Book Review: The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle

Review
The Secret Race is written by Daniel Coyle, about Tyler Hamilton, the former professional cyclist who tested positive for drugs after being the team-mate of Lance Armstrong during the early 2000s.

The book tells the story of Hamilton's career, but predominantly his years of professional cycling riding for the US Postal Service team during Armstrong's initial victories in the Tour de France. It starts with a traditional format, documenting the story of Hamilton's love for cycling as a junior rider. He's a little different from ordinary, as he enjoys pushing himself through the pain barrier, and finds that he is actually rather good at it. This will stand him in great stead for future years.

Before long, Hamilton is shooting through the ranks and being noticed by the top teams. Recruitment by one of the top teams, however, does bring with it the revelation that you can't win clean. Or, realistically, it is almost impossible for you to compete regularly without taking performance-enhancing drugs. Sometimes it is hard to know whether drugs really were required. Surely a rider with morals could have said 'no'? It seems like a loss with drugs could be tolerated, as the rider had tried 'everything' to win; a defeat without drugs was just not competing. Ultimately the sport was infected with cheats, deceptive cheats and powerful cheats. We learn that Armstrong is all three of these categories, and to be elite with Armstrong involved all manner of medical procedures.

The book heads through Hamilton's career with the Postal Service, his emergence as a team leader and subsequent fall from grace following his positive test in 2004. I'm not going to dwell on the narrative of the book; anyone with a brief scan of major search engines will find his life story, and I certainly didn't find any ground-breaking discoveries about his personal life in this book.

The Secret Race definitely focuses on the doping. We learn a lot about the processes the Postal team used to conceal their tracks, but ultimately how naive the testers were in attempting to detect cheating. Any rider supported by their team, with a few simple steps, could avoid being tested when they were 'glowing' soon after blood transfusions or testosterone injections. In fact, the scale of the doping and implication of Armstrong is almost secondary to the shock of how easy it actually was. In fact, what is completely surprising is that Hamilton actually got caught. I suppose that eventually every significant rider in that generation was, or has come clean afterwards.

Daniel Coyle deserves some credit as an interviewer of Hamilton. Never does the book really slip away from the key objective of explaining Hamilton's misdemeanours. It is simple to get drawn into the doping and descent into cheating, but it never feels rushed or ponderous. It is a tricky balance to make it sound like the rider, without descending into banal observations, but Coyle accomplishes it well.

I think it is important to put into context how and when I read this book. I've already read David Millar's Racing Through The Dark, a man who fully acknowledged his role in doping, admitted his guilt and has devoted the twilight of his career to fighting the cause. I was rapt by this book; possibly because I bought into the story of Millar that he wants to be redeemed, but also because of the emotion that he explains from the early days of doping until his positive test. He truly seemed to hate the methods and himself without any exceptions.

I finished the book about a week before Lance Armstrong's interviews with Oprah Winfrey. Getting Armstrong's side of the story has painted a different light on my opinion of Hamilton. Armstrong, in my opinion, would never have admitted without the disclosures of Hamilton and Floyd Landis, another ex-team mate. On that basis, I have to consider this story to be beneficial for the sport of cycling, as it can hopefully put the omerta and cheating culture behind it. So many developments have happened since the Tours of the mid 2000s that we would like to hope that the sport is now clean and redemptive. In fact, the speeds of the riders in 2012 being substantially lower than those ten years previously gives us hope that our time isn't being wasted watching top-level cycling. I wasted three weeks in July over seven consecutive years watching Armstrong 'win' cycling events, marvelling at his dominance, but it was based on a lie.

Ultimately it is difficult to consider whether Hamilton's story is credible. There is certainly some value in writing a narrative like this, as it educates the reader about the endemic doping culture that was prevalent. It is shocking and really goes to underline that systematic testing was, at best, ineffectual and at worst pointless. However, Hamilton never really feels or sounds contrite about his cheating. He doesn't go far enough to explain why he was doping. We know some of the guilt is real, but would Hamilton have written the book if he hadn't tested positive in 2004? Unfortunately, I don't think so.

Summary
First published - 2012
Immediacy - 4/5 - as a cycling fan, I knew what to expect - a narrative about his opening years, drive for success et cetera. Others might find it harder to get into.
Writing style - 4/5 - Coyle is factual, descriptive but it always feels like it is coming from Hamilton himself.
Ongoing narrative - 3/5 - I couldn't get past the guilt and incomplete emotion depicted in the book. This probably isn't the fault of the book, but any reader with knowledge of Hamilton's history cannot fully enjoy it, in my opinion.
Overall - 3.5/5.