Book Review: The Secret Race - Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle

Just Let Them All Take Drugs And Leave Them To It

Wow, there a books that can really shake your understanding and beliefs in life. Some are very profound, the excellent Bounce book by Matthew Syed for example has changed how I raise my children and has made me assess my (lack of) limitations in life. The Secret Race has been so quite life changing but it has brought a whole new understanding to the soap opera that is cycling.

Tyler Hamilton was Lance's right hand man, for a period of time he roomed with him, he shared his aspirations and worries with him and he even doped with him. In this book Hamilton gives a first hand account of what it was like within the US Postal team and their organised doping. He also gives a full account of Armstrong and his personality, I never thought I would like him be I can't quite believe what a bullying nutcase he comes across as in the book.

My very wise wife has said to me in the past that they should 'just let them all take drugs and leave them to it'. Well it seems that they pretty much did. Hamilton says in his book that Armstrong was even caught for EPO in the Tour of Switzerland and the UCI swept it under the carpet - all for a $125,000 'donation' from Lance. Wow! It seems the authorities were so far behind the cyclists that they might have not bothered. Simple techniques like chugging down loads of water and simply pretending to not be in worked getting around drugs tests. Also they knew what time the testers were allowed to turn up so they would just try to take the drugs outside of those hours. One tester even phoned before he came to make sure they'd be in!

However, many keen cycling fans will have heard about the Festina affair in 1998 where a member of the team was caught carrying a load of drugs across the border during the tour. This meant a massive clamp down and all the cyclists and teams were running scared of the testers and being caught. Armstrong thought everyone else would still be getting their EPO one way or another and so organised his to be delivered. However they were wrong and in recent times (since Lance's retirement) the samples taken from riders at the time were tested with the new tests able to catch the cheats. Only 8% tested positive. 8%! That means only 8% of the field had a chance against Armstrong in his first tour win.

This really changed my perspective on the whole thing. I've always felt it was a fairly even playing field but it obviously wasn't that year. As time went on everyone else was doping, in fact most of them were using the same doctor! In fact I can remember one year when everyone was attacking Armstrong and it was a real close race - that must have been the year everyone was wired up to the eyeballs!

Having read David Millar's Racing Through The Dark and now this book, there is a stark contrast. Millar felt he was pushed in to drug taking, that he had no choice, that he felt bad. I feel Hamilton's view point is probably a lot more common. He portrays it as a cool club that he wanted to be in, that it gave him belief he could win or more that he didn't think he could win without it. He saw a marked change in competitors and felt he wanted and needed to follow them.The irony being that one tell-tale sign to him was one person's improvement over another athlete. It turns out that at that point that cyclist wasn't doping, he was just on good form but I guess this is why drug taking gave them the belief.

I think at the moment there is still a lot of drug taking about. The course for the Vuelta was so punishing but some cyclists seemed to compete day after day at the same level, cycling up the steepest of mountains like they were racing on the flat. There was a phrase used by Lance that someone was doping, he said a result or a performance was 'not normal'. The Vuelta this year was 'not normal', let's hope the tour this year is.

Oh and do buy the book, you will find it fascinating.

Was Lance Clean and Did He Need To Cheat?

What an emotive subject Lance Armstrong is. He has inspired millions, whether they are cyclists, armchair sports fans or cancer patients his story has touched so many across the world. The man who dominated cycling to such an extent that it's probably better to describe him as crushing rather than dominating his opponents. Lance was everything the sport needed and he was everything that was needed to win at the sport. His nationality and mother tongue made him perfect for the media and his dynamic personality filled inches after inches of sports columns, hours and hours of TV coverage and flogged products to their readers/viewers. So was it all a sham, did he take drugs and that was why he was so good? Well the answer to the those two questions is "probably" and "no".

First of all let's rewind to before Lance had cancer, he was a strong rider from a young age and was the youngest rider to be road race world champion. Then cancer hit. Armstrong hit back at cancer with everything he had, he researched cancer to the nth degree and went about it in a way that he would be famous for attacking cycling when he made his comeback. He was methodically, looking at everything at the heart of that was nutrition. Coming out the other side (if you want the whole story read his excellent autobiography) he must have then analysed cycling with a new lust for life. I imagine him saying "right what do I need to do to win the Tour de France" and then researched it massively. This is where the grey areas start to come in. The Tour at that point (late nineties) was a dark place, running a two speed peloton - those who took drugs (doped) and those who didn't. There wasn't yet a test that could detect the most popular drug EPO and so it was rampant amongst cyclist. This description from bikepure.org explains how it works

"EPO artificially boosted the body’s red blood cell count . Boosting an athlete’s red blood cell count (and thus the efficiency with which oxygen is transported around the body) in order to improve performance, is done by injecting erythropoietin – a hormone produced by the kidneys that stimulates production of red blood cells – and it gives a massive advantage in performance."

The only cyclist and those on the staff who had been caught were those caught in possession of the drug rather than through drug tests. So before we go any further those who claim that because an athlete has take "hundreds of drugs tests" it doesn't mean they're not taking drugs. There wasn't a test for the third generation of EPO until May 2008, three years after Lance won his last Tour.

So back to Lance and his outlook in 1997/8, all the top cyclists were doping. Evidence? Let's look at the three winners before Lance, they were Pantani, Ullrich and Riis. Bjarne Riis has admitted he took drugs, Jan Ullrich has been done for drugs and, if you have the stomach for it, you can read The Death of Marco Pantani, a biography that uncovers his drug aided career from start to cocaine overdose finish.

Faced with a Tour that was fuelled by drugs it is feasible that Lance thought his only way of winning the tour during his generation was to use EPO.

However, Lance wasn't just EPO good, he was amazing. This is where the non-drugs side to Lance comes through. He was the complete rider. Let me explain in more detail.

He trained hard, he was one of the first riders to bring in reconnoitering the major stages of the tour before hand. Knowing how the route was gave him that extra edge, knowing exactly when to attack, knowing which side of the road to be on when descending. It all added up.

His diet was followed strictly, unlike Ullrich who would crash diet before the race Armstrong would turn up to the tour looking lean and but would stay lean aiding his training. Why is that important? Before cancer Lance had a lot of upper body weight in the form of muscle (he used to be a tri-athlete), the new slimmed down version meant he was a lot lighter and that aided him when climbing mountains. As you can imagine the lighter you are, the less weight you have to drag up a mountain.

Everything for Lance was down to the little detail, he wouldn't walk around in bare feet in his house as that was a way to catch colds. Everything was thought of. You may have heard David Brailsford talk of marginal gains to do with British Cycling and Team Sky but it's Lance that really brought that thinking on a step. He looked at everything, I've mentioned nutrition, training, health but his team also looked at his bike making sure he gained every advantage where he could.

Tactics wise he was spot on, at the start of his dominance he seemed easy to read, he would attack on the first mountain summit finish and then just keep eating away at time after that. Yet, it wasn't that simple. First of all, knowing when he would attack wouldn't help if you could keep up with him but he controlled the whole race from start to finish. He would carefully choose who would have the race lead by allowing only certain breakaways to have success (by his team not chasing them down) and would then hold them at a certain length so they weren't a danger to him but meant he wouldn't have to defend his lead too early. Team Sky are still learning from Lance today. They looked at how he never got in any crashes - something Bradley Wiggins didn't avoid as he went out of last year's Tour with a broken collar bone. Again it seemed easy to read him, just stay at the front and you don't end up in a crash. Yet when 200 riders want to be at the front for that very reason it actually causes the crashes so how did Lance do it? He got his team to ride a fast pace even on stages where there was nothing at stake, this stretched out the peloton and meant that the scrum for the front was no more.

Drugs may have helped with the implementation of his tactics but it didn't help form the original thought. That really sums Lance up, it may have helped his implementation but he was head and shoulders above the other drug takers. Does it make it right? No but he's still the best rider of his generation. That I'm sure of.