The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs

by Daniel Coyle

  At the foot of Alpe d’Huez, five Posties went to the front. Heras and Chechu started sprinting—full gas, as vicious a sprint as they could manage. It was the kind of punch that had won four previous Tours, superhigh wattage for a couple of minutes. For a second, I got dropped. Then I got back on.

  That’s the moment. If someone wants to see where doping affects a race, I’d point them to those ten seconds at the foot of Alpe d’Huez in 2003. When Lance and company accelerated, I was instantly twenty, thirty feet back. Without the BB, I would have fallen further back and never returned; my day would have been over. But with the BB, I had those extra five heartbeats, those twenty more watts. With the BB, I could claw my way back. On the video, you can see me rising out of the bottom of the picture; I catch on to the lead group. And when Lance looks back, I’m right there.

  Lance keeps attacking, spinning the pedals, hitting his numbers. But he can’t drop us: it’s Mayo and his teammate Haimar Zubeldia, Beloki and Vino. And no Posties—because Lance is alone now; he’s burned up his helpers.

  A few minutes into the Alpe, Lance gets out of the saddle, standing like he does when he’s going his hardest. I can’t stand—my collarbone hurts too much—so I grit my teeth, keep sitting, and go as deep as I can. It was like those old training days: just him and me in the mountains above Nice. He’s giving his all, and I’m answering.

  How’s that?

  —I’m still here.

  How’s that?

  —Still here.

  A little math: the leader on a climb typically spends 15 to 20 more watts than the guy in his slipstream. That’s why you want to follow as much as you can, conserving your energy for the key moments, the attacks and replies. The phrase we use is “burning matches,” meaning that each rider has a certain number of big efforts he can make. Now, on Alpe d’Huez, Lance was burning one match after another.

  We sense it, and start attacking him. First Beloki, then Mayo, then I give it a dig, leaving Lance behind. And it works. For a few seconds, I’m in the clear. On the television broadcast, commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen are going crazy.

  “We’ve never seen a climb like this before,” Liggett shouts. “They believe [Lance is] vulnerable! They actually believe Armstrong can be beaten!”

  Lance has the bad face going: deep lines on the forehead, lower lip pushed out, head tipped forward. He drags himself up to me. Then Mayo escapes, charging up the road, his unzipped orange jersey flapping like a superhero’s cape. Vinokourov follows; Lance lets them both go. I try to escape again, but Lance follows. Now we’ve reversed roles; he’s the one telling me, I’m still here, dude.

  By the last switchbacks, we’re both out of matches; we ride the last few kilometers of the climb close to each other. Mayo scores the victory; Vino is second; Lance and I finish with five others, with Ullrich only 1:24 behind. Afterward, all the talk in the media is of Lance’s weakness. But we riders know that they’ve got it wrong. The truth is that the playing field, for the first time in my Tour de France career, is level.

  In the following days, due to favoring my collarbone, I compressed a nerve in my lower back. This ignited a pain that was even worse than the collarbone and caused my back to spasm and seize up. The evening of stage 10, the pain became unbearable. Walking was becoming difficult. My breathing was restricted. We tried all the usual methods: massage, ice, heat, Tylenol—nothing worked. It felt like an iron fist wrapped around my spine, squeezing.

  CSC’s therapist, a lanky, new-agey guy named Ole Kare Foli, decided to try an extreme chiropractic adjustment—basically, to try to straighten me out the same way you’d straighten a bent piece of copper pipe. I told him to do it, quick. So he did. I was screaming and Ole and Haven were crying and Tugboat was barking. But when it was over, I felt better. I lost some time the next couple stages, but stayed within striking distance of the podium.

  Going into stage 15, the race was tighter than ever: five riders within 4:37 of each other. Postal, seemingly with only one card to play, tried again to beat us with brute force; again they failed. By the last climb of the day, to Luz Ardiden, we were all together. Mayo was first to attack; Lance responded, and we followed. Lance caught Mayo, then set off on the attack himself.

  When Lance is leading, he sometimes likes to make it hard on the pursuers by riding as close as possible to the spectators on the edge of the road; that way, his rival can use less of his slipstream than if he were in the center. Giving a half draft, it’s called; and while it’s useful, it’s also risky. Because when you ride close to spectators, things can happen.

  In this case, it was a boy of about ten. He was playing with a yellow plastic musette—a souvenir feed bag—and as Armstrong passed, his right handlebar caught the handle of the musette; the boy instinctively hung on, neatly flipping Armstrong to the pavement and causing Mayo to crash as well; Ullrich swerved to avoid joining them.

  We rode on. In such cases, it’s traditional to call a halt to all attacking, to wait for the yellow jersey to rejoin the group—part of the ancient code of bike-racing chivalry. So we kept pedaling at a steady speed, waiting for Lance to rejoin the group.

  Ullrich kept pedaling too. I saw him a couple hundred meters up the road, and it didn’t seem to me like he was waiting. Ullrich wasn’t attacking, exactly, but he sure wasn’t slowing down either. I decided to burn a match, to catch him and tell him to take it down a notch. It took me about a minute, and when I pulled alongside, I gestured for him and the rest to wait. Ullrich waited, and Lance rejoined us. Then Lance rode off and won the stage in impressive fashion, putting 40 seconds into Ullrich and 1:10 into me, and giving himself a small margin going into the Tour’s final days.

  That night, Haven got a text message from Lance. It said, “Tyler showed big class today. Your husband’s the fucking man. Thanks so much.” I appreciated getting that. But not as much as I appreciated the feeling of doing the right thing. It wasn’t about Lance. It was about fairness. Even in our world—especially in our world—following the rules feels good sometimes.

  That night I met with Ufe at a nearby hotel and got the third BB. Everything went smoothly, but I had a nagging feeling of regret, wishing that I’d done it earlier; that way I wouldn’t have lost time on stages 13 and 14. Now that my collarbone was feeling more stable, I knew that I had to use this BB well. The following day was my final chance to do something in the Tour: stage 16, from Pau to Bayonne, including the Tour’s last big climbs.

  The day didn’t start out well: early in the stage, I got caught behind a break in the field and got dropped. I felt blocked and heavy, as I sometimes did after taking a BB. I had to call some teammates to pace me back; soon I was in front again and feeling better.

  When we hit the day’s first major climb, I attacked and managed to bridge up to a small breakaway. We put some distance on the peloton, and as we approached the day’s big test, the Col Bagargui, I decided to attack again. I put my head down, went into the death zone, and when I looked up, I was alone in the mist, with 96 kilometers to the finish.

  A solo breakaway is a strange experience; I imagine it’s sort of like rowing across the Atlantic. You start off with a certain what-the-hell freedom; you spend energy recklessly, you’ve got nothing to lose. Then, as time goes on, your mind starts to play tricks on you. Your mood jerks from one extreme to the next. One moment you feel alone and hopeless; the next you feel invincible.

  I went as hard as I’ve ever gone. I usually pride myself on keeping somewhat of a poker face, but as the photos of that day show, appearances went out the window: squinty, puffy eyes, tongue out, head lolling back; I went sick piggy. My legs, though, were strong. They kept churning.

  I inched away. Two-minute lead. Then three minutes. Then four. Then, unbelievably, five minutes. As the gap lengthened I felt myself get stronger: I’d started the day nine minutes down on Lance; now I was riding myself onto the podium of the Tour de France. Behind me, the peloton got worried and started chasing: the teams of the riders
whose podium places were at risk. I could almost hear Lance’s growl—not normal! They went flat out; they pushed hard to catch me, alternating leads between the teams that had the most to lose. But they couldn’t catch me. Not today. Everything else in this race had gone sideways—the crash, my collarbone, the pinched nerve. Today was going to be different. The long run-in to Bayonne was a roller coaster of steep, short uphills, and steep, short downhills. I saw it, and I smiled inwardly. It was exactly like training with Cecco in the hills of Tuscany, doing our 40–20s. I used the new top end of my motor. In my earpiece, I could hear Bjarne’s calm voice, urging me on.

  You are destroying the Tour de France.

  Tyler, Tyler, Tyler, you are so strong.

  They will not catch you.

  You can talk all you want about the BBs and the Edgar; you can call me a cheater and a doper until the cows come home. But the fact remains that in a race where everybody had equal opportunity, I played the game and I played it well. I took a chance and I pushed myself as hard as I could, and when the day was over, I finished first. As I approached the line, I slowed so Bjarne could pull up next to me, and we linked hands in victory. The press called it the longest and most courageous breakaway in Tour history. A few riders grumbled about my being “extraterrestrial,” but I didn’t care. A few days later, Lance went on to win the Tour narrowly over Ullrich and Vino; thanks to my breakaway, I placed fourth in the overall, my best-ever finish. I wasn’t quite on the podium. But I could definitely see it from where I was standing.

  Sadly, a few days later, Bjarne Riis and I parted ways. As much as we liked each other personally, as much success as we’d had, we kept disagreeing on one key point. I felt I needed the entire team’s support during the Tour de France, and Bjarne was committed to the idea of dual leaders. I realized our relationship was over on stage 13, when Bjarne, in our team car, raced past me to support Carlos Sastre’s bid for a stage win. Leaving CSC wasn’t easy. When I told Bjarne my decision, we both cried. He said he’d never met anybody else who worked as hard as I did; I appreciated that, and I appreciated him. But I wasn’t a young pup anymore; I was thirty-three, and there was no time to wait.

  I signed with Phonak, an up-and-coming Swiss team, for the 2004 and 2005 seasons. The team owner, a cheerful, bearlike Swiss magnate named Andy Rihs, was the kind of boss you dream about: positive attitude, big ambitions, pure supportiveness. My deal was $900,000 yearly salary plus bonuses. Those numbers, plus Andy’s support, assured me that I was going to be the leader for the Tour, and that 2004 would be the year I pushed all the chips to the center of the table.

  In early August I headed back to the States and got a surprise: I was kinda famous—at least for a few weeks. We knew that my Tour performance had drawn attention, but we hadn’t realized how much. The next thing I knew I was chatting with Matt Lauer on the Today show, throwing out the first pitch at a Red Sox game, ringing the opening bell at the American Stock Exchange. The traders on the floor were especially happy to meet me (apparently a lot of them watch the Tour). They started calling me Tyler Fucking Hamilton—Hey, check it out, it’s Tyler Fucking Hamilton—until we decided it was my new middle name.

  My hometown threw a parade. Three thousand people gathered in Marblehead’s Seaside Park; there were flags and T-shirts and yellow placards that said TYLER IS OUR HERO. A sign was erected at the city limits: Home of Tyler Hamilton, World-Class Cyclist. A fleet of bike riders led us in; Haven and I rode in the back of a shiny convertible waving to the people. I stood at a podium and gave a speech and received the key to the city. I looked out and saw the looks on their faces—these happy, admiring, smiling faces.

  I couldn’t stand it.

  Don’t get me wrong—I appreciated it more than I can possibly say. I was honored and grateful for all the good wishes; it was so cool to be surrounded by all the friends and family I’d grown up with. But deep down I was ashamed. Being praised made it worse.

  The worst thing was, the praise wouldn’t stop. Complete strangers were leaving gifts at our doorstep; writing me long, moving letters about how much I inspired them; proposing marriage via email, naming their children after me. To ease the feeling, I tried to redirect the attention. When a fan started asking me about my collarbone, or my stage win, I would change the subject. I’d ask them about their hometown, or their favorite baseball team, or their pet—anything but me. Or when they praised me I would respond with something like “Hey, it’s just a bike race.” I truly meant it—in the end, we’re not solving world hunger, we’re just a bunch of skinny, crazy guys trying to get across a finish line first. But my attempts usually had the opposite effect, because people interpreted it as my being humble and considerate. It was like I was trapped: no matter what I did, it created more fame, more attention.

  I remember thinking, This is what Lance lives with every day, only his is a hundred times worse. We were trapped in the same game, and there was no way out. What was I going to do, retire? Tell the truth? Start riding paniagua? The world wanted more, needed more. And so I would have to give them more—keep winning, keep being the hero they wanted me to be.

  That fall Haven and I bought a new house outside of Boulder on Sunshine Canyon Road with views of the Continental Divide and a grand piano in the living room and all the decorator touches right down to the carved wooden moose head on the wall. We felt like we had it all. But down deep, the truth was eating at me.

  In the fall of 2003, I fell into the deepest depression of my life. I sank to the bottom of the black ocean. I couldn’t get out of bed for days. I had zero interest in riding my bike, in eating, in anything that brought pleasure. By every possible measure, I was at the peak of my career; I had accomplished virtually all the things I’d set out to do and more. I was successful, I was rich, it seemed like every door was open to me. And I was utterly miserable.

  What people don’t understand about depression is how much it hurts. It’s like your brain is convinced that it’s dying and produces an acid that eats away at you from the inside, until all that’s left is a scary hollowness. Your mind fills with dark thoughts; you become convinced your friends secretly hate you, you’re worthless, and there’s no hope. I never got so low as to consider ending it all, but I can understand how that happens to some people. Depression simply hurts too much.

  We got through it. Haven made excuses for me to friends, and made an appointment with a terrific doctor, who put me on Effexor, 150 milligrams a day, enough to get my brain straightened out. Slowly, inch by inch, I felt myself recovering. After a few weeks, the darkness began to recede; my appetite for life returned. Haven was wonderful; she understood and nursed me through these weeks until I felt strong enough to go out in public, to get on my bike again.

  One thing that helped me was our work with the Tyler Hamilton Foundation, which was growing quickly, thanks to the increased attention. One of our main projects was organizing group rides to raise money and awareness; one of the unexpected surprises was how many people with MS came to join our rides. Whatever misgivings I felt about my success melted when I saw a smile on an MS sufferer’s face, or when I saw them battling their way up a steep climb. Their struggles, their resilience, helped give my life meaning.

  We entered the 2004 season feeling wounded and wiser. We’d made it to the top of the bike-racing world, and when we got there we found mostly desolation and emptiness. I think that was when both Haven and I began talking about retirement. About when we could quit this crazy life and settle down and be normal; have kids, make friends, spend real time together, eat real dinners, take walks. Instead of looking ahead to a long, productive career, we started dreaming about another goal: we’d do two years with Phonak, then cash in our chips and go home.

  * According to Manzano, team doctors had given him a 50-milliliter injection of oxy-globin, a blood substitute. (Kelme officials denied the allegation, saying Manzano had suffered heatstroke.) Later that season, Manzano again became gravely ill after receiving a blood bag at the Tour
of Portugal, and went on to make a confession to the Spanish newspaper AS. His confession would spark the Spanish investigation known as Operación Puerto, which resulted in the arrest of Eufemiano Fuentes and, ultimately, the scandal that ended the careers of Jan Ullrich and other top riders.

  Chapter 12

  ALL OR NOTHING

  BY THE TIME I RETURNED to Europe in early 2004, I was ready to go again, and Phonak was too. From owner Andy Rihs down to the mechanics, everyone was on board and targeting the Tour de France. If our year had a theme, it was All for one, and one for all.

  It started with the people. Our director was a calm, pleasant man named Álvaro Pino, who’d previously headed up the powerful Kelme squad. We signed up a trio of Spanish riders, Óscar Sevilla, Santos González, and José Gutiérrez, to complement the existing roster, which included Santiago Pérez, Swiss riders Alex Zülle, Oscar Camenzind, and Alexandre Moos, and Slovenian tough guy Tadej Valjavec. From CSC, I brought along Nicolas Jalabert, a smart rider and a good friend. The sense of togetherness was increased by the fact that some of the Spanish guys were already working with Ufe, who had been Kelme’s team doctor.

  At training camp, I set the tone: we would work hard; but we would also be good to one another. I went out of my way to show that I wasn’t a prima donna. I worked the hardest; I checked in on everybody, I got to know each of my teammates and their families. I did my best to make sure that no one would confuse our team’s culture with Postal’s.

  We were big on innovation and technology. Working with the BMC bike company (which, conveniently, was also owned by Rihs), the team started designing a series of new bikes for me to ride in the Tour—light, fast designs based on race cars. We’d have the best skinsuits for the time trials, the best chefs, the best soigneurs. Our team bus was a thing of beauty: a rock-star bus far newer and nicer than Postal’s bus, with two bathrooms, leather couches, stereo, TV, altitude-simulation machines, the works.