Tyler Hamilton Describes Doping System

Monday, May 23rd, 2011

I am shocked — shocked! — to find that doping is going on in cycling:

Tyler Hamilton, a 2004 Olympic gold medalist and former Postal Service rider, described life on the team Sunday in an interview on “60 Minutes.” He said it was one filled with secret code words, clandestine phone lines and furtive conversations. Riders led double lives that revolved around performance-enhancing drug use, while publicly insisting that the team was perfectly clean, he said.

The best cyclists received white lunch bags filled with EPO, human growth hormone and testosterone by team doctors, who handed out the packages as if they contained only sandwiches and juice boxes. They were also given little red pills that contained a testosterone oil they squirted beneath their tongues for a performance boost.

And if a top rider needed the blood-booster EPO to help adjust his blood values to evade doping positives, Hamilton said, he knew exactly where to turn: to Armstrong, who was the undisputed leader of the team and whose help from other riders was necessary for victory.

“You know, I reached out to Lance Armstrong, you know,” Hamilton said on “60 Minutes,” describing what he did when he needed EPO. “And he helped me out, he helped me out.”

The next day or two, he said, a package arrived with some EPO.

“It was an illegal doping product, but he helped out a friend,” Hamilton said. “So I want to make it clear that, you know, if the roles were reversed and I had the connection, I would have done the same, same, thing for Lance.”

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