A new book by Lance Armstrong's former cycling teammate Tyler Hamilton has made its way into the hands of the press.
The book is called THE SECRET RACE: Inside The Hidden World Of The Tour De France. Doping, Cover-Ups, And Winning At All Costs.
David Walsh, a journalist at London's Sunday Times who wrote an early article about Armstrong's suspected doping, described the book this weekend.
Hamilton's book describes in vivid detail the sophisticated system that Hamilton says that Armstrong's U.S. Postal team used to stay ahead of the anti-doping authorities, a challenge that Hamilton says was easy, at least in the early years.
Hamilton's book says that Lance Armstrong not only took part in this cheating system, he ran the system.
In the 1998 Tour de France, for example, Hamilton says, the top riders on the team were supplied with blood-doping drug EPO throughout the race by a motorcycle courier who delivered it to the riders in white lunch bags. The courier also worked as a gardener for Armstrong at his house in Nice. Hamilton wasn't considered good enough to get hand-delivered EPO that year, but he wanted it.
The following year, before the 1999 race, Hamilton says he was hanging out with Armstrong in Armstrong's villa in Nice and asked Armstrong whether he had any EPO. Armstrong pointed to the refrigerator. Hamilton checked the refrigerator and found the EPO.
In 2000, Hamilton says, he and Armstrong and a third U.S. Postal rider named Kevin Livingston flew to Spain to have blood drawn before the race. This blood was later delivered to the riders' hotel rooms during the Tour and infused back into them before the crucial (and grueling) 11th Stage. In this case, Hamilton says, Armstrong was next to him when he got the transfusion.
As to the risk of getting caught--and all those drug tests that Armstrong cites to prove his innocence--Hamilton has this to say:
The tests are easy to beat. We’re way, way ahead of the tests. They’ve got their doctors and we’ve got ours, and ours are better. Better paid, for sure.”
Along with Floyd Landis, another former Armstrong teammate, Hamilton was later busted for doping, stripped of victories, and given a suspension. So the dwindling number of people who still believe that Armstrong raced cleaned will likely dismiss Hamilton's book with the same obstinate explanation with which all evidence against Armstrong has been dismissed--as a vendetta launched by a proven liar.
But given the amount of evidence that has been produced against Armstrong in recent years, it's no surprise that the US Anti-Doping Agency decided to go after him aggressively. And they were right to do so. Not because tearing down inspiring heroes is good for anyone (least of all the heroes). But because the world deserves to know and understand the truth. And because it's only fair, now that so many other riders in the era have finally come clean. And because many other promising cyclists likely made decisions not to cheat, and, in so doing, threw away their dreams.
A few weeks ago, before Lance Armstrong announced that he was not going to fight the USADA's charges, another former teammate of Armstrong's, Jonathan Vaughters, came clean in the New York Times. No one paid much attention to Vaughters' article--by then, most people had likely concluded that doping was just a fact of life in cycling in Armstrong's era. But Vaughters' explanation of why the riders cheated, and why so many riders vehemently stood behind the lie that went along with it, is one of the most compelling explanations I've ever read.
Doping, Vaughters explained, provided only a small performance advantage--a 2% improvement. But in the world of professional sports, a 2% advantage is huge:
In elite athletics, 2 percent of time or power or strength is an eternity. It is the difference in time between running 100 meters in 9.8 seconds and 10 seconds. In swimming it’s between first and ninth place in the 100-meter breaststroke. And in the Tour de France, 2 percent is the difference between first and 100th place in overall time.
Vaughters, like Armstrong, Hamilton, and other professional cyclists, had spent years getting to the top. Everyone almost at the top knew that everyone at the top was doping. So not taking advantage of that extra 2% to be competitive meant throwing away your dreams:
I wasn’t hellbent on cheating; I hated it, but I was ambitious, a trait we, as a society, generally admire. I had worked for more than half my life for one thing. But when you’re ambitious in a world where rules aren’t enforced, it’s like fudging your income taxes in a world where the government doesn’t audit. Think of what you would do if there were no Internal Revenue Service.
So, inevitably, Vaughters came to the choice that all the top riders in that era appear to have come to: Give up without ever quite achieving your dream because everyone you're trying to beat is cheating--or decide to cheat, too. And lie.
People who end up living their dreams are not those who are lucky and gifted, but those who are stubborn, resolute and willing to sacrifice. Now, imagine you’ve paid the dues, you’ve done the work, you’ve got the talent, and your resolve is solid as concrete. At that point, the dream is 98 percent complete but there is that last little bit you need to become great.
THEN, just short of finally living your childhood dream, you are told, either straight out or implicitly, by some coaches, mentors, even the boss, that you aren’t going to make it, unless you cheat. Unless you choose to dope. Doping can be that last 2 percent. It would keep your dream alive, at least in the eyes of those who couldn’t see your heart. However, you’d have to lie. Lie to your mother, your friends, your fans. Lie to the world. This has been the harsh reality laid out before many of the most talented, hardest working and biggest dreaming athletes.
If all of the riders in the Armstrong era had cheated--not just the top riders, but all the riders who almost made it to the top but walked away without cheating--then those who say Armstrong never should have been investigated would have more of a leg to stand on. But as Vaughters observes, some of the riders in that era did not cheat. Faced with the choice above, some of them chose instead to walk away. And however unfair the Armstrong investigation appears to some, this unfairness pales before the unfairness that ended the careers of many upcoming cyclists who chose to keep playing by the rules.
This is why the Armstrong investigation matters. And it's why it was the right thing to do, despite what Armstrong and his defenders say about it.
If, by some chance, Armstrong didn't do what the evidence now strongly suggests he did, he should write his own book. Based on everything else that has been said so far, this book would need to describe and explain a world in which almost all of the world's top cyclists were cheating--and all of Armstrong's teammates were cheating, with his full knowledge of their cheating--and in which he himself did not cheat.
That would be quite a story. And it would be a story that this Lance Armstrong fan, for one, would be very eager to read
But the story would have to ring true. And making it ring true, in the face of all the evidence that has already been released--not to mention the full USADA evidence, which will soon be released--will probably be a tougher challenge than any that Armstrong has faced to date.
If Armstrong has been telling the truth all this time, there would be no downside to his writing a book like that. And there might be a lot of upside (lots of people might believe him).
In the absence of a story like that, however, it's probably time for even Armstrong's most vocal defenders to acknowledge that the USADA did the right thing.
Please follow Sports Page on Twitter and Facebook.