jamin, you would probably like Lance to Landis, another good read

Great book. My favorite phrase about recovery. “ if you are standing, you should be sitting, if you are sitting you should be laying down, if you are laying down, you should be sleeping.

Fun fact, Lance is related to Muhammad Ali.

LoneStarXC wrote:

Lol, does he talk about his “vanishing twin”?

Yep, I just got to that part

Welcome to 2013, jamin. Read that book long ago.

trolero wrote:

Confirms what we know: Lance was the Alberto Salazar of cycling. It wouldn’t surprise me if these two are genetically related if you do one of those ancestry.com DNA tests on them.

Nah. They were all on the drugs. Track just dabbles compared to the TdF

The race started on drugs. It was an endurance race that was basically last man standing. They have a statue to Tom Simpson on the mountain where he ODd on amphetamines.

I enjoyed Lance's riding. Hated his personal behaviors. But all those guys he beat? they were all on the gear. Cycling was about staying below the upper limits. Pantani was obviously on the gear. he used to delay the test to dilute his Hematocrit. The rest of his numbers were all over the place. but they only cared if your hematocrit was sub 50 at the time of the draw.

Vino used the wrong blood in a tour too.

Some more interesting tidbits:

* Although Lance won 7 TDFs, it's worth noting that he was focused exclusively on winning the TDF, skipped Giro d'Italia and other, arguably more prestiguous and competitive races (not as much name recognition with non-cyclists as the TDF), something other pros on the circuit looked down on him for.

* When Lance was at the height of his celebrity status and loaded from the business empire he created, he had seriously considered buying the entire TDF race for $1.5 billlion.

* There's a story when the fraud investigation was going on and Lance and Tyler almost got into a drunken physical altercation at a bar in Aspen, CO. The bar was one of Lance's hangout spots and Tyler knew that but thought Lance was out of town. The bartended, who was Lance's friend, called Lance to tell him that Tyler was there. Lance came with his girlfriend and was sitting on the opposite side of the bar as Tyler and they were ignoring each other at first. Then, when Tyler went to the restroom, which requires walking by Lance, he was acosted and Lance and was repeatedly asking "How much did 60 Minutes pay you?" and Tyler was repeatedly answering "Lance, you know they didn't pay me" and it was awkward for everyone there watching. The bartender, who was Lance's friend, kicked Tyler out of the place.

Glass of vino wrote:

Vino used the wrong blood in a tour too.

For Vino, it was likely an error because by 2007, everyone knew about the tests, and his teammate also tested positive. Nobody sees Vino as a moral hero, he hasn't claimed having confessed everything.

Whereas if Tyler "telling full truth feels good" Hamilton learned about the viability of the method at latest in 2004 and used intentionally someone else's blood just when there was yet no test to detect it, but was caught because of stupidity (1.3 % of foreign RBC in his AAF), he is still lying in maintaining his innocence, and one wonders what else he is lying/hiding etc.

Of course, it was rocket fuel madness in the 90s -00s hey days of cycling. The big German, Jan Ulrich, was with Team Telekom that had a doping program up on par with U.S. Postal. Ulrich was best of the rest finishing 2nd to Lance on three occasions. I still marvel at how he propelled that huge body of his up major climbs hanging right up there with Lance. A big influx of RBCs will allow big guys to improve aerobic capacity significantly.

And Pantani was hell on wheels - a huge responder to PEDs. The guy couldn't TT were crap, generally was with ousy teams and yet single handedly won the Tour in 1998! The most dangerous climber in the peloton.

Check this out - The Pirate & the Texan shooting it out to the summit of Mt. Ventoux during the 2000 Tour. Rocket-fueled turbo boosters at work here! Wow!