It’s so much more than a mud flinging, revenge-driven tell-all. Tyler Hamilton educates us all on the rigors and extremes of competing in world class cycling. The utter ghoulishness of it all may be striking to the less informed—extracting one’s blood, storing it amongst a dozen other riders’ blood, only to re-inject it later. Hamilton relays an incident in which their “doctor’s” courier gets stopped by police on the road, ditches the blood bags for a time, only to retrieve them later and distribute the sun-warmed blood to the riders, which left Hamilton feverish and full of dead blood cells. For me, it was the methodical, systematic nature of the ghoulish practices that made the deepest impression. As a former racer I can certainly recall taking too big of a piece of pie, spitting it out surreptitiously into a napkin, and feeling awkward about it the first time, then how later it would become less strange, until it felt like nothing out of the norm.
On the subject of Lance, there is no more condemnation regarding the Texan’s use of “Edgar” (as in Edgar Allen Poe: EPO) than anyone else’s. But when it comes to his character and motives, Hamilton does focus the lens more sharply, removing the Gaussian blur most Americans have viewed Lance through and revealing a win-at-all-costs megalomaniac. I have to be honest; I’ve always respected Lance—not just his achievements, but Lance, as I knew him through interviews and tweets. I even appreciated his cockiness. I saw it as necessary—something that came with the territory. And I was never blind to the fact that the man doped. But I believed that there was an underlying honor in it all and Hamilton’s recounting of history goes a long way in eroding that belief.
The Secret Race also paints a fair and unabashed portrait of the racer, husband, son, and doting father to Tugboat, the golden retriever. Hamilton does not seek to spare himself as a simple foot soldier who followed team orders in a system where doping was the norm. He describes how he was introduced to it as a domestique, and how he later brought it with him as a team leader. He lets us in on the moral gymnastics it took to lie to the media, his parents, his fans. But he also explains the freedom “getting popped” afforded him—how good it felt drop the act. Hamilton describes towards the end of his tale, a pair of spandex clad riders on race bikes who pass him while on his town bike in Boulder, one of them is wearing a jersey that advertises: DOPERS SUCK, prompting Hamilton to pursue, mashing away on his 30 lb. fat-tired bike, and catching them down the road.
Hamilton to rider:
Yeah, I’m an ex-doper, but I don’t suck.
And it’s very evident, upon finishing this book that Tyler Hamilton does not, and did not ever suck. Nor did Pantani, Floyd, Ulrich, Basso, or Valverde or any of the others we spectators so easily pass judgment upon. Ok Ricco sucked, and still does, but the cast of characters who played the game in the late nineties was as tough and daring as any. They were simply caught up in an arms race—one that proliferated because the governing bodies of the time were inclined to look the other way. Because the science and technology available to these racers so greatly eclipsed the dope their directors were privy to, and because on paper, records were being smashed everywhere. The Secret Race gives us deep insight into the secretive, turbulent, and arguably most important era in professional cycling’s history.