Tyler Hamilton | Athlete Voice on Cycling and PEDs

Cycling has impacted my life positively in so many different ways from the incredible people along the way, I’ve traveled all around the world, seen different cultures, different everything, just a whole different world. It’s really opened up my eyes.

I’ve always loved that freedom aspect of cycling, you know, the first time I could get away from mom and dad on my bike and travel many towns away from home. I raced 13 or 14 years as a professional cyclist. I was racing in Europe full-time, we had European riders on the team, we had European staff. I had finished a stage race in Southern Spain, like a week-long stage race, and I was just like a starfish on my bed, collapsed. And I remember one of the team doctors came into my room and he was praising me about how well I had done, how much I’d pushed through the pain, and how impressed he was, but that I had to start taking care of my body and living a little bit more “professionally,” as he called it. He was wearing this fly fishing vest and he reached into one of the pockets and he pulled out this little red, egg-shaped capsule. He said to me, he said, “Tyler, this is for your health. It’s not doping, it’s for your health.” Yeah, it had testosterone in it. And that was the moment, he handed me this capsule, that was the moment.

I knew most of my teammates were doping at the time, and I thought if I said no to it, then I wouldn’t be selected to ride in the Tour de France. In a way, the doctor coming into my room, offering me this little red, egg-shaped testosterone pill, in a way that was almost introducing me to the “A Team.” And for me, I felt that was a big opportunity, that was my chance to ride in the Tour. And it showed that they had faith in me and that they thought I had a future in the sport. So, yeah, I made that decision. I didn’t really think about it too much, I just knew he was a well-respected doctor that worked with big champions over the years and that I should listen to him. I knew it was wrong from the moment I put it in my mouth, for sure. But I also thought that I had to look the other way. This was my opportunity, everybody else was doing it, so I kind of had to just join the club and not think so much about it.

That little red testosterone pill led to other things. A month or two later I was introduced to my first injection of a drug called EPO, which basically boosts your hematocrit, which brings red blood cells to your muscles. Kind of a big deal. And I remember the first time I ever did it, the blood was pulled out in Spain, outside of Valencia, Spain, and it was put back into me three weeks later in the middle of the Tour de France. So somebody had to transport that over an international border. Serious stuff, serious stuff. My life went from being a wide-eyed, green bike racer from Marblehead, Massachusetts to a few years later in a little bit of a dark world, very secretive, two different faces. Cycling, all of a sudden, became different, it was more about results. I felt more like a number, the numbers that I produced on the bike, you have all this data that you can record while you’re cycling, those numbers became kind of whether I was happy or not.

After the 2003 season, which was probably my most successful season on record, I had great results, had a big Tour de France. I got back stateside after the season was over, it was in my off-season, and I realized I was having a hard time just getting out of bed, no motivation. I mean, I thought about suicide, I drank to just check out at some points. Pretty much every night, if not every night at least every other night, I’d wake up usually between two and three in the morning and just sit there for 45 minutes and stare at the ceiling. I called them committee meetings and just kind of think about what I was up to and the consequences if it all went bad, how ugly that was going to look.

In 2004, I was in the middle of the Tour de France, I did a transfusion, I’d given blood weeks before and it was getting reinfused back into me, and I think the red blood cells had gone bad. And I had a bad reaction, my urine was like, black with dead red blood cells, I had a fever. I didn’t know if I could die from that, and sure enough, from the research that I’ve found out, that, yeah, it could have been really bad. Luckily, the fever didn’t get any worse. I told the team doctor about it and he watched over me. Luckily, it passed. But I remember thinking to myself, you know, what am I doing? What am I doing? This is a crazy world.

But the power of the truth, I mean, the truth saved me. There was a federal investigation into Lance Armstrong and the U.S. Postal Service Cycling Team. And a guy by the name of Jeff Novitsky contacted me, and I was forced to come in and tell the truth in front of a grand jury. And I didn’t want to tell the truth, I really didn’t, I felt like I was 10 years too late to tell the truth. But being forced to go in and testify in front of the grand jury, I felt like, all of a sudden, that was my moment and I had all this guilt built up that I didn’t even know how deep it went. And finally, I got there in front of the grand jury and maybe the first 10, 15 minutes were a little bit hard, but then it was just like – PHEW – and it just came out, and for as hard as it was, it felt also just wonderful. Here we go, here’s the truth, and it’s not pretty, it’s really ugly and I’m ashamed about it. I’m going to disappoint a lot of people with this information, but it’s the truth. And it was at that moment, I was like, wow, I’ve been protecting this culture, this “omerta,” trying to be the good, old fraternity mate not telling the secrets. But then I realized, wow, what an ugly situation this has been and ugly situation that we all went through. From that moment on, really, being in that Los Angeles courtroom, I came out of there and I had a new perspective on what I was going to do with my life. Hiding the truth was not included in that anymore.

In general, it’s like, people have kind of come and told their truth or not told the truth and kind of moved on. I credit them for that, but I also feel like, we have an opportunity to make sure a situation like this doesn’t happen again. I try to talk about it as much as possible, it’s obviously still hard, you know, I wish I was talking about something else. But I feel like it’s super important. My girlfriend’s got two kids we live with, seven and five, I told them last night what this interview was about. So, they didn’t know about that. They didn’t know about the dark side of my cycling career. And the youngest asked me why I did it. Yeah.

I would say I take cycling a lot less seriously now, just kind of enjoy it a lot more. It got pretty focused on just how much power you’re pushing into the pedals, you almost became just like a number, and that got old really quickly. To come back and just enjoy cycling for that freedom, for that wind blowing through your hair, that’s pretty awesome.