Lance Armstrong, his former wingman and roommate, said that Tyler Hamilton’s writing a tell-all book about doping in cycling is “greedy, opportunistic, and self-serving.” The president of the international federation wondered, “What’s the objective of him coming clean”? And his former teammates and rivals, Hamilton observes, have maintained “an almost eerie silence.”
But the man from Marblehead has no apologies for exposing his sport’s dirty underwear three years after he got off the bike.
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Tyler can do all of the soul cleaning confessing for himself that he wants. One has to question the motivation for soul cleaning everyone else he can think of. By doing so does he, in his mind, diminish his transgressions? Did a falling out with Lance precede his sudden revelations about him? Will the sale of a book filled with names, dosages, dates enrich him in a way he can otherwise not do? Just because Tyler says it, does it make it true?
Well said. Usually people like Hamilton will tend to try and replace one endorphin rush with another. In his case, his racing career was seemingly as a second fiddle to Armstrong. I'm sure there was more resentment playing that role than he eludes to in the book. Then, as his racing days neared a natural end, the prospect of turning miles into money emerged. I for one find it really hard to accept that nearly everyone was in on it for so long. There's always someone who talks. So, even if it's somewhat true, why did the USADA violate its own standards in going after Armstrong? The real loser here is going the be the sport at large which will lose sponsors in droves. Watch while cycling takes a decade long downward spiral before it begins to recover with new blood (no pun intended).
The notion that Tyler's coming clean to emotionally unburden himself from years of doping is absurd. He has no career left and this is purely a money grab, no less deplorable than cheating in cycling. It's a better story for his book if he inflates the severity of the problem and also serves to make it look like he was just doing "what everyone else was already doing." It would be an even better story if he was contributing proceeds from the book to charity or to The Home For Washed Up Cyclists. This contrition-after-the-fact has become so common in sports and politics and show business that it's almost reflexive but it doesn't make it any less pathetic. I hope he's in witness protection in Montana 'cause he's gonna need it. When Lance tells you that he's going to make your life a living hell, you better listen. Go Lance.
williamtele - are you serious? "Go Lance?" So you support the act of doping regardless? Gotta love a mindset that favors winning over morals, but I guess that's what this country is built on (see "The Great Recession." The thing that i don't understand with doping and sports is that if noone was doing it, everyone would be starting from the same vantage point. Frankly I say let them dope and then they are at least competing fair and square. Just seems like a lot of hassle and health risk if you ask me and therefore wouldn't it make more sense if everyone agreed not to dope, or at least made it criminal? How about you let the dopers compete w/ an asterisk and the non-dopers w/out. It's kind of like segregating the seniors on the PGA tour. You could compete in different classes depending on whether you dope or not and ultimately leave the decision up to the athelte as a personal choice. We could have a first place for dopers and a first place for non-dopers. At the end of the day non of us really care if people dope, we only care if they cheat. I say we let them dope, but let them do it honestly and not in a way that allows them to have a competitive advantage. Let het dopes compete w/ the dopes and the straights compete w/ the straights and the rest of us will get back to living our normal lives, not really caring about who is doping or not.
The "Go Lance" comment was actually referring to him making Hamilton's life a living hell.