March 6, 2023 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, former Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton rocked the world of professional cycling—and exposed the doping culture surrounding the sport and its most iconic rider, Lance Armstrong. As one of the world’s top-ranked cyclists—and a member of Lance Armstrong’s inner circle, Hamilton has quite an amazing story and is here to share it with us.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. Former Olympic gold
medalist Tyler Hamilton rocked the world a professional cycling and
exposed the doping culture surrounding this sport and its most
iconic writer, Lance Armstrong, is one of the world's top
ranked cyclists and a member of Lance Armstrong's Inner Circle.
(00:32):
Hamilton has quite an amazing story of his own is
here to share it with us. Let's take a listen.
My name's Tyler Hamilton. I live here in Missoula, Montana.
Grew up in Marble At, Massachusetts. Great family, older brother,
older sister, loved the outdoors and loved to spend time
(00:53):
out in nature. First, it was my love for Scheme
that kind of got me excited at being outdoors and
him a ski racer. After an accident with the University
of Colorado's ski team, I broke my back and then
started my cycling career kind of by accident. It happened fast.
I was a bit of a late bloomer in cycling,
(01:14):
but you know, I had I've always had like a
high pain threshold, and I think I think I was
born born with it. I don't know. My parents are tough.
My grandparents were tough, and so I think that was
the biggest asset that I had as a as a
bike racer, just you know that never give up mentality
and just you know, don't listen to the pain. Growing
(01:34):
up at Marble at Massachusetts in the seventies was pretty awesome.
I was born in seventy one, and yeah, I mean
my parents didn't really put many demands on my brother
or sister at all, you know. I mean they're like
just trying to do well in school and working hard,
and they liked just competing in sports if we were
interested in it. But whether or not we were successful
(01:55):
in sports, it didn't matter. It didn't matter, you know.
The most important thing for that was, you know, being honest,
being a good sport, and just being you know, transparent.
My dad said, if we did have a family crest,
it would probably be you know, honesty, and uh yeah,
I got in trouble here and there, but it was
I got in a lot of trouble when I was dishonest,
a lot of trouble. It was really exciting to get
(02:19):
my first pro contract. I signed it in what the
fall of nineteen ninety four. It was the original Postal team.
It was under a different title sponsor then, but it
was the original US Postal Team and it was under
the sponsor of Montgomery Bell. The next year, in nineteen
ninety six, it became the US Postal Team. I thought
(02:43):
I had no business, you know, racing professionally, but obviously
people believed in me, and I got a call from
Tom Wissel, the head of Montgomery Securities and the leader
of the team. Yeah, he offered me a contract was
I think it was thirty thousand dollars back then, and
at the time Money made their phone call, I was
painting my neighbor's house to make extra money to just
make ends meet, and I thought it was just gonna
(03:06):
be you know, one year, maybe two years of doing
this and then had finished up college and get a
real job and do the nine to five thing. But
next thing I know, I'm on the start line in
the tourta France, which I thought was way beyond anything
that I could possibly do. Fast forward two years from there,
we're trying to win the tourta France and that was
That was with Lance Armstrong. That was in ninety nine.
(03:29):
But yeah, I mean we were kind of the bad
news bears of cycling in the early years ninety seven,
ninety eight, even ninety nine when Lance one. You know,
we were a small budget team. Most teams have big bus,
big shiny buses. We had like two rented little campers.
We'd stuff all nine riders into both of those and
staff members and one again in two thousand and want
(03:51):
to get in two thousand and one, and with Lance,
And then at that point I was I felt like
I could see myself in the same role. I could
look back three years in the look ahead three years
and see myself doing the same exact thing, which is
being like a domestique, a workhorse for Lance in the tour.
So it wasn't a bad thing, but I was sure
that if I stayed in that role, I would definitely
(04:13):
regret it someday and regret the chance of going off
and maybe trying for myself seeing what I could do,
you know, the doping and the sport of cycling. I mean,
I remember hearing about it back and probably like nineteen
ninety four when I was on the US national team
and then first year pro in nineteen ninety five, remember
hearing a little bit about it. But every once in
(04:35):
a while you'd read like a small blurb and it
was like doping was happening over in Europe, you know,
it didn't wasn't happening stateside. But I didn't really realize
it until I got to the highest ranks in nineteen
ninety seven, when we did the tour to France for
the first time, and that's kind of when I kind
of gave into it. A team doctor came into my
(04:55):
room for your a few months into the season. We
just finished a really difficult five or six day stage
race in southern Spain. I was just like a starfish
on the bed, laying on the bed, and the team
doctor walked in and told me like how proud he
was of me, but that I had started taking care
(05:15):
of my body, and you know, that's when I happened.
He was wearing this five fish and vest and pulled
out a little red egg egg shaped capsule and he
he told me what it was, and he told me
that it was testosterone, and then what I needed to do. Yeah,
so that's how it started. I didn't want to be
I didn't want to participate in any of that, but
(05:37):
I feel like at that level that was it was
either say yes to it, and at that point I
knew a lot of my teammates were open. It was
a hard decision, but I made the decision really quick,
and then I thought about the consequences of it, like
almost daily. It was also like he was inviting me
into onto like the A team basically, you know, it
(05:58):
was like the team within the team. Before that, I
felt like I was on the B team, just trying
to prove myself. And then all of a sudden, I
think the team saw that that I was talented enough,
they believed in me enough. I saw that I was
hungry enough, and that's when I kind of got it,
invited onto the whatever you could call it. We didn't
have an A and B team, but hypothetical A team,
and that was a couple of months away from riding
(06:21):
in my first Tour de France, and so that's, you know,
I was like, Okay, I'm being invited onto this team.
I need to even though I know it's wrong, I
need to take this opportunity. So I started with the
red egg testosterone and then I don't know if a
month later, my first injection of EPO, which raises your
(06:42):
red blood cell count, but you really wouldn't feel it.
You really wouldn't feel anything. It was just a small
prick under your skin then. But if you did it consistently,
you know, a few times a week over three four weeks,
eventually you'd feel a little bit of a difference, you know,
going up hill, felt a little bit more comfortable, riding
a little bit faster at the same heart rate, and yeah,
(07:04):
you could feel the difference. It made it. I mean,
out of all the things I did, that was the
biggest game changer EPO. Yeah, I mean within cycling, it
was a bit of an arms race. I mean, doping
was prevalent. At first, I didn't really know how prevalent
it was, and then I quickly realized that it wasn't
(07:25):
just myself and a few of my teammates on Postal.
It was every team was doing it. It was rampant,
and you know, riders are changing teams on a yearly basis.
Directors changed teams, team doctors changed teams, so like in general,
the secrets were out, you know. When I first started
doping in nineteen ninety seven, I mean, the teams would
travel with it to the races, divvy it up to riders,
(07:48):
and then send them a home with it and a
little like care package. So it was very open wild
West days that they weren't worried about getting caught, you know,
and then things came like kind of cracking down in
the ninety eight season. That's when they had the Festina affair.
They caught it French team. I think it was at
the Belgian border crossing over and it was one of
(08:09):
the staff members had a carload of performance enhancing drugs.
Last night, Jean Marie LeBlanc, the director general of the
Tour de France, issued a statement saying that Team Festina,
the number one team in the world, has been removed
from this year's tour. Now this comes on the heels
of an admission by the lawyer for Bruno Roussel, the
team manager, that there was a doping plan in place
(08:32):
for the use of performance enhancing drugs under strict medical supervision,
and that's when riders went to jail. People became a
lot more secretive. People just seemed like they just became
a lot more worried. The EPO test came out and
the team doctors quickly figured out how to eat it
and how to still take EPO without getting caught, and
(08:55):
that meant like kind of smaller type dosis and maybe
a little bit more insistently. Yeah, and then under the
scant goes through your body, clear through your body, quicker
if it was, oh, now in the vein instead of
under the skin. Yeah, all these little tricks I didn't like.
Most cyclists wouldn't know this, But like all the doctors knew,
and then they knew how to beat the test, So
like before you even thought about it, there was handing
(09:17):
you a cheat sheet basically, And you're listening to tyle
Or Hamilton tell a heck of a story about his
life and cycling, his family and so much more, including
how doping came to be and how it became just
well a part of cycling life. I love what he
said about his parents and their motto, the family crest
(09:38):
be honest. I got in the most trouble when I
wasn't honest. More of Tyler Hamilton's story his book The
Secret Race Inside the hidden world of the Tour de France,
doping cover ups and winning at all costs. The story
continues here on our American Stories, and we continue with
(10:10):
our American stories and former Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton's story.
Let's pick up where we last left off. There were
a few times during my career when yeah, I knew
I wasn't clear to take a test, and when they
had anti doping out of competition at anti doping tests
like that's when things became a lot more difficult. One time,
(10:34):
I remember, I was back home in my hometown of
marble Head and we got my wife and I at
the time, got a knock on the door and it
was a pretty loud knock and it sounded like the
knock you didn't want to hear. So instead of opening
that door, we just hit the deck, stay low and
stay quiet, and basically avoided a test. You were able
(10:57):
to get at the time. I think you were able
to have two mistests before he got in trouble. Being
a teammate with Lance was it was. I mean, I
would say it was a challenge. You know, he was
he was the boss. He was the unofficial boss of
the team, you know, I mean even he was higher,
he was had more power than even our director for sure.
(11:19):
So yeah, I mean that came with consequences. It was
just like he was the boss and he laughed at
his jokes. He didn't you know, you didn't never talked
over him, and he tried to sympathize with him when
he was having a bad day or when things weren't
going great, and it was it was stressful because he
kind of always had to be in your toes and
when you weren't and you maybe were like in his eyes,
(11:42):
a little bit disrespectful or weren't paying enough attention. And yeah,
things happened sometimes, and it wasn't always the funniest, but yeah,
but he also brought a lot of energy to the team.
He had tons of energy, for sure. He's always making up,
you know, funny sayings and calm. He would call it,
like to call a lot of people out, you know,
with the exception of himself maybe, but he'd call a
(12:05):
lot of people out, you know. You know, sometimes I
was fun, but a lot of times it wasn't, you know,
it just bullying. And you know, if a rider went
too fast, it was all not normal, pondermal as they
would say, not normal you know. But but yeah, well,
I mean we were all we were all riding too
fast at times. Eventually in my career, yeah, I believe
(12:26):
it was in two thousand and two, two thousand and three,
I worked with a doctor by the name of Ufi
manof Went as we called him Oufe. It was basically
my blood open doctor. He'd extract blood store for you
like a lot of other cyclists and athletes, and then
reinfuse it back into when your when your body was depleted.
So we'd usually text back and forth. Rarely rarely would
(12:48):
we talked to each other on the phone, but we
definitely spoken code a lot. So, you know, to get
gave a blood bag, you're going to give a present.
Sometimes I have a present to give to you. Maybe
say that in the text message. And and I do
remember this one time, like I texted him like, hey, Ufe,
I need to give you a bike, meaning meaning a
bag of blood basically, And he took that, literally took
(13:11):
that and said, oh so great, I need a new bike.
And yeah, I kind of got myself into a little
bit of a pigeonhole. And but you know what, I
had an extra training bike. I think I believe it
was a Sorbello, and yeah, that made its way to
oofed me on off one test after that, didn't promise
him anything else, didn't want to say, I'm going to
give you a car. So yeah, I mean I've had
(13:33):
all sorts of problems with my teeth due to me
grinding down, grinding them down during my career during painful moments.
The first big accident I had where I started grinding
severely was in the two thousand and two Cheered to
tell you, bombing down a descent and the pins on
my cassette and the back wheel snapped off. And it's
(13:55):
basically the same effect as like breaking your chain, so
sprinting out of a quarter And that happened, and I
went flying over my handlebars, laying on my shoulder, and
I didn't find out till the day after the race ended,
you know, two and a half weeks later, that I
had broke basically the top of my arm in my
shoulder sock it So yeah, I spent the rest of
(14:16):
the race in a ton of pain. Whether it was
whether it was on my bike or off the bike
or even sleeping. I was grinding my teeth constantly, grinding, grinding, grinding.
The same thing happened the next year, and then two
thousand and three, toward de France, I crashed on stage
one and a mass crash and broke my collarbone. Continued
in the race, sink did the same thing, ground my
teeth the whole way. I finished fourth overall and on
(14:38):
a stage that off season, I went to see the
dentist and yeah, that then I get to have my
whole mouth reconstructed, all caps on every tooth. So it's
been a process. And actually even about an hour I
got to go to the damnist to get a new
cap replacement. So sometimes people say was it worth it
to keep going? You know, I got a lot of
(15:00):
a lot of people praised me for keeping keeping going
in the Tour de France and oh three, and it
seemed like I got a lot of attention back in
the United States and and I didn't really realize until
I got back to my hometown of marbal Head, Massachusetts,
and did like a huge parade for me, and a
couple of thousand people came out and they gave me
(15:21):
the key to the town. Yeah, you know, from the
outside of look really glamorous and you know, how lucky
for me. But you know, on the inside, I was
really struggling. And there I was having a smile and
you know, speak in front of you know, thousands of
people there in my hometown. And probably a month later,
I was diagnosed with depression at the really that that
(15:41):
peak of my career. So I had this relationship with
this deviant doctor roofing On of Fuentas he uh it
was the two thousand and four Torda, France. You know.
He text back and forth, arranged the meeting where He's
going to drop off a blood bag and I'm going
to infuse a you know, a bag in my blood
(16:02):
that i'd you know, given to him maybe a month
or two before. And they came to my hotel room.
I got the blood infusion, and then probably about an
hour later, I started feeling kind of hot, feverish, and
I went to the bathroom and I went to um.
(16:23):
I looked down and my yearn was was like black,
like filled with a dead red blood blood cells. So
that was kind of a scary moment for me. You know,
I didn't know. I didn't know what I figured right away, like,
oh it was they gave me my blood bag had
gone bad, it probably had gotten too warm or it
(16:43):
would have been affected, and you know, the blood cells
had died and then it was reinfused into me. So
it was I mean, I was lucky I didn't die, really,
And I continued on the race, but it was it
was definitely an eye opening moment, like you know that
the system we were in was certainly not perfect. You know,
another time I was after I basically gave it by
(17:04):
a bag of blood. I was rushing out of the
Madrid airport where Ufigano Fuentez lived, and I was heading
back to my home in Gerona, Spain, and I was
really rushed to catch a flight, and I donated a
bag of blood. It's a big needle that they put
in and then you know, I quickly held pressure on
(17:25):
my arm for a few seconds, but then I had
to go. I had to go and catch my flight,
and so I ran out to the street, was hailing
a cab with one arm, and then I looked down
and saw the arm that had just you know, given
the blood. Like it was, my sleeve is completely red,
so you know, the hole from the extraction needle head
(17:45):
and closed. And but there I was, you know, like
you know, on a busy street in Madrid. You know,
in one hand, I'm like holding a cell phone with
like code names and numbers, the other hands covered in blood,
and you know, it was another it was another moment
where I'm like what am I doing this is crazy.
(18:05):
This is crazy, and you're listening to Tyrell or Hamilton
tell one heck of a story. The Secret Race inside
the hidden world of the Tour de France, doping cover
ups and winning at all costs. It's available at Amazon,
and all the usual suspects, and my goodness, the life
of living with these anti doping tests, the regimes that
(18:27):
got set up, the protocols, the daily practices that knock
on the door at home with his wife where he
just ducked for cover, and of course what it was
like to work for someone who would drive you to this,
the way Lance Armstrong did and the way everybody did. Frankly,
can't blame Lance for the anti doping machine. You can
blame the industry itself. And then of course that recirculation
(18:50):
of his own blood and calling the bags bikes. He
has secret code words and then blood infusions, and it's
so bizarre, so bizarre, and one day he wakes up
and he's wondering, how did I get into this? By
the way, it's happened all of us at some point
in our life, more than likely something you didn't want
(19:11):
to do you ended up doing. When we come back
more of the story of Tyler Hamilton, former Olympic gold
medalist here on our American stories, and we continue with
(19:39):
our American stories and former Olympic gold medalist and teammate
of Lance Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton. Let's pick up where we
last left off. So let's see two thousand and four.
September two thousand and four. I was in the middle
of the Tour of Spain, another three week they called
(19:59):
Grand Tour, and I had a positive doping test. My
life quickly spiraled at you know, down downward very fast,
and you know, kicked up the team. Really the cycling
world turned that back to me and yeah, I went
through you know, went through divorce, went through just hard, hard,
(20:21):
hard times. You know, the heavy blanket I was. I
felt like that a heavy blank out on me almost
at all times. Yeah, tried to make a comeback and
I was, you know, my name was now black. I
wasn't welcome back to the peloton. Most teams didn't want me.
Riders who I know, one that doped, you know, wouldn't
even talk to me. What got me out of the
(20:45):
Doldhams was it was telling the truth and that that
was like day one of like my new life. I
was received a subpoena to come in and answer questions
about the US still serve A cycling team and Lance
Armstrong in front of a federal grand jury in Los Angeles.
(21:05):
I was in I believe twenty ten. Very few people
knew the truth, and there I was in front of
I don't know, twelve jury members and I sat. I
stood there for like seven hours and told the truth.
And when I got out of that court room, I
knew from that moment on, like the truth was my
way forward. So it felt so good to tell the truth.
(21:27):
And you know, from the very beginning to the very end,
And that's kind of where it started for me. Like
when I exited that court I walked outside and I
felt like I just shed like one hundred pounds, one
hundred pound back back gone. Just felt free, not completely free.
I knew that, I knew there was a lot of
work to be done, but I was like, all right,
(21:48):
this was you know, day day one and the rest
of my life. So yeah, what it was twenty and eleven.
It was in the middle of this federal investigation. They
were investigating the US Postal Service cycling team and they're
also investigating Lance Armstrong. I was living in Boulder, Colorado
at the time, and I was invited to do a
(22:10):
charity event up in Aspen. So my my colleague Jim Caper,
and I drove up there together and on our way up,
I do remember him like, hey, I'm gonna just because
he knew Lance lived up there and there was a
big federal investigation going on and we didn't need to
cross paths. So he I think he googled what where
(22:32):
Lance was and it turns out he was on a
charity ride on the East Coast. So it's great, Okay,
we're you know, smooth sailing. So that night we're out
at dinner with a group of people, maybe twelve people,
you know. I got up to use the restroom I had,
and I had to walk through like a dimly lit
bar area. So on my return from the restroom, just
(22:54):
out of nowhere, like a hand just reaches out and
stops to meet my tracks, and I look over and boom,
there's Lance Armstrong, nostrils flaring. You know, you can only
flare your nostrils really if you're angry. It's hard to
do it. Just fake it. So I knew he was pissed.
He got right in my face. He had was a
(23:15):
little posse around him, and uh yeah, he told me
he's going to make my life a living hell, and
both in the courtroom and out of the courtroom. So
you know, that's called witness intimidation. You know. I told him, hey,
let's go speak outside one on one instead of you know,
let's leave your posse here, or let me go grab
(23:36):
some of my friends and keep you know, make this even.
But he didn't want anything to do with that. Asked
him also go to like a quiet room to speak.
He didn't want to do that either, but he just
kind of chastised me in front of his his his gang.
So yeah, I mean I straightaway had to let let
the federal investigators know, and you know, but you know,
(23:56):
unfortunately the videotape in the restaurant cash At get deleted
or it was broken somehow, so none of that, none
of that really went anywhere. But yeah, it was that
was the truth. That's what happened. You know. I'm sure
today Lance probably you know, but he found out from
the owner of the restaurant that I was there, and
like he came, he flew back from the East Coast
(24:20):
and came straight in and you know, approached me. So
you know, I'm sure today he regrets that, I would
think so, but yeah, I wasn't one of his best days. Yeah,
it was a weird time. I was living in Boulder then,
and I mean I baseball bats at every doorway. People
had their eyes on me and and that and that
(24:41):
was and that was confirmed by the FBI soon there after,
I got an invitation to speak with sixty Minutes, and
that was you know, everything I said to the in
front of the grand jury was sealed, so the only way,
like it about that information would go to the public,
as if the case continued, and I knew most likely
he was going to get shut down just to either
(25:03):
like who they were investigating. You know, there's a lot
of power there. And it did get shut down, but
I knew the truth. I had to be open and honest.
So still the public didn't know the truth. And so yeah,
I chose to chose to speak to sixty Minutes, and
they gave me like a double sex segment, so like
almost forty minutes worth. And that was really my first
time telling the whole truth or the part of the
(25:25):
truth to the you know, to the world or anyone
who's listening. That's the first time my parents kind of
heard the whole truth. You know, I gave him a
warning the day before it aired on sixty Minutes. That
was the first time I told my parents the truth.
So yeah, I took I got sat my parents down,
my brother and my sister, and I told him pretty
much like the whole truth and the very beginning to
(25:45):
the very end. You know. It was brutal, you know,
I don't that was one of the most difficult things
I've ever done. So but yeah, they forgave me, and
they you know, they understand. Ye people make mistakes, and
you know, my dad tells me today that he's more
proud of me, you know, for what I've done off
the light then on the Bay. That still wasn't enough.
It was you know, with commercials and all that, it's
(26:06):
like maybe thirty thirty five minutes of the truth, but
there's a lot of a lot of the truth that
I still hadn't told. So that's when I decided to
write a book. So I got a luckily had a
great co writer by the name of Dan Coyle, and
we spent almost two and a half years writing a
book together and one of the hardest things I've ever done,
(26:27):
but like one of the proudest, you know, I'm really
proud of doing that. It was almost like therapy really.
So yeah, the Secret Race, I wrote a book and
back in twenty and twelve one Awards Sports Sports Book Awards,
and yeah, it was. Yeah, I was very surprising. Man.
Straight away. There was so much for giving us, almost
(26:47):
too much, because I went from being the black sheep
to like, maybe praise a little bit too much. So
I didn't. I struggled with that too, which is kind
of weird if you think about it, but it felt
I just fellow a lot lighter. And I did feel
really bad for Lance. I know he had a lot
of deep, dark secrets. I knew he was going to
fight to the very end of you know, keep those
(27:08):
secrets from not coming out. And yeah, I felt sympathy
for him. He was he was backed up into a
real deep hole, you know, or to the edge of
the cliff, and he was like, either tell the truth
or or chump. And I'm glad he told the truth.
You know what he did on OPRAH, I thought it
was great. You know, not everyone loved it, but I
thought those first, like ten questions, the first yes, no
(27:29):
questions on Oprah when he admitted to his peed use,
Like I thought that was great, and you know that's all. Sure,
people wanted to hear more details and we didn't get
a lot of that, but you know, the big questions
were he answered. And you know he doped for a
lot of a lot of his career, you know, like
a lot of us. So m and I honestly think
(27:52):
I'm sure he's a better person today because of it all. Yeah,
I'm certainly life's changed a lot for me. And I'm
newly married again. We got married in December. Two step
beautiful stepchildren and then my own I have my own
son about eight months ago. So it's been it's been
a really great experience. I love being a dad and
(28:15):
a step dad. Let's see, I worked for a money
manager down in Boulder, Colorado, so a lot helping people
and you know, helping people manage some money in a
better way. So you get a lot of positive feedback
and it makes you feel good for sure. Um, well,
I knows she knows about my past obviously, and you
know I've told our two stepchildren the ten he's one's
(28:36):
ten and one's eight you know, they know, they know
my my past our little guy who's eight months. You know,
maybe a few more years for that. But people need
to hear the story, like how things get a little
blurry when you set your mind on a goal, and like,
but don't get off track. And I got off track,
and it's you gotta be honest about it, and you
got to tell the younger generation to make sure that
(28:59):
you know they don't make a mistake that you did.
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Gregg Engler and his special thanks to
Tyler Hamilton his book The Secret Race Inside the hidden
world of the Tour de France, doping cover ups and
winning at all costs. Go to Amazon with the usual
(29:21):
suspects and pick up the book. And there he was.
On that day of the positive doping test. My life
spiraled down fast, kicked off the team, divorced. I felt
like I had a heavy blanket on me. And then
came that day where he told the truth. The truth
was my way forward. It felt like I had shed
a hundred pound backpack. And then I can just picture
(29:45):
that meeting with Lance Armstrong and the fury he had
is this one person was going to blow the cover
on everything. And now, of course Tyler's married, he's a
money manager, and just admitting that life can get blurry
when you set a goal. I got off track, boy,
that's any of us. The story of Tyler Hamilton, the
(30:07):
story of the pursuit of success, and of course the
excesses we can commit when doing that. Here on our
American stories,
And we continue with our American stories. Former Olympic gold
medalist Tyler Hamilton rocked the world a professional cycling and
exposed the doping culture surrounding this sport and its most
iconic writer, Lance Armstrong, is one of the world's top
ranked cyclists and a member of Lance Armstrong's Inner Circle.
(00:32):
Hamilton has quite an amazing story of his own is
here to share it with us. Let's take a listen.
My name's Tyler Hamilton. I live here in Missoula, Montana.
Grew up in Marble At, Massachusetts. Great family, older brother,
older sister, loved the outdoors and loved to spend time
(00:53):
out in nature. First, it was my love for Scheme
that kind of got me excited at being outdoors and
him a ski racer. After an accident with the University
of Colorado's ski team, I broke my back and then
started my cycling career kind of by accident. It happened fast.
I was a bit of a late bloomer in cycling,
(01:14):
but you know, I had I've always had like a
high pain threshold, and I think I think I was
born born with it. I don't know. My parents are tough.
My grandparents were tough, and so I think that was
the biggest asset that I had as a as a
bike racer, just you know that never give up mentality
and just you know, don't listen to the pain. Growing
(01:34):
up at Marble at Massachusetts in the seventies was pretty awesome.
I was born in seventy one, and yeah, I mean
my parents didn't really put many demands on my brother
or sister at all, you know. I mean they're like
just trying to do well in school and working hard,
and they liked just competing in sports if we were
interested in it. But whether or not we were successful
(01:55):
in sports, it didn't matter. It didn't matter, you know.
The most important thing for that was, you know, being honest,
being a good sport, and just being you know, transparent.
My dad said, if we did have a family crest,
it would probably be you know, honesty, and uh yeah,
I got in trouble here and there, but it was
I got in a lot of trouble when I was dishonest,
a lot of trouble. It was really exciting to get
(02:19):
my first pro contract. I signed it in what the
fall of nineteen ninety four. It was the original Postal team.
It was under a different title sponsor then, but it
was the original US Postal Team and it was under
the sponsor of Montgomery Bell. The next year, in nineteen
ninety six, it became the US Postal Team. I thought
(02:43):
I had no business, you know, racing professionally, but obviously
people believed in me, and I got a call from
Tom Wissel, the head of Montgomery Securities and the leader
of the team. Yeah, he offered me a contract was
I think it was thirty thousand dollars back then, and
at the time Money made their phone call, I was
painting my neighbor's house to make extra money to just
make ends meet, and I thought it was just gonna
(03:06):
be you know, one year, maybe two years of doing
this and then had finished up college and get a
real job and do the nine to five thing. But
next thing I know, I'm on the start line in
the tourta France, which I thought was way beyond anything
that I could possibly do. Fast forward two years from there,
we're trying to win the tourta France and that was
That was with Lance Armstrong. That was in ninety nine.
(03:29):
But yeah, I mean we were kind of the bad
news bears of cycling in the early years ninety seven,
ninety eight, even ninety nine when Lance one. You know,
we were a small budget team. Most teams have big bus,
big shiny buses. We had like two rented little campers.
We'd stuff all nine riders into both of those and
staff members and one again in two thousand and want
(03:51):
to get in two thousand and one, and with Lance,
And then at that point I was I felt like
I could see myself in the same role. I could
look back three years in the look ahead three years
and see myself doing the same exact thing, which is
being like a domestique, a workhorse for Lance in the tour.
So it wasn't a bad thing, but I was sure
that if I stayed in that role, I would definitely
(04:13):
regret it someday and regret the chance of going off
and maybe trying for myself seeing what I could do,
you know, the doping and the sport of cycling. I mean,
I remember hearing about it back and probably like nineteen
ninety four when I was on the US national team
and then first year pro in nineteen ninety five, remember
hearing a little bit about it. But every once in
(04:35):
a while you'd read like a small blurb and it
was like doping was happening over in Europe, you know,
it didn't wasn't happening stateside. But I didn't really realize
it until I got to the highest ranks in nineteen
ninety seven, when we did the tour to France for
the first time, and that's kind of when I kind
of gave into it. A team doctor came into my
(04:55):
room for your a few months into the season. We
just finished a really difficult five or six day stage
race in southern Spain. I was just like a starfish
on the bed, laying on the bed, and the team
doctor walked in and told me like how proud he
was of me, but that I had started taking care
(05:15):
of my body, and you know, that's when I happened.
He was wearing this five fish and vest and pulled
out a little red egg egg shaped capsule and he
he told me what it was, and he told me
that it was testosterone, and then what I needed to do. Yeah,
so that's how it started. I didn't want to be
I didn't want to participate in any of that, but
(05:37):
I feel like at that level that was it was
either say yes to it, and at that point I
knew a lot of my teammates were open. It was
a hard decision, but I made the decision really quick,
and then I thought about the consequences of it, like
almost daily. It was also like he was inviting me
into onto like the A team basically, you know, it
(05:58):
was like the team within the team. Before that, I
felt like I was on the B team, just trying
to prove myself. And then all of a sudden, I
think the team saw that that I was talented enough,
they believed in me enough. I saw that I was
hungry enough, and that's when I kind of got it,
invited onto the whatever you could call it. We didn't
have an A and B team, but hypothetical A team,
and that was a couple of months away from riding
(06:21):
in my first Tour de France, and so that's, you know,
I was like, Okay, I'm being invited onto this team.
I need to even though I know it's wrong, I
need to take this opportunity. So I started with the
red egg testosterone and then I don't know if a
month later, my first injection of EPO, which raises your
(06:42):
red blood cell count, but you really wouldn't feel it.
You really wouldn't feel anything. It was just a small
prick under your skin then. But if you did it consistently,
you know, a few times a week over three four weeks,
eventually you'd feel a little bit of a difference, you know,
going up hill, felt a little bit more comfortable, riding
a little bit faster at the same heart rate, and yeah,
(07:04):
you could feel the difference. It made it. I mean,
out of all the things I did, that was the
biggest game changer EPO. Yeah, I mean within cycling, it
was a bit of an arms race. I mean, doping
was prevalent. At first, I didn't really know how prevalent
it was, and then I quickly realized that it wasn't
(07:25):
just myself and a few of my teammates on Postal.
It was every team was doing it. It was rampant,
and you know, riders are changing teams on a yearly basis.
Directors changed teams, team doctors changed teams, so like in general,
the secrets were out, you know. When I first started
doping in nineteen ninety seven, I mean, the teams would
travel with it to the races, divvy it up to riders,
(07:48):
and then send them a home with it and a
little like care package. So it was very open wild
West days that they weren't worried about getting caught, you know,
and then things came like kind of cracking down in
the ninety eight season. That's when they had the Festina affair.
They caught it French team. I think it was at
the Belgian border crossing over and it was one of
(08:09):
the staff members had a carload of performance enhancing drugs.
Last night, Jean Marie LeBlanc, the director general of the
Tour de France, issued a statement saying that Team Festina,
the number one team in the world, has been removed
from this year's tour. Now this comes on the heels
of an admission by the lawyer for Bruno Roussel, the
team manager, that there was a doping plan in place
(08:32):
for the use of performance enhancing drugs under strict medical supervision,
and that's when riders went to jail. People became a
lot more secretive. People just seemed like they just became
a lot more worried. The EPO test came out and
the team doctors quickly figured out how to eat it
and how to still take EPO without getting caught, and
(08:55):
that meant like kind of smaller type dosis and maybe
a little bit more insistently. Yeah, and then under the
scant goes through your body, clear through your body, quicker
if it was, oh, now in the vein instead of
under the skin. Yeah, all these little tricks I didn't like.
Most cyclists wouldn't know this, But like all the doctors knew,
and then they knew how to beat the test, So
like before you even thought about it, there was handing
(09:17):
you a cheat sheet basically, And you're listening to tyle
Or Hamilton tell a heck of a story about his
life and cycling, his family and so much more, including
how doping came to be and how it became just
well a part of cycling life. I love what he
said about his parents and their motto, the family crest
(09:38):
be honest. I got in the most trouble when I
wasn't honest. More of Tyler Hamilton's story his book The
Secret Race Inside the hidden world of the Tour de France,
doping cover ups and winning at all costs. The story
continues here on our American Stories, and we continue with
(10:10):
our American stories and former Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton's story.
Let's pick up where we last left off. There were
a few times during my career when yeah, I knew
I wasn't clear to take a test, and when they
had anti doping out of competition at anti doping tests
like that's when things became a lot more difficult. One time,
(10:34):
I remember, I was back home in my hometown of
marble Head and we got my wife and I at
the time, got a knock on the door and it
was a pretty loud knock and it sounded like the
knock you didn't want to hear. So instead of opening
that door, we just hit the deck, stay low and
stay quiet, and basically avoided a test. You were able
(10:57):
to get at the time. I think you were able
to have two mistests before he got in trouble. Being
a teammate with Lance was it was. I mean, I
would say it was a challenge. You know, he was
he was the boss. He was the unofficial boss of
the team, you know, I mean even he was higher,
he was had more power than even our director for sure.
(11:19):
So yeah, I mean that came with consequences. It was
just like he was the boss and he laughed at
his jokes. He didn't you know, you didn't never talked
over him, and he tried to sympathize with him when
he was having a bad day or when things weren't
going great, and it was it was stressful because he
kind of always had to be in your toes and
when you weren't and you maybe were like in his eyes,
(11:42):
a little bit disrespectful or weren't paying enough attention. And yeah,
things happened sometimes, and it wasn't always the funniest, but yeah,
but he also brought a lot of energy to the team.
He had tons of energy, for sure. He's always making up,
you know, funny sayings and calm. He would call it,
like to call a lot of people out, you know,
with the exception of himself maybe, but he'd call a
(12:05):
lot of people out, you know. You know, sometimes I
was fun, but a lot of times it wasn't, you know,
it just bullying. And you know, if a rider went
too fast, it was all not normal, pondermal as they
would say, not normal you know. But but yeah, well,
I mean we were all we were all riding too
fast at times. Eventually in my career, yeah, I believe
(12:26):
it was in two thousand and two, two thousand and three,
I worked with a doctor by the name of Ufi
manof Went as we called him Oufe. It was basically
my blood open doctor. He'd extract blood store for you
like a lot of other cyclists and athletes, and then
reinfuse it back into when your when your body was depleted.
So we'd usually text back and forth. Rarely rarely would
(12:48):
we talked to each other on the phone, but we
definitely spoken code a lot. So, you know, to get
gave a blood bag, you're going to give a present.
Sometimes I have a present to give to you. Maybe
say that in the text message. And and I do
remember this one time, like I texted him like, hey, Ufe,
I need to give you a bike, meaning meaning a
bag of blood basically, And he took that, literally took
(13:11):
that and said, oh so great, I need a new bike.
And yeah, I kind of got myself into a little
bit of a pigeonhole. And but you know what, I
had an extra training bike. I think I believe it
was a Sorbello, and yeah, that made its way to
oofed me on off one test after that, didn't promise
him anything else, didn't want to say, I'm going to
give you a car. So yeah, I mean I've had
(13:33):
all sorts of problems with my teeth due to me
grinding down, grinding them down during my career during painful moments.
The first big accident I had where I started grinding
severely was in the two thousand and two Cheered to
tell you, bombing down a descent and the pins on
my cassette and the back wheel snapped off. And it's
(13:55):
basically the same effect as like breaking your chain, so
sprinting out of a quarter And that happened, and I
went flying over my handlebars, laying on my shoulder, and
I didn't find out till the day after the race ended,
you know, two and a half weeks later, that I
had broke basically the top of my arm in my
shoulder sock it So yeah, I spent the rest of
(14:16):
the race in a ton of pain. Whether it was
whether it was on my bike or off the bike
or even sleeping. I was grinding my teeth constantly, grinding, grinding, grinding.
The same thing happened the next year, and then two
thousand and three, toward de France, I crashed on stage
one and a mass crash and broke my collarbone. Continued
in the race, sink did the same thing, ground my
teeth the whole way. I finished fourth overall and on
(14:38):
a stage that off season, I went to see the
dentist and yeah, that then I get to have my
whole mouth reconstructed, all caps on every tooth. So it's
been a process. And actually even about an hour I
got to go to the damnist to get a new
cap replacement. So sometimes people say was it worth it
to keep going? You know, I got a lot of
(15:00):
a lot of people praised me for keeping keeping going
in the Tour de France and oh three, and it
seemed like I got a lot of attention back in
the United States and and I didn't really realize until
I got back to my hometown of marbal Head, Massachusetts,
and did like a huge parade for me, and a
couple of thousand people came out and they gave me
(15:21):
the key to the town. Yeah, you know, from the
outside of look really glamorous and you know, how lucky
for me. But you know, on the inside, I was
really struggling. And there I was having a smile and
you know, speak in front of you know, thousands of
people there in my hometown. And probably a month later,
I was diagnosed with depression at the really that that
(15:41):
peak of my career. So I had this relationship with
this deviant doctor roofing On of Fuentas he uh it
was the two thousand and four Torda, France. You know.
He text back and forth, arranged the meeting where He's
going to drop off a blood bag and I'm going
to infuse a you know, a bag in my blood
(16:02):
that i'd you know, given to him maybe a month
or two before. And they came to my hotel room.
I got the blood infusion, and then probably about an
hour later, I started feeling kind of hot, feverish, and
I went to the bathroom and I went to um.
(16:23):
I looked down and my yearn was was like black,
like filled with a dead red blood blood cells. So
that was kind of a scary moment for me. You know,
I didn't know. I didn't know what I figured right away, like,
oh it was they gave me my blood bag had
gone bad, it probably had gotten too warm or it
(16:43):
would have been affected, and you know, the blood cells
had died and then it was reinfused into me. So
it was I mean, I was lucky I didn't die, really,
And I continued on the race, but it was it
was definitely an eye opening moment, like you know that
the system we were in was certainly not perfect. You know,
another time I was after I basically gave it by
(17:04):
a bag of blood. I was rushing out of the
Madrid airport where Ufigano Fuentez lived, and I was heading
back to my home in Gerona, Spain, and I was
really rushed to catch a flight, and I donated a
bag of blood. It's a big needle that they put
in and then you know, I quickly held pressure on
(17:25):
my arm for a few seconds, but then I had
to go. I had to go and catch my flight,
and so I ran out to the street, was hailing
a cab with one arm, and then I looked down
and saw the arm that had just you know, given
the blood. Like it was, my sleeve is completely red,
so you know, the hole from the extraction needle head
(17:45):
and closed. And but there I was, you know, like
you know, on a busy street in Madrid. You know,
in one hand, I'm like holding a cell phone with
like code names and numbers, the other hands covered in blood,
and you know, it was another it was another moment
where I'm like what am I doing this is crazy.
(18:05):
This is crazy, and you're listening to Tyrell or Hamilton
tell one heck of a story. The Secret Race inside
the hidden world of the Tour de France, doping cover
ups and winning at all costs. It's available at Amazon,
and all the usual suspects, and my goodness, the life
of living with these anti doping tests, the regimes that
(18:27):
got set up, the protocols, the daily practices that knock
on the door at home with his wife where he
just ducked for cover, and of course what it was
like to work for someone who would drive you to this,
the way Lance Armstrong did and the way everybody did. Frankly,
can't blame Lance for the anti doping machine. You can
blame the industry itself. And then of course that recirculation
(18:50):
of his own blood and calling the bags bikes. He
has secret code words and then blood infusions, and it's
so bizarre, so bizarre, and one day he wakes up
and he's wondering, how did I get into this? By
the way, it's happened all of us at some point
in our life, more than likely something you didn't want
(19:11):
to do you ended up doing. When we come back
more of the story of Tyler Hamilton, former Olympic gold
medalist here on our American stories, and we continue with
(19:39):
our American stories and former Olympic gold medalist and teammate
of Lance Armstrong, Tyler Hamilton. Let's pick up where we
last left off. So let's see two thousand and four.
September two thousand and four. I was in the middle
of the Tour of Spain, another three week they called
(19:59):
Grand Tour, and I had a positive doping test. My
life quickly spiraled at you know, down downward very fast,
and you know, kicked up the team. Really the cycling
world turned that back to me and yeah, I went
through you know, went through divorce, went through just hard, hard,
(20:21):
hard times. You know, the heavy blanket I was. I
felt like that a heavy blank out on me almost
at all times. Yeah, tried to make a comeback and
I was, you know, my name was now black. I
wasn't welcome back to the peloton. Most teams didn't want me.
Riders who I know, one that doped, you know, wouldn't
even talk to me. What got me out of the
(20:45):
Doldhams was it was telling the truth and that that
was like day one of like my new life. I
was received a subpoena to come in and answer questions
about the US still serve A cycling team and Lance
Armstrong in front of a federal grand jury in Los Angeles.
(21:05):
I was in I believe twenty ten. Very few people
knew the truth, and there I was in front of
I don't know, twelve jury members and I sat. I
stood there for like seven hours and told the truth.
And when I got out of that court room, I
knew from that moment on, like the truth was my
way forward. So it felt so good to tell the truth.
(21:27):
And you know, from the very beginning to the very end,
And that's kind of where it started for me. Like
when I exited that court I walked outside and I
felt like I just shed like one hundred pounds, one
hundred pound back back gone. Just felt free, not completely free.
I knew that, I knew there was a lot of
work to be done, but I was like, all right,
(21:48):
this was you know, day day one and the rest
of my life. So yeah, what it was twenty and eleven.
It was in the middle of this federal investigation. They
were investigating the US Postal Service cycling team and they're
also investigating Lance Armstrong. I was living in Boulder, Colorado
at the time, and I was invited to do a
(22:10):
charity event up in Aspen. So my my colleague Jim Caper,
and I drove up there together and on our way up,
I do remember him like, hey, I'm gonna just because
he knew Lance lived up there and there was a
big federal investigation going on and we didn't need to
cross paths. So he I think he googled what where
(22:32):
Lance was and it turns out he was on a
charity ride on the East Coast. So it's great, Okay,
we're you know, smooth sailing. So that night we're out
at dinner with a group of people, maybe twelve people,
you know. I got up to use the restroom I had,
and I had to walk through like a dimly lit
bar area. So on my return from the restroom, just
(22:54):
out of nowhere, like a hand just reaches out and
stops to meet my tracks, and I look over and boom,
there's Lance Armstrong, nostrils flaring. You know, you can only
flare your nostrils really if you're angry. It's hard to
do it. Just fake it. So I knew he was pissed.
He got right in my face. He had was a
(23:15):
little posse around him, and uh yeah, he told me
he's going to make my life a living hell, and
both in the courtroom and out of the courtroom. So
you know, that's called witness intimidation. You know. I told him, hey,
let's go speak outside one on one instead of you know,
let's leave your posse here, or let me go grab
(23:36):
some of my friends and keep you know, make this even.
But he didn't want anything to do with that. Asked
him also go to like a quiet room to speak.
He didn't want to do that either, but he just
kind of chastised me in front of his his his gang.
So yeah, I mean I straightaway had to let let
the federal investigators know, and you know, but you know,
(23:56):
unfortunately the videotape in the restaurant cash At get deleted
or it was broken somehow, so none of that, none
of that really went anywhere. But yeah, it was that
was the truth. That's what happened. You know. I'm sure
today Lance probably you know, but he found out from
the owner of the restaurant that I was there, and
like he came, he flew back from the East Coast
(24:20):
and came straight in and you know, approached me. So
you know, I'm sure today he regrets that, I would
think so, but yeah, I wasn't one of his best days. Yeah,
it was a weird time. I was living in Boulder then,
and I mean I baseball bats at every doorway. People
had their eyes on me and and that and that
(24:41):
was and that was confirmed by the FBI soon there after,
I got an invitation to speak with sixty Minutes, and
that was you know, everything I said to the in
front of the grand jury was sealed, so the only way,
like it about that information would go to the public,
as if the case continued, and I knew most likely
he was going to get shut down just to either
(25:03):
like who they were investigating. You know, there's a lot
of power there. And it did get shut down, but
I knew the truth. I had to be open and honest.
So still the public didn't know the truth. And so yeah,
I chose to chose to speak to sixty Minutes, and
they gave me like a double sex segment, so like
almost forty minutes worth. And that was really my first
time telling the whole truth or the part of the
(25:25):
truth to the you know, to the world or anyone
who's listening. That's the first time my parents kind of
heard the whole truth. You know, I gave him a
warning the day before it aired on sixty Minutes. That
was the first time I told my parents the truth.
So yeah, I took I got sat my parents down,
my brother and my sister, and I told him pretty
much like the whole truth and the very beginning to
(25:45):
the very end. You know. It was brutal, you know,
I don't that was one of the most difficult things
I've ever done. So but yeah, they forgave me, and
they you know, they understand. Ye people make mistakes, and
you know, my dad tells me today that he's more
proud of me, you know, for what I've done off
the light then on the Bay. That still wasn't enough.
It was you know, with commercials and all that, it's
(26:06):
like maybe thirty thirty five minutes of the truth, but
there's a lot of a lot of the truth that
I still hadn't told. So that's when I decided to
write a book. So I got a luckily had a
great co writer by the name of Dan Coyle, and
we spent almost two and a half years writing a
book together and one of the hardest things I've ever done,
(26:27):
but like one of the proudest, you know, I'm really
proud of doing that. It was almost like therapy really.
So yeah, the Secret Race, I wrote a book and
back in twenty and twelve one Awards Sports Sports Book Awards,
and yeah, it was. Yeah, I was very surprising. Man.
Straight away. There was so much for giving us, almost
(26:47):
too much, because I went from being the black sheep
to like, maybe praise a little bit too much. So
I didn't. I struggled with that too, which is kind
of weird if you think about it, but it felt
I just fellow a lot lighter. And I did feel
really bad for Lance. I know he had a lot
of deep, dark secrets. I knew he was going to
fight to the very end of you know, keep those
(27:08):
secrets from not coming out. And yeah, I felt sympathy
for him. He was he was backed up into a
real deep hole, you know, or to the edge of
the cliff, and he was like, either tell the truth
or or chump. And I'm glad he told the truth.
You know what he did on OPRAH, I thought it
was great. You know, not everyone loved it, but I
thought those first, like ten questions, the first yes, no
(27:29):
questions on Oprah when he admitted to his peed use,
Like I thought that was great, and you know that's all. Sure,
people wanted to hear more details and we didn't get
a lot of that, but you know, the big questions
were he answered. And you know he doped for a
lot of a lot of his career, you know, like
a lot of us. So m and I honestly think
(27:52):
I'm sure he's a better person today because of it all. Yeah,
I'm certainly life's changed a lot for me. And I'm
newly married again. We got married in December. Two step
beautiful stepchildren and then my own I have my own
son about eight months ago. So it's been it's been
a really great experience. I love being a dad and
(28:15):
a step dad. Let's see, I worked for a money
manager down in Boulder, Colorado, so a lot helping people
and you know, helping people manage some money in a
better way. So you get a lot of positive feedback
and it makes you feel good for sure. Um, well,
I knows she knows about my past obviously, and you
know I've told our two stepchildren the ten he's one's
(28:36):
ten and one's eight you know, they know, they know
my my past our little guy who's eight months. You know,
maybe a few more years for that. But people need
to hear the story, like how things get a little
blurry when you set your mind on a goal, and like,
but don't get off track. And I got off track,
and it's you gotta be honest about it, and you
got to tell the younger generation to make sure that
(28:59):
you know they don't make a mistake that you did.
And a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling
by our own Gregg Engler and his special thanks to
Tyler Hamilton his book The Secret Race Inside the hidden
world of the Tour de France, doping cover ups and
winning at all costs. Go to Amazon with the usual
(29:21):
suspects and pick up the book. And there he was.
On that day of the positive doping test. My life
spiraled down fast, kicked off the team, divorced. I felt
like I had a heavy blanket on me. And then
came that day where he told the truth. The truth
was my way forward. It felt like I had shed
a hundred pound backpack. And then I can just picture
(29:45):
that meeting with Lance Armstrong and the fury he had
is this one person was going to blow the cover
on everything. And now, of course Tyler's married, he's a
money manager, and just admitting that life can get blurry
when you set a goal. I got off track, boy,
that's any of us. The story of Tyler Hamilton, the
(30:07):
story of the pursuit of success, and of course the
excesses we can commit when doing that. Here on our
American stories,
Host
Lee Habeeb
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