The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour De France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour De France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs Read Online Free PDF Page B

had my eye on a house in Nederland, Colorado, a small, sleepy town just outside Boulder. The house wasn’t anything fancy, just fifteen hundred square feet, with a small porch where I could see the mountains. But to me it meant a sense of permanence, a place to call my own.
    In early 1996 Weisel hired former Olympic gold medalist Mark Gorski as general manager. Within a few months Gorski delivered the big news: the U.S. Postal Service had agreed to a three-year contract to be the team’s title sponsor, with budget increases built inso the team could grow. Weisel and Gorski got busy stocking the roster with more young riders, capping it with Andy Hampsten, who was the most accomplished American cyclist this side of Greg LeMond. Hampsten had won the Tour of Italy, the Tour of Switzerland, and the Tour of Romandie.
    The plan for 1996–97 was to establish Postal’s European credentials. We’d enter more big races, and hopefully, by 1997, earn an invitation to what Weisel liked to call the Tour de Fucking France. We fed off Weisel’s determination. We felt optimistic and energized, especially with Hampsten leading us. That spring of ’96 we headed to Europe feeling optimistic. We knew it’d be tough, but we’d find a way to get it done.
    We had no idea.
    * Borysewicz was best known for importing Eastern European training methods to the United States—including some that were more than a little questionable. Prior to the 1984 Olympic Games, Borysewicz arranged blood transfusions for the U.S. Olympic cycling team in a Ramada Inn in Carson, California. The team went on to win nine medals, including four golds. While transfusions were not technically against the rules at the time, the United States Olympic Committee condemned the procedure, calling the transfusions “unacceptable, unethical, and illegal as far as the USOC is concerned.”
    The scandal and ensuing publicity seem to have scared Borysewicz straight: Hamilton and teammate Andy Hampsten agree that the team was clean during Eddie B’s 1995–96 tenure as director, and that he frequently warned them against “getting involved with that shit.”

Chapter 2

  REALITY
    AT FIRST, WE TOLD ourselves it was jet lag. Then the weather. Then our diet. Our horoscopes. Anything to avoid facing the truth about Postal’s performance in the bigger European races in 1996: we were getting crushed.
    It wasn’t that we were losing; it was the way we were losing. You can grade your performance in a race the same way you would grade a test in school. If you cross the finish line in the lead group, then you earned an A: you might not have won, but you never got left behind. If you are in the second group, you get a B—not great, but far from terrible; you only got left behind once. If you’re in the third group, you get a C, and so on. Each race is really a bunch of smaller races, contests that always have one of two results: you either keep up, or you don’t.
    As a team, Postal was scoring D’s and F’s. We did fairly well in America, but our performance in the big European races seemed to follow the same pattern: the race would start, and the speed would crank up, and up, and up. Pretty soon we were hanging on for dearlife. Pack-fill, we called ourselves, because our only function was to make the back group of the peloton bigger. We had no chance to win, no chance to attack or affect the race in a meaningful way; we were just grateful to survive. The reason was that the other riders were unbelievably strong. They defied the rules of physics and bike racing. They did things I’d never seen, or even imagined seeing.
    For instance, they could attack, alone, and hold off a charging peloton for hours. They could climb at dazzling speed, even the bigger guys who didn’t look like climbers. They could perform at their absolute best day after day, avoiding the usual peaks and valleys. They were circus strongmen.
    For me, the guy who stood out was Bjarne Riis, a six-foot-tall,