Dammit, Tyler
The hubub of Battenkill was enough to drown out a small piece of big news -- Tyler Hamilton's retirement from cycling due to a second positive doping test. The rumors that he tested positive at or before ToC turned out to be true after all, and the immediate reaction was exactly what you'd expect: what an asshole.
Of course, it's more complicated than that. This time around, he admitted his guilt and claimed the banned steriod (DHEA) he tested positive for came from his anti-depression medication, that he knowingly took this winter. In his words:
Backing up his story is this quote from cyclingnews:
So, it appears that Hamilton will end up being banned (possibly for life) for taking a performance enhancer that doesn't actually enhance performance, but might mitigate depression. Tough break. Before you feel too bad for him, remember that he has a 2004 Olympic Time Trial Gold Medal at home, thanks to a botched B sample test -- so he's caught a few breaks of his own.
The most common response from the cycling community has been "good riddance," and it's hard to blame them -- Tyler's presence, with or without a second positive test, was a reminder of just how dirty professional cycling was just five years ago, and a question about how dirty it may still be.
And that's the real issue here. It's easy to say "Fuck Tyler Hamilton," because it focuses your anger on a person. It's easy to hate people, much easier than a complicated, organic, and faceless "system" -- and it makes total sense, as long as Tyler was one of the rare cheaters in the pro peloton. A pro peloton that didn't even have a test for EPO until 2000, a test for homologous blood doping until 2004, and still doesn't have a test for HGH.
Right.
Let's consider a scenario: you're a phenomenally talented young bike racer in the United States. Maybe your last name is Armstrong or Hamilton -- or maybe Keough or Mannion. Your dream, as long as you've ridden a bike, is to race on the road in Europe -- and you might just be good enough to do it.
After spending a decade of your life working toward this dream, making bike racing your career, you finally make it to the big leagues and find out that everyone is cheating. Luckily, the team doctor will help you cheat too, and since everyone else is doing it -- you're really just leveling the playing field.
Or, you can quit the sport you love and give up every athletic dream you've ever had, and go back home with nothing but your integrity to show for the first twenty years of your life.
Don't forget that you'll never be able to tell anyone why you came back, unless you want to betray every other professional cyclist out there, aka "your entire social network."
So what would you do?
Fuck Tyler, indeed.
Of course, it's more complicated than that. This time around, he admitted his guilt and claimed the banned steriod (DHEA) he tested positive for came from his anti-depression medication, that he knowingly took this winter. In his words:
"What I did was wrong and yes, I did know it [DHEA] was on the list of banned substances. I also knew that USADA could have shown up any day and at any time to test me. But, I was going through a very rough moment and I was desperate. I heard about it and I thought I would try it out as an act of desperation"
Backing up his story is this quote from cyclingnews:
"There is no scientific evidence or basis for this steroid to be a performance enhancer," said Scott. "It is fair to suggest that the probability of DHEA having a performance effect on anyone, at any amount taken is inconceivable. There is no good reason to take DHEA, this is a very foolish drug to take because it is readily detectable, but it has no performance enhancements."
So, it appears that Hamilton will end up being banned (possibly for life) for taking a performance enhancer that doesn't actually enhance performance, but might mitigate depression. Tough break. Before you feel too bad for him, remember that he has a 2004 Olympic Time Trial Gold Medal at home, thanks to a botched B sample test -- so he's caught a few breaks of his own.
The most common response from the cycling community has been "good riddance," and it's hard to blame them -- Tyler's presence, with or without a second positive test, was a reminder of just how dirty professional cycling was just five years ago, and a question about how dirty it may still be.
And that's the real issue here. It's easy to say "Fuck Tyler Hamilton," because it focuses your anger on a person. It's easy to hate people, much easier than a complicated, organic, and faceless "system" -- and it makes total sense, as long as Tyler was one of the rare cheaters in the pro peloton. A pro peloton that didn't even have a test for EPO until 2000, a test for homologous blood doping until 2004, and still doesn't have a test for HGH.
Right.
Let's consider a scenario: you're a phenomenally talented young bike racer in the United States. Maybe your last name is Armstrong or Hamilton -- or maybe Keough or Mannion. Your dream, as long as you've ridden a bike, is to race on the road in Europe -- and you might just be good enough to do it.
After spending a decade of your life working toward this dream, making bike racing your career, you finally make it to the big leagues and find out that everyone is cheating. Luckily, the team doctor will help you cheat too, and since everyone else is doing it -- you're really just leveling the playing field.
Or, you can quit the sport you love and give up every athletic dream you've ever had, and go back home with nothing but your integrity to show for the first twenty years of your life.
Don't forget that you'll never be able to tell anyone why you came back, unless you want to betray every other professional cyclist out there, aka "your entire social network."
So what would you do?
Fuck Tyler, indeed.
Comments
I read an article two summers ago in the times that quoted Fausto Copp, who rode to yellow in 1949 and 1952, on his response to being asked if he had ever used amphetamines in the tour:
“Only when necessary,” he said.
How often was that?
“Most of the time,” Coppi replied.
Doping control only began after Tom Simpson collapsed and died on Mt. Venoux in 1967, with amphetamines in his jersey.
Think about how many jackasses attack on the wrong side of the yellow line in cat 3 and 4 road races, sometimes to form the winning break. Gamache Cyclery pulls this in every race and in every category. Why, because it works and you don't get caught most of the time.
People dope because it works and you don't get caught most of the time.
I'm sure he got tested often, so knowingly taking a banned substance was literally career suicide. Sure, depression is no joke, but there is no shortage of drugs aimed at controlling it, and the majority of them probably don't contain banned substances. For Hamilton to find, and take, one of the few that he knew contained a banned substance means he is either an enormous jackass, or he wanted to get caught.
At least this time he has an excuse that kind of makes people feel bad for him, which was probably part of the plan.
I can almost write it myself - Young man works really hard to acheive his dream, young man acheives dream then screws it up by constantly crashing in all the big races, young man marries the women of his dreams but can't keep her happy, blames the bike saddle, young man is unjustly beaten down by the system but prevails, then the young man meets Micheal Ball and his world falls apart. Could just be a coincidence. Then, he turns his life around yadda.... The rest is boring because there are no more bicycles.
But who would play Tyler?
Who would play Micheal Ball?
And thanks for the link to my place.
The problem with zero tolerance is you remove all incentive for anyone to come clean. If a rider comes forward today, without being caught, and admits to doping in the past, they get the same punishment as someone who does everything to avoid detection. This discourages disclosure. The governing bodies want it this way, as they turned a blind eye or even participated in coverup for so long, they don't want the truth to ever come out.
Young riders can still refuse to dope, no matter what the pressure. I'm sure some manage. The real problem to me is that if they still manage to win, many people still assume they dope. How many times have you heard "they all dope?" They don't all dope.
It would still take huge balls to out Lance. That's the real reason it'll never happen.
My point is the dopers getting away with it isn't as big a deal as clean kids being presumed guilty. That's the real shame of the situation.
I've also never seen anything informative about just how powerful dope is. Maybe some of these guys who rant about their power meters can go on EPO for us and blog about the performance gains? They don't call it performance enhancing for nothing, but is it impossible to win without it? Or does the best rider not need it?
It's one thing for Lance to shrug off doping accusations from crazy Frenchmen and Greg Lemond, who don't have any real proof.
You're telling me that Tyler could write a book detailing a systematic doping program run at US Postal, complete with all the details and Lance-implication you'd expect from someone on the inside, and wouldn't be a big deal? I'm skeptical.
In this country people don't care. Nobody's torn those W stickers off the bumpers of their trucks. Baseball and football are as big as ever.
I try not to confuse the crap I see in the media with facts too. I generally leave that to others. You sucked me in here...
http://outside.away.com/outside/bodywork/200311/200311_drug_test_1.html
If someone from the inside has actually written about/admitted to systematic doping at US Postal and it was swept under the rug -- please provide evidence of such.
I honestly don't think there are too many people who know the details. If there was a systematic program, they weren't all on it. Certainly Armstrong was faster than everyone else who ever rode on the team, right? So was this just dope? After all, even as a kid, he was better than everyone else. We saw him at age 18 in Maine and he lapped the field at the Biddeford crit, twice...
Anyway, my original point is that one of the reasons he may not be able to write a tell-all book (at least not an interesting one) is because it would implicate Lance. Maybe he doesn't have anything on Lance, but stuff like the alleged conversation about Lance dumping Floyd's blood refill make me think it wasn't as secretive between riders and team managers as you do.
Even if the linked anecdote is is just "secondhand gossip" (one of the parties claimed that), the point is that these guys would talk frankly with each other about blood doping.
a) They didn't know the alleged program well enough to duplicate it without getting caught.
b) The programs they got caught using weren't effective enough for them to beat the Postal rider.
This leads me to conclude that they were not on the same program as the successful Postal rider. If they were, they wouldn't have got caught and would have been faster (this is assuming the alleged doping program is truly the key to success at Postal, and that the individuals who left Postal were intelligent enough to execute a similar program with similar results).