But most surprisingly of all, I came away with a renewed love of the sport. I came away with a renewed respect for Tyler Hamilton despite his misdemeanours. I came away with a better appreciation of the professional cyclist, under pressure to succeed. But it is an honest, harrowing, eye-opening account that is a must-read for anyone interested in competitive cycling in the late '90s and the early 2000s. He broke my heart in 2004 and he’s a self-confessed cheat after all. I wasn’t expecting to be moved by Hamilton’s book. The book is co-written by cycling journalist Daniel Coyle, a former Armstrong insider and author of Lance Armstrong: Tour de Force Coyle says he extensively fact-checked the book to guarantee its accuracy.
Ingenious ways of getting the edge over others, of keeping up with your competitors. Before you know it, you’re reading about the early races, the sense of adventure and fear as he prepares to head for Europe, and his first meeting with Lance Armstrong.īecause that’s what this book is really about – Hamilton’s relationship with Armstrong and how that relationship was defined: by success by rivalry and by drugs. His young life is dealt with quickly and his passion for cycling soon takes over. It’s not a walk from infancy to adulthood with excruciating detail serving as padding. So it was with some trepidation that I approached his biography.īiography doesn’t really do it justice. My love of cycling was tainted and, like Hamilton’s cycling life, has never returned to what it once was. He failed a drugs test at the Olympics later that year, he became embroiled in Operation Puerto not long after, and his career never recovered. It turned out that a lot of people could blame him. So I watched with dismay as Tyler Hamilton climbed off the bike and gave up. We’d moved there to open an auberge which gave that fateful day a double resonance: he was in our neighbourhood and he was my favourite rider.
In 2004, he abandoned on Stage 13, the torturous climb to the Plateau de Beille just around the corner from our new home in the French Pyrénées. I can remember his last day with the Tour de France. On 30 September 2012 Guest reviewer Julia Stagg critiques The Secret Race, the autobiography of Tyler Hamilton – the first cyclist to so publicly point the finger at Lance Armstrong over allegations of doping.
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