The Secret Race is a definitive look at the world of
professional cycling—and the doping issue surrounding this
sport and its most iconic rider, Lance Armstrong—by former
Olympic gold medalist Tyler Hamilton and New York
Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle. Over the course of two years, Coyle
conducted more than two hundred hours of interviews with
Hamilton and spoke candidly with numerous teammates, rivals,
and friends. The result is an explosive book that takes us,
for the first time, deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and
surreal world of unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team
directors, and athletes so relentlessly driven to succeed
that they would do anything—and take any risk, physical,
mental, or moral—to gain the edge they need to win.
Tyler Hamilton was once one of the world’s
best-liked and top-ranked cyclists—a fierce competitor
renowned among his peers for his uncanny endurance and epic
tolerance for pain. In the 2003 Tour de France, he finished
fourth despite breaking his collarbone in the early
stages—and grinding eleven of his teeth down to the nerves
along the way. He started his career with the U.S. Postal
Service team in the 1990s and quickly rose to become Lance
Armstrong’s most trusted lieutenant, and a member of his
inner circle. For the first three of Armstrong’s record
seven Tour de France victories, Hamilton was by Armstrong’s
side, clearing his way. But just weeks after Hamilton
reached his own personal pinnacle—winning the gold medal at
the 2004 Olympics—his career came to a sudden, ignominious
end: He was found guilty of doping and exiled from the
sport.
From the exhilaration of his early,
naïve days in the peloton, Hamilton chronicles his ascent to
the uppermost reaches of this unforgiving sport. In the
mid-1990s, the advent of a powerful new blood-boosting drug
called EPO reshaped the world of cycling, and a relentless,
win-at-any-cost ethos took root. Its psychological toll
would drive many of the sport’s top performers to substance
abuse, depression, even suicide. For the first time ever,
Hamilton recounts his own battle with clinical depression,
speaks frankly about the agonizing choices that go along
with the decision to compete at a world-class level, and
tells the story of his complicated relationship with Lance
Armstrong.
A journey into the heart of a
never-before-seen world, The Secret Race is a
riveting, courageous act of witness from a man who is as
determined to reveal the hard truth about his sport as he
once was to win the Tour de France.
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