Author: Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle
Book: The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs
For anyone interested in the background detail of the Lance Armstrong conspiracy, this is probably the best place to start.
If, however, you are reading this blog and thinking you might read the book a little background would be helpful. Tyler Hamilton was a professional cyclist from the mid-1980’s and Armstrong’s most important team member for his first 3 tour wins - 1999 - 2001.
By all further accounts, Tyler Hamilton is a nice guy and he certainly doesn’t seem to be profiting much from telling his story about what “actually” happened through the whole of the Armstrong era.
Put this together with the author Daniel Coyle who is hugely respected in sports writing and infact followed Armstrong in the mid-2000’s for 15 months writing and authorized biography on him. He has also written phenomenal books such as The Talent Code and does not seem to be the type of author to jump on a bandwagon.
This book is truly dynamite - based around Tyler Hamilton’s testimony to a federal investigation regarding Armstrong and his team. It transcends cycling completely. It is shocking to see what could happen and be concealed institutionally by a huge industry in circumstances which must be being replicated throughout the world in all sectors.
It might be easy for me to lose my faith in humanity after reading such a book and after having been an Armstrong devotee for so long but I am heartened by the fact that when the racks started to appear in the story, the whole thing blew apart dramatically with many, many people now telling the truth of what happened.
From a purely cycling perspective this is a fabulous book - another fabulous insight into what life is like being a professional cyclist. How hard these guys really are regardless of any chemicals that they become involved with. How much training they do and how much dedication they have but on a larger scale it demonstrates this “need to win” mentality which seems to run through everything these days, including the business of dentistry.
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