Tyler Hamilton’s tell all book came out yesterday, “The Secret Race”. Reports are that he’s relieved to finally get everything out in the open and have no more secrets and lies.
He was interviewed by Daniel Coyle who helped write the book. Tyler’s reason for continuing the lies was that if he told the truth so many people would be hurt.
“Look, I lied. I thought it would cause the least damage. Put yourself in my shoes. If I had told the truth, everything’s over. The team sponsor would pull out and fifty people, fifty of my friends would lose their jobs. People I care about. If I told the truth, I’d be out of the sport, forever. My name would be ruined. And you can’t go partway – you can’t say Oh, it was only me, just this one time. The truth is too big, it involves too many people. You’ve either got to tell 100% or nothing. There’s no in-between. So yeah, I chose to lie. I’m not the first to do it and I won’t be the last. Sometimes you lie enough you start to believe it.”
He had to testify in LA where they kept trying to get him to finger Lance. He says he always pointed it at himself first (like on 60 Minutes). He says he made them understand how the whole system worked, got developed over the years and how one person couldn’t be singled out. Everybody was involved.
When asked by an interviewer how he avoided positive tests, he said that the tests are easy to beat. The athletes are way ahead of the testers and have better doctors. The sport doesn’t want to catch some people because it will cost them.
Hamilton describes how riders avoided detection, techniques to outsmart the testers. Teams had guys on motorbikes delivering a thermos of EPO during the Tour and no one knew. They used prepaid phone cards so the calls couldn’t be easily traced. They had code names of where to meet to do the doping and for the moto drivers as well.
He also explains Lance’s connections to Dr. Ferrari and his advanced techniques.
The infrastructure of the doping culture was highly tuned. Everyone-cyclists, doctors, coaches, soigneurs, trainers, spouses was involved. When a drug tester would arrive the word spread really quickly tipping everyone off.
His effort in writing the book was to unburden himself, not to trap Armstrong. He says he feels sorry for Lance because he’s in a corner that’s hard to get out of. He thinks telling the truth would be the best thing for Lance in the long run.
