The Fallout

After the press conference where Tyler Hamilton admitted that he’d used a supplement containing DHEA, a banned supplement, and he also announced his retirement, it was only a matter of time before follow-up stories began to appear. One of the first real follow-up pieces (and hands-down, one of the best) that I saw was Bonnie Ford’s article on ESPN.com which really summed things up from my perspective. As the title to the HTML page reads, Whether or not you believe Tyler Hamilton, it’s a dispiriting day for cycling.

That about says it all, doesn’t it? But, of course, there’s more. Ford intersperses quotes from an earlier interview with Tyler Hamilton with observations and commentary about how he seemed at that time (November 2008, just five months ago) and what was going on in his life.  For me, the real money quote of the story came from Mike Creed, Hamilton’s Rock Racing teammate who roomed with him at various events. Towards the end of Ford’s story, we see this:

“I hope people get big-picture about this and see that it’s a tragedy,” Creed said Friday. “I talked to him this morning, and I told him I hope he finds the peace he’s looking for. You’re never as good as the best thing you’ve done, and you’re never as bad as the worst thing you’ve done.”

That’s quite a nuanced and balanced way of looking at Hamilton’s situation. Ford finished up by saying:

Hamilton once divided the world into believers and nonbelievers. Now he has retired, owned up to breaking the rules and cited a condition stronger than he is — a condition so common that millions of people would immediately recognize the names of the prescription medications he spelled for reporters Friday morning. The camps will divide again, into sympathizers who will wish him the best in his effort to regain personal equilibrium and skeptics who will think the whole thing is a beard. It’s a dispiriting day either way.

As with many matters in modern cycling, there’s no way to fill in all the blanks and give an airtight explanation of what led Hamilton to this juncture. We can only hope he means it when he says the reason he’s quitting, for perhaps the first time in his life, is because he needs to chase something more important.

It was a dispiriting day for cycling. That’s a very good way to put it. Pretty much sums up what I thought when I first heard the news, via a phone call. As we quickly saw in comments here and elsewhere, the division Ford referred to was pretty soon in coming. Bob Roll’s post on Versus.com perhaps best sums up the almost visceral reactions that some folks have had to Hamilton’s story.

This second infraction makes his denials of his first infraction hollow and even more egregious.  For 5 years Tyler Hamilton has subjected us to a litany of denials that ruined the credibility of the whole sport and not just one athlete.  This second infraction is even more troubling because Tyler admitted that he knew before what he was taking as against the rules. Any person with a brain would understand the scrutiny they would be subjected to at their second and last chance to race clean. For Tyler Hamilton to possess the egotistical conceit that would allow him to continue cheating with drugs while our sport struggles with this monstrosity might be finally the first person to merit a lifetime ban from cycling.

…

I will be the first person to admit lionizing this man because of his truly amazing performance in the 2003 Tour de France.  With grace and courage Tyler Hamilton doggedly pursued his dreams with a broken collarbone without ever surrendering and eventually winning a spectacular stage and finishing 4th overall. How shocking now to realize that the emptiness of [Hamilton’s] dreams extend to my own enjoyment of the sport and being to realize gainful employment form it. That is a bitter pill to swallow. Please pardon the pun.  I would rather know that the sport is clean and that the riders that race clean may never win then have the illusion of grandeur and the glamour of evil perpetrated by Tyler Hamilton. If this latest episode does not want to make you vomit and spontaneously regurgitate all of the lies that we’ve been forced to swallow you do not love cycling and there’s plenty of hypocritical sports that do not do anything to combat doping.  Please feel free to follow anyone of those which include but is not limited to: football, baseball, basketball, tennis, soccer, formula one etc…etc…etc…

Tyler can now feel free to hand in all his prizes and hopefully he can eventually look into the eyes of riders like Blake Caldwell and Viatcheslav Ekimov, both of whom he stole titles from, and sincerely apologize.  When Tyler was a kid and developing his competitive instincts as skier he was taught to apologize to the ski racers he had beaten.  Is Tyler a self fulfilling prophecy of doom?

Bike racing is tough game. We need to arrive at a place where the professionals can apply their trade on a fair and level playing field.  Tyler Hamilton is a prime example of why there is so much suspicion surrounding the successful riders.  To imagine how desperate he must have been to take these steps sours my taste buds for all sports and not just cycling.  Cycling as always leads the way without any regard for the status of any athlete. Tyler Hamilton has been a huge star in the sport of cycling and rather than be satisfied with his god given talent for reasons yet to be explained Tyler decided it was better to cheat.  His bankrupt excuses do not bolster his arguments but rather further erode the public’s belief in the sport of cycling and enjoyment of the cast majority of riders whose efforts are clean and authentic.  I have never recommended a lifetime ban from cycling but until Tyler come clean his purgatory in the wilderness must go on endlessly.

Ouch! Them’s some pretty harsh words there, Mr. Roll. The thing is, USADA doesn’t need Bobke’s recommendation or any of our recommendations regarding what to do. Chances are, they wouldn’t listen to what any of us have to say, anyway. There are rules to be followed, and in Hamilton’s case, the rules suggest that he will get either an 8 year ban or a lifetime ban from the sport. While Hamilton and his attorneys may be hoping for some leniency because of his admission and retirement from the sport, I’m guessing that won’t happen.

From what I’ve seen, there’s a lot of anger towards Hamilton in various corners of the Internets. Much of that anger towards Hamilton seems to be based on the feeling that were it not for his constant and continuing denials regarding the first case, the sport would not have been cast in such disrepute. And yet, Hamilton is hardly the first, nor will he be the last cyclist who tests positive for a banned substance.

There were plenty of doping scandals in cycling before Hamilton came along, and there have been plenty since. While he chose to vigorously defend himself, that’s his right under the current system. If you’ve ever talked to people locked up in prison, you’ll find that a whole lot of them deny having done the crime they were convicted of. Some of them, it turns out, really are innocent. But sometimes it takes years before that person’s name is cleared.

Given what’s transpired, it would be fairly easy to conclude that Hamilton was guilty of blood doping in 2004. But what if, at some future date, evidence came to light that suggested he’d be wrongly convicted? Would those who have roundly criticized him for his denials apologize to him then? I suspect not.

Although parts of his defense from the blood doping case have been ridiculed in the press and beyond, Hamilton did raise some legitimate issues about the test used and the overall testing process in his case. We’ll get into that in another post.

In the meantime, I certainly hope that people can eventually come to see Hamilton’s story in the way that Mike Creed sees it. As a tragedy. As Creed said,  “You’re never as good as the best thing you’ve done, and you’re never as bad as the worst thing you’ve done.”

I’d say that applies to most people. There might be a couple of figures in history who would disprove the “never as bad as the worst thing you’ve done” part, however. But that’s a discussion for another time and another place.