Too Tough for Tugboat

New York Times Nixes Hamilton

See the news on the SixDay site
--
le Vent a Dos, Davey Crockett
Six Day Racing: http://sixday.741.com/2004-2005/2004-2005.html
Latest Road Racing news at http://sixday.741.com/news.html
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My wife came up to the computer room this morning with a hard copy of the
Sunday Times. The Hamilton piece is the top article on the Sunday Sports
page. I think the Hamilton tugboat is taking on water and sinking fast.

"Davey Crockett" wrote in message
...
New York Times Nixes Hamilton

See the news on the SixDay site
--
le Vent a Dos, Davey Crockett
Six Day Racing: http://sixday.741.com/2004-2005/2004-2005.html
Latest Road Racing news at http://sixday.741.com/news.html
RSS feed: http://sixday.741.com/rssfeed/newsfeed.rss
RSS feed: http://sixday.741.com/rssfeed/newsfeed.xml
(Some RSS readers want .rss whilst others demand .xml
so both files are there for you)

My wife came up to the computer room this morning with a hard copy of the
Sunday Times. The Hamilton piece is the top article on the Sunday Sports
page. I think the Hamilton tugboat is taking on water and sinking fast.

"Davey Crockett" wrote in message
...
New York Times Nixes Hamilton

See the news on the SixDay site
--
le Vent a Dos, Davey Crockett
Six Day Racing: http://sixday.741.com/2004-2005/2004-2005.html
Latest Road Racing news at http://sixday.741.com/news.html
RSS feed: http://sixday.741.com/rssfeed/newsfeed.rss
RSS feed: http://sixday.741.com/rssfeed/newsfeed.xml
(Some RSS readers want .rss whilst others demand .xml
so both files are there for you)

"B. Lafferty" writes:

My wife came up to the computer room this morning with a hard copy of the
Sunday Times. The Hamilton piece is the top article on the Sunday Sports
page. I think the Hamilton tugboat is taking on water and sinking fast.


I think the whole world has seen it by now

Shoot, I just checked the logs and it's been picked up 58 times already from
my Mickey Mouse feed, and it's on all the newswires which of course is where I
got it from

--
le Vent a Dos, Davey Crockett
Six Day Racing: http://sixday.741.com/2004-2005/2004-2005.html
Latest Road Racing news at http://sixday.741.com/news.html
RSS feed: http://sixday.741.com/rssfeed/newsfeed.rss
RSS feed: http://sixday.741.com/rssfeed/newsfeed.xml
(Some RSS readers want .rss whilst others demand .xml
so both files are there for you)

"B. Lafferty" writes:

My wife came up to the computer room this morning with a hard copy of the
Sunday Times. The Hamilton piece is the top article on the Sunday Sports
page. I think the Hamilton tugboat is taking on water and sinking fast.


I think the whole world has seen it by now

Shoot, I just checked the logs and it's been picked up 58 times already from
my Mickey Mouse feed, and it's on all the newswires which of course is where I
got it from

--
le Vent a Dos, Davey Crockett
Six Day Racing: http://sixday.741.com/2004-2005/2004-2005.html
Latest Road Racing news at http://sixday.741.com/news.html
RSS feed: http://sixday.741.com/rssfeed/newsfeed.rss
RSS feed: http://sixday.741.com/rssfeed/newsfeed.xml
(Some RSS readers want .rss whilst others demand .xml
so both files are there for you)

On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 13:25:14 GMT, "B. Lafferty"
wrote:

I think the Hamilton tugboat is taking on water and sinking fast.

*** First, pretty lame reference to his dog.
Sad attempt at cleverness.

Second, how does this piece add anything to the
current dialogue? Oh, that's right. It doesn't.

I'm not saying one way or another, as I'm not
qualified.

Are you?

---
k e i t h a l e x a n d e r
http://www.modernamerican.com
http://www.nootrope.net
aim: nootrope9 /blog

- - e n d t r a n s m i s s i o n - -

On Sun, 14 Nov 2004 13:25:14 GMT, "B. Lafferty"
wrote:

I think the Hamilton tugboat is taking on water and sinking fast.

*** First, pretty lame reference to his dog.
Sad attempt at cleverness.

Second, how does this piece add anything to the
current dialogue? Oh, that's right. It doesn't.

I'm not saying one way or another, as I'm not
qualified.

Are you?

---
k e i t h a l e x a n d e r
http://www.modernamerican.com
http://www.nootrope.net
aim: nootrope9 /blog

- - e n d t r a n s m i s s i o n - -

Davey Crockett wrote in message ...
New York Times Nixes Hamilton


\----------------------------------------------------------/


Tyler says it would be a shame to lose all this (reference nice
colorado mansion). Should have thought about that before cheating.

Or, one could argue, none of it would have been his without cheating
in the first place.

Liars can't be trusted.


In Trying to Save Medal and Tour de France Hopes, Hamilton Faces
Uphill Course

November 14, 2004
By JULIET MACUR





From the living room of his Colorado dream house, Tyler
Hamilton sees miles of rolling hills covered with
evergreens. In the distance, snow-capped mountains form the
Continental Divide. The sky is muted orange, promising
another magnificent sunset.

Behind him, around the neck of a grinning carved wood
moose, hangs the Olympic gold medal he won in the cycling
time trial at the Athens Games. On the walls are
photographs of his golden retriever, Tugboat, who died in
July and whose tag Hamilton wore inside his helmet on that
winning ride. Next to the couch, a wood box holds Tugboat's
ashes, a long lock of his pale tail curling around the lid.


Cycling jerseys stitched for the Swiss team built for
Hamilton to win the Tour de France sit neatly stacked in
the laundry room. Nine custom bicycles line the walls of
his garage.

When he turns away from the windows, he frowns. "This is
the lowest point of my whole life," he says. "I could lose
all of this."

Hamilton, the American considered the heir apparent to
Lance Armstrong, learned in September that he had tested
positive for endurance-boosting blood transfusions at the
Olympics and at the Vuelta a España.

At 33, just as he seemed ready to claim center stage,
Hamilton is facing a two-year suspension from competition.
His lawyers expect the United States Anti-Doping Agency,
which has jurisdiction over the case, to make a formal
charge against him soon, and they anticipate going to
arbitration in January.

Hamilton's goal of winning the 2005 Tour de France is
slipping away. He stands a good chance of missing the Tour,
a race Armstrong has won six consecutive times but is
expected to skip.

Anti-doping experts involved in the case say Hamilton is
guilty, and Olympic officials are not convinced of his
innocence. That keeps Hamilton and his wife, Haven, awake
at night. They read arcane scientific data on blood doping
to learn what they will be up against when he presents his
case. If he loses, he plans to go to the Court of
Arbitration for Sport, the highest court of international
athletics.

He has a lot at stake. His Swiss team, Phonak, pays him a
high-six-figure salary. He also has endorsement deals with
companies like Nike, Clif Bar and Oakley, putting his
yearly income well above $1 million.

Now sponsors are wary. Some fellow competitors are
retreating. And recently, a World Anti-Doping Agency
spokesman said Hamilton had kept his Olympic medal only
because of a laboratory error. "After the Olympics, my life
was really secure, my career was really on track because
the gold medal can bring you a lot, you know?" Hamilton
says. "Now my life is on hold."

Hamilton, a sliver of a man at 5 feet 8 inches and 130
pounds, makes eye contact as he says: "I would be happier
without everything I have, with nothing, if I could just
clear my name. If I had to, I'd give up everything, down to
my last penny, to have my name back."

A Test Failed

Hamilton, the first American to win a road racing Olympic
gold in 20 years, left Athens in late August and headed for
the Vuelta a España. On Sept. 11, he won an individual time
trial. Five nights later, he rose from a massage table to
be met by Alvaro Pino, the director of his Phonak team.

"You've been accused of transfusing blood from a different
person," in the Vuelta, Hamilton said Pino told him.

Homologous blood doping, the practice of transfusing
another person's blood to increase the amount of
oxygen-carrying red blood cells, has been against the rules
in cycling since the late 1980's. It improves athletes'
endurance but can spread disease and even cause death.

Hamilton, the first athlete with a positive result since
the test's introduction this year, said he was stunned. His
requests for additional screening and a DNA test were
denied. "This can't be right," he said he told Pino. "Stay
calm. We'll work this out, don't worry."

Hamilton dropped out of the Vuelta that day and headed to
his condominium in Girona, Spain. Haven, his wife, was in
Massachusetts with her family. Tugboat was gone. He opened
the door to an empty, painful feeling.

Hamilton is known for coping with pain. A year after
leaving his job as Armstrong's lieutenant on the United
States Postal Service team, Hamilton raced the 2002 Giro
d'Italia despite a broken shoulder, grinding 11 teeth to
their nerves. In the 2003 Tour de France, he broke his
collarbone early but finished fourth. During the sixth
stage of this year's Tour, Hamilton flew over his
handlebars and landed on his back. But he did not drop out
of the race until the 13th stage, three days after the
cancer-stricken Tugboat was euthanized.

But that night in Spain, the pain sickened him. On the
Internet, he researched homologous blood doping. Hamilton
said he was restless, the sleeping pill from the team's
doctor useless. His mind raced. Was there a mix-up with
blood samples? Were Europeans out to get an American?

"We felt like all the air had rushed out of our lungs,"
Haven, 35, said.

The situation worsened two days later, he said, when he
learned that a blood sample at the Olympics had also shown
evidence of a transfusion.

During the next few days, Hamilton twice drove to
Switzerland, first for Phonak's news conference on his test
results, then to spend two days in a lab watching
scientists test his second, or B, samples from the Vuelta
and the Olympics. "It was so important to me to see the
procedure," he says. "They had my life in that vial."

The Olympics and professional cycling use the same testing
procedures. Each blood sample is divided. If the A sample
is positive, the B is tested to confirm the initial result.
Without confirmation, the entire test is deemed negative.

On Aug. 22, scientists at the Olympic drug-testing
laboratory marked Hamilton's A sample negative but labeled
it suspicious for a blood transfusion. On the
recommendation of external experts called in to examine the
results, the I.O.C. declared Hamilton's A sample positive
on Sept. 16, nearly a month after he won the gold medal. By
then, the I.O.C. knew that a lab technician had frozen
Hamilton's B sample, leaving too few red blood cells to
analyze. On Sept. 23, the Olympic B sample was called
inconclusive, so Hamilton kept his medal, but the B sample
from the Vuelta came out positive.

"It's obvious that the lab there had no idea what they were
doing, and it makes you question the entire drug-testing
process," Hamilton said. "But it's too late for me. I'm
just their guinea pig. They already ruined my life because
of their mistakes."

Drug testing and drug scandals have long played a part in
international cycling. In 1967, a rider died during the
Tour de France, and an autopsy revealed amphetamines in his
blood. Random urine screenings began in 1968, and random
blood testing began about four years ago.

In the 1998 Tour de France, the top-ranked Festina team was
expelled amid a doping investigation. This year, David
Millar was stripped of his 2003 world championship and
suspended for using erythropoietin, EPO, a synthetic
red-blood-cell booster.

Also this year, Hamilton's teammate Oscar Camenzind was
suspended for EPO use; another teammate, Santiago Perez,
tested positive for traces of another person's blood on
Oct. 27. Still, Hamilton insists that cycling "is not a
dirty sport" and that the blood-doping test is faulty.

But Michael Ashenden, an Australian physiologist and head
researcher on a team of scientists who this year developed
the test for homologous blood doping, said there was no
doubt of its reliability. The World Anti-Doping Agency
approved the test for the Athens Games. The International
Cycling Union began using it at this summer's Tour de
France.

The original test, Ashenden said, has been used for more
than a decade to determine if there is hemorrhaging between
a fetus and a mother with an incompatible blood type.

"The knee-jerk reaction of a team that is faced with a
sanction is that the test is new, so it's problematic,"
Ashenden said. "But you just don't use a test a million
times and then it suddenly doesn't work. This isn't a new
test. It just hasn't been used in sports for very long."

He added: "It's too bad that an athlete very seldom has the
moral courage to admit: 'Yes, I did this. I'm guilty.' "

Hamilton vows he's innocent. His wife said: "I want to
scream it from the rooftops and say Tyler is innocent. But
we have to be methodical now, like we're doing a really
hard crossword puzzle."

On the Offense

Days after Hamilton's B test results were announced, Haven
flew to Spain. They decided he should honor his
commitments.

"I'm not going to stay locked up in my house because of
this," Hamilton said. "I have nothing to hide."

He spent eight days in the Pyrenees filming an IMAX movie
about the brain's reaction to emotions and pain, to be
released next fall. Next, he flew to Las Vegas for the
Interbike trade show, beginning the journey to salvage his
reputation. He said his heart beat quickly as he arrived,
the Strip aglow, thousands of people in the tight-knit
biking world about to see him for the first time since his
positive tests.

The Interbike show, North America's largest cycling trade
show, covered 660,000 square feet in the Sands Expo and
Convention Center. Amid a maze of booths with $5,000 bikes,
$25 socks, energy bars, heart- rate monitors and hydration
backpacks was Tyler Hamilton, considered the nicest, most
polite person in cycling.

Hamilton, who has boyish looks and a freckled, tan face,
walked through the doors, nervous and blushing slightly.
But at 15 appearances over two days, he was treated like an
Olympic champion. People waited hours for his autograph,
asked for photos, shook hands. Some offered condolences for
Tugboat.

One of his sponsors, Bell Helmets, gave away "I Believe
Tyler" buttons. One man wearing that button proudly was
Andy Rihs, the chairman of Phonak, a Swiss hearing aid
company, and the boss of Hamilton's team. Rihs, who
suspended Hamilton with pay, said he had spent $800,000 on
Hamilton's defense, hiring five scientists to study the
blood-doping test and its validity.

"We wanted a clear second opinion because this new test is
a little black box with a thousand questions in it," Rihs
said.

One American cyclist at the show, Bobby Julich, had other
questions. Julich had roomed with Hamilton in Athens and
won the bronze medal in the time trial. He said the
suspicions about Hamilton "go against everything I've ever
known from the guy." But, he added: "The rest of us at the
Olympics passed the test. Why didn't he?"

Julich took a deep breath.

"I'm sick of people who cheat,
sick of cleaning up their mess and trying to explain it,"
he said.

Then, a pause.

"There is heavy evidence against him," he said. "With that
much evidence, I don't know how he's going to get out of
it."

Facing His Public

After the embrace at Interbike, Hamilton prepared for two
weeks of more difficult appearances at events for the Tyler
Hamilton Foundation, which raises money for multiple
sclerosis patients and for youth cycling. He started the
foundation this year, modeling it after Armstrong's cancer
foundation.

At his first stop, in a 437-seat San Francisco theater, 100
people heard him speak. When Hamilton's friend Chris
Davenport, an extreme skier who served as emcee, said,
"Tyler is innocent," most of the audience applauded.

But one man sat silent, arms tightly crossed, a disgusted
look on his face as Hamilton's Olympic gold medal was
passed around. He was Dr. Prentice Steffen, who had worked
with Hamilton and the United States Postal Service team.

In the book "L.A. Confidential, the Secrets of Lance
Armstrong," Steffen said Hamilton had been present when
another rider, Marty Jemison, hinted that
performance-enhancing drugs could help the team.

Steffen said he had refused the request and that his
contract with the team was not renewed.

"If he had the guts to show up in my town and talk, I
needed to be there," Steffen said of Hamilton. "I knew this
would happen. After the news got out that he tested
positive, I got lots of calls and e-mails, people saying,
'Yeah, Prentice wins!' "

Hamilton responded, "He's just mad that he got fired."


From San Francisco, Hamilton and his wife returned to their
refuge, their gray slate house high above Boulder, the home
of the University of Colorado. The 4,200-square-foot home
is appointed with a decorator's touch: animal-skin throw
rugs, paintings from Spain, Haven's grand piano.

It is far removed from the hubbub of European cycling, and
near friends and endless bike trails, one of which leads to
the door.

Because the Hamiltons are apart 200 days a year while he
trains and races, their time together is precious. But now,
they worry that the stress will crack their tight bond. She
says they argue more. He says their relationship is now
"all business."

Haven Parchinski was working at an advertising agency in
Boston when she met Hamilton at a cycling race in 1996.
Married to Tyler for six years, she now she has another
job: helping her husband restore his reputation. These
days, she is answering the phone, returning his calls and
rerecording their voice mail message in her voice. "I want
to protect him," she says.

For a distraction, they are thinking about replacing
Tugboat. Hamilton wants two golden retrievers. His wife
agrees.

"It's better, I think, to get two because they'll always
have each other," she says, looking him in the eye.

The next night, the Hamiltons took the stage for another
foundation talk, for about 300 people at the University of
Colorado. He raced on its ski team until he broke two
vertebrae in a mountain biking accident. Then he focused on
cycling and became an even bigger name in town.

When Hamilton was introduced, his father, Bill, was the
first to leap to his feet. "We believe in you, Tyler!" he
shouted.

The next morning, Hamilton and his father and brother - who
flew in from Marblehead, Mass. - rolled into a parking lot
on bikes for a charity ride. Counting friends, relatives
and foundation workers, the ride attracted 40 people. Two
weeks before, Armstrong's Ride for the Roses, a cancer
fund-raiser in Austin, Tex., drew 6,500.

The Yellow Jersey

In his bright living room, Hamilton
cradles his Olympic gold medal in his hands. He says he
lived a dream to feel it against his chest, to hear "The
Star-Spangled Banner," to be an Olympic champion. Not even
Armstrong achieved that.

"Cool, huh?" Hamilton says.

But Dr. Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee
president, and Dick Pound, the chairman of the World
Anti-Doping Agency, have suggested Hamilton does not
deserve the medal. And two national Olympic committees have
filed protests to strip Hamilton of it.

The Russian committee has asked the Court of Arbitration
for Sport to award it to Vyacheslav Ekimov, who finished
second in the time trial. The Australian committee has
asked that Michael Rogers, who finished fourth, receive the
bronze.

That only strengthens Hamilton's resolve. "I earned it fair
and square, and there is not a chance that someone else is
going to get it," he says of the gold. "I guarantee it."

An angry yet uncertain Hamilton says: "I'm a nice person
and I try to forgive people, but not this time, not with
this. I've lost a lot of trust in people because they have
backed off from me when I needed them the most. When my
name is cleared, I'm going to remember those people. They'd
better not come crawling back to me when this is all over."


Some friends have not left. Armstrong sent an encouraging
e-mail message. Davenport has set up www.believetyler.org,
which collects donations on the Web for Hamilton's defense.
Just as an injury led him away from skiing and toward
cycling, this ordeal may lead Hamilton to another phase of
his life. He talks about organizing a union to promote
cyclists' rights, including approval of drug-testing
procedures.

Whatever may happen, Hamilton has begun training for next
season. Pedaling through each workout, he says, he thinks
of one thing. Not of his uncertain future. Not of his
appeal. Not even of his beloved Tugboat.

He thinks of the Tour de France.

He imagines himself
wearing the leader's yellow jersey as he cruises down the
Champs-Élysées, finally vindicated.

Not a cheater, but a champion.

"Even if I'm suspended for
two years, I'll come back just to show those people who
doubted me that they were wrong," he says. "I would come
back and win the Tour de France, for my sport, for me, for
everyone who has believed in me."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Davey Crockett wrote in message ...
New York Times Nixes Hamilton


\----------------------------------------------------------/


Tyler says it would be a shame to lose all this (reference nice
colorado mansion). Should have thought about that before cheating.

Or, one could argue, none of it would have been his without cheating
in the first place.

Liars can't be trusted.


In Trying to Save Medal and Tour de France Hopes, Hamilton Faces
Uphill Course

November 14, 2004
By JULIET MACUR





From the living room of his Colorado dream house, Tyler
Hamilton sees miles of rolling hills covered with
evergreens. In the distance, snow-capped mountains form the
Continental Divide. The sky is muted orange, promising
another magnificent sunset.

Behind him, around the neck of a grinning carved wood
moose, hangs the Olympic gold medal he won in the cycling
time trial at the Athens Games. On the walls are
photographs of his golden retriever, Tugboat, who died in
July and whose tag Hamilton wore inside his helmet on that
winning ride. Next to the couch, a wood box holds Tugboat's
ashes, a long lock of his pale tail curling around the lid.


Cycling jerseys stitched for the Swiss team built for
Hamilton to win the Tour de France sit neatly stacked in
the laundry room. Nine custom bicycles line the walls of
his garage.

When he turns away from the windows, he frowns. "This is
the lowest point of my whole life," he says. "I could lose
all of this."

Hamilton, the American considered the heir apparent to
Lance Armstrong, learned in September that he had tested
positive for endurance-boosting blood transfusions at the
Olympics and at the Vuelta a España.

At 33, just as he seemed ready to claim center stage,
Hamilton is facing a two-year suspension from competition.
His lawyers expect the United States Anti-Doping Agency,
which has jurisdiction over the case, to make a formal
charge against him soon, and they anticipate going to
arbitration in January.

Hamilton's goal of winning the 2005 Tour de France is
slipping away. He stands a good chance of missing the Tour,
a race Armstrong has won six consecutive times but is
expected to skip.

Anti-doping experts involved in the case say Hamilton is
guilty, and Olympic officials are not convinced of his
innocence. That keeps Hamilton and his wife, Haven, awake
at night. They read arcane scientific data on blood doping
to learn what they will be up against when he presents his
case. If he loses, he plans to go to the Court of
Arbitration for Sport, the highest court of international
athletics.

He has a lot at stake. His Swiss team, Phonak, pays him a
high-six-figure salary. He also has endorsement deals with
companies like Nike, Clif Bar and Oakley, putting his
yearly income well above $1 million.

Now sponsors are wary. Some fellow competitors are
retreating. And recently, a World Anti-Doping Agency
spokesman said Hamilton had kept his Olympic medal only
because of a laboratory error. "After the Olympics, my life
was really secure, my career was really on track because
the gold medal can bring you a lot, you know?" Hamilton
says. "Now my life is on hold."

Hamilton, a sliver of a man at 5 feet 8 inches and 130
pounds, makes eye contact as he says: "I would be happier
without everything I have, with nothing, if I could just
clear my name. If I had to, I'd give up everything, down to
my last penny, to have my name back."

A Test Failed

Hamilton, the first American to win a road racing Olympic
gold in 20 years, left Athens in late August and headed for
the Vuelta a España. On Sept. 11, he won an individual time
trial. Five nights later, he rose from a massage table to
be met by Alvaro Pino, the director of his Phonak team.

"You've been accused of transfusing blood from a different
person," in the Vuelta, Hamilton said Pino told him.

Homologous blood doping, the practice of transfusing
another person's blood to increase the amount of
oxygen-carrying red blood cells, has been against the rules
in cycling since the late 1980's. It improves athletes'
endurance but can spread disease and even cause death.

Hamilton, the first athlete with a positive result since
the test's introduction this year, said he was stunned. His
requests for additional screening and a DNA test were
denied. "This can't be right," he said he told Pino. "Stay
calm. We'll work this out, don't worry."

Hamilton dropped out of the Vuelta that day and headed to
his condominium in Girona, Spain. Haven, his wife, was in
Massachusetts with her family. Tugboat was gone. He opened
the door to an empty, painful feeling.

Hamilton is known for coping with pain. A year after
leaving his job as Armstrong's lieutenant on the United
States Postal Service team, Hamilton raced the 2002 Giro
d'Italia despite a broken shoulder, grinding 11 teeth to
their nerves. In the 2003 Tour de France, he broke his
collarbone early but finished fourth. During the sixth
stage of this year's Tour, Hamilton flew over his
handlebars and landed on his back. But he did not drop out
of the race until the 13th stage, three days after the
cancer-stricken Tugboat was euthanized.

But that night in Spain, the pain sickened him. On the
Internet, he researched homologous blood doping. Hamilton
said he was restless, the sleeping pill from the team's
doctor useless. His mind raced. Was there a mix-up with
blood samples? Were Europeans out to get an American?

"We felt like all the air had rushed out of our lungs,"
Haven, 35, said.

The situation worsened two days later, he said, when he
learned that a blood sample at the Olympics had also shown
evidence of a transfusion.

During the next few days, Hamilton twice drove to
Switzerland, first for Phonak's news conference on his test
results, then to spend two days in a lab watching
scientists test his second, or B, samples from the Vuelta
and the Olympics. "It was so important to me to see the
procedure," he says. "They had my life in that vial."

The Olympics and professional cycling use the same testing
procedures. Each blood sample is divided. If the A sample
is positive, the B is tested to confirm the initial result.
Without confirmation, the entire test is deemed negative.

On Aug. 22, scientists at the Olympic drug-testing
laboratory marked Hamilton's A sample negative but labeled
it suspicious for a blood transfusion. On the
recommendation of external experts called in to examine the
results, the I.O.C. declared Hamilton's A sample positive
on Sept. 16, nearly a month after he won the gold medal. By
then, the I.O.C. knew that a lab technician had frozen
Hamilton's B sample, leaving too few red blood cells to
analyze. On Sept. 23, the Olympic B sample was called
inconclusive, so Hamilton kept his medal, but the B sample
from the Vuelta came out positive.

"It's obvious that the lab there had no idea what they were
doing, and it makes you question the entire drug-testing
process," Hamilton said. "But it's too late for me. I'm
just their guinea pig. They already ruined my life because
of their mistakes."

Drug testing and drug scandals have long played a part in
international cycling. In 1967, a rider died during the
Tour de France, and an autopsy revealed amphetamines in his
blood. Random urine screenings began in 1968, and random
blood testing began about four years ago.

In the 1998 Tour de France, the top-ranked Festina team was
expelled amid a doping investigation. This year, David
Millar was stripped of his 2003 world championship and
suspended for using erythropoietin, EPO, a synthetic
red-blood-cell booster.

Also this year, Hamilton's teammate Oscar Camenzind was
suspended for EPO use; another teammate, Santiago Perez,
tested positive for traces of another person's blood on
Oct. 27. Still, Hamilton insists that cycling "is not a
dirty sport" and that the blood-doping test is faulty.

But Michael Ashenden, an Australian physiologist and head
researcher on a team of scientists who this year developed
the test for homologous blood doping, said there was no
doubt of its reliability. The World Anti-Doping Agency
approved the test for the Athens Games. The International
Cycling Union began using it at this summer's Tour de
France.

The original test, Ashenden said, has been used for more
than a decade to determine if there is hemorrhaging between
a fetus and a mother with an incompatible blood type.

"The knee-jerk reaction of a team that is faced with a
sanction is that the test is new, so it's problematic,"
Ashenden said. "But you just don't use a test a million
times and then it suddenly doesn't work. This isn't a new
test. It just hasn't been used in sports for very long."

He added: "It's too bad that an athlete very seldom has the
moral courage to admit: 'Yes, I did this. I'm guilty.' "

Hamilton vows he's innocent. His wife said: "I want to
scream it from the rooftops and say Tyler is innocent. But
we have to be methodical now, like we're doing a really
hard crossword puzzle."

On the Offense

Days after Hamilton's B test results were announced, Haven
flew to Spain. They decided he should honor his
commitments.

"I'm not going to stay locked up in my house because of
this," Hamilton said. "I have nothing to hide."

He spent eight days in the Pyrenees filming an IMAX movie
about the brain's reaction to emotions and pain, to be
released next fall. Next, he flew to Las Vegas for the
Interbike trade show, beginning the journey to salvage his
reputation. He said his heart beat quickly as he arrived,
the Strip aglow, thousands of people in the tight-knit
biking world about to see him for the first time since his
positive tests.

The Interbike show, North America's largest cycling trade
show, covered 660,000 square feet in the Sands Expo and
Convention Center. Amid a maze of booths with $5,000 bikes,
$25 socks, energy bars, heart- rate monitors and hydration
backpacks was Tyler Hamilton, considered the nicest, most
polite person in cycling.

Hamilton, who has boyish looks and a freckled, tan face,
walked through the doors, nervous and blushing slightly.
But at 15 appearances over two days, he was treated like an
Olympic champion. People waited hours for his autograph,
asked for photos, shook hands. Some offered condolences for
Tugboat.

One of his sponsors, Bell Helmets, gave away "I Believe
Tyler" buttons. One man wearing that button proudly was
Andy Rihs, the chairman of Phonak, a Swiss hearing aid
company, and the boss of Hamilton's team. Rihs, who
suspended Hamilton with pay, said he had spent $800,000 on
Hamilton's defense, hiring five scientists to study the
blood-doping test and its validity.

"We wanted a clear second opinion because this new test is
a little black box with a thousand questions in it," Rihs
said.

One American cyclist at the show, Bobby Julich, had other
questions. Julich had roomed with Hamilton in Athens and
won the bronze medal in the time trial. He said the
suspicions about Hamilton "go against everything I've ever
known from the guy." But, he added: "The rest of us at the
Olympics passed the test. Why didn't he?"

Julich took a deep breath.

"I'm sick of people who cheat,
sick of cleaning up their mess and trying to explain it,"
he said.

Then, a pause.

"There is heavy evidence against him," he said. "With that
much evidence, I don't know how he's going to get out of
it."

Facing His Public

After the embrace at Interbike, Hamilton prepared for two
weeks of more difficult appearances at events for the Tyler
Hamilton Foundation, which raises money for multiple
sclerosis patients and for youth cycling. He started the
foundation this year, modeling it after Armstrong's cancer
foundation.

At his first stop, in a 437-seat San Francisco theater, 100
people heard him speak. When Hamilton's friend Chris
Davenport, an extreme skier who served as emcee, said,
"Tyler is innocent," most of the audience applauded.

But one man sat silent, arms tightly crossed, a disgusted
look on his face as Hamilton's Olympic gold medal was
passed around. He was Dr. Prentice Steffen, who had worked
with Hamilton and the United States Postal Service team.

In the book "L.A. Confidential, the Secrets of Lance
Armstrong," Steffen said Hamilton had been present when
another rider, Marty Jemison, hinted that
performance-enhancing drugs could help the team.

Steffen said he had refused the request and that his
contract with the team was not renewed.

"If he had the guts to show up in my town and talk, I
needed to be there," Steffen said of Hamilton. "I knew this
would happen. After the news got out that he tested
positive, I got lots of calls and e-mails, people saying,
'Yeah, Prentice wins!' "

Hamilton responded, "He's just mad that he got fired."


From San Francisco, Hamilton and his wife returned to their
refuge, their gray slate house high above Boulder, the home
of the University of Colorado. The 4,200-square-foot home
is appointed with a decorator's touch: animal-skin throw
rugs, paintings from Spain, Haven's grand piano.

It is far removed from the hubbub of European cycling, and
near friends and endless bike trails, one of which leads to
the door.

Because the Hamiltons are apart 200 days a year while he
trains and races, their time together is precious. But now,
they worry that the stress will crack their tight bond. She
says they argue more. He says their relationship is now
"all business."

Haven Parchinski was working at an advertising agency in
Boston when she met Hamilton at a cycling race in 1996.
Married to Tyler for six years, she now she has another
job: helping her husband restore his reputation. These
days, she is answering the phone, returning his calls and
rerecording their voice mail message in her voice. "I want
to protect him," she says.

For a distraction, they are thinking about replacing
Tugboat. Hamilton wants two golden retrievers. His wife
agrees.

"It's better, I think, to get two because they'll always
have each other," she says, looking him in the eye.

The next night, the Hamiltons took the stage for another
foundation talk, for about 300 people at the University of
Colorado. He raced on its ski team until he broke two
vertebrae in a mountain biking accident. Then he focused on
cycling and became an even bigger name in town.

When Hamilton was introduced, his father, Bill, was the
first to leap to his feet. "We believe in you, Tyler!" he
shouted.

The next morning, Hamilton and his father and brother - who
flew in from Marblehead, Mass. - rolled into a parking lot
on bikes for a charity ride. Counting friends, relatives
and foundation workers, the ride attracted 40 people. Two
weeks before, Armstrong's Ride for the Roses, a cancer
fund-raiser in Austin, Tex., drew 6,500.

The Yellow Jersey

In his bright living room, Hamilton
cradles his Olympic gold medal in his hands. He says he
lived a dream to feel it against his chest, to hear "The
Star-Spangled Banner," to be an Olympic champion. Not even
Armstrong achieved that.

"Cool, huh?" Hamilton says.

But Dr. Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee
president, and Dick Pound, the chairman of the World
Anti-Doping Agency, have suggested Hamilton does not
deserve the medal. And two national Olympic committees have
filed protests to strip Hamilton of it.

The Russian committee has asked the Court of Arbitration
for Sport to award it to Vyacheslav Ekimov, who finished
second in the time trial. The Australian committee has
asked that Michael Rogers, who finished fourth, receive the
bronze.

That only strengthens Hamilton's resolve. "I earned it fair
and square, and there is not a chance that someone else is
going to get it," he says of the gold. "I guarantee it."

An angry yet uncertain Hamilton says: "I'm a nice person
and I try to forgive people, but not this time, not with
this. I've lost a lot of trust in people because they have
backed off from me when I needed them the most. When my
name is cleared, I'm going to remember those people. They'd
better not come crawling back to me when this is all over."


Some friends have not left. Armstrong sent an encouraging
e-mail message. Davenport has set up www.believetyler.org,
which collects donations on the Web for Hamilton's defense.
Just as an injury led him away from skiing and toward
cycling, this ordeal may lead Hamilton to another phase of
his life. He talks about organizing a union to promote
cyclists' rights, including approval of drug-testing
procedures.

Whatever may happen, Hamilton has begun training for next
season. Pedaling through each workout, he says, he thinks
of one thing. Not of his uncertain future. Not of his
appeal. Not even of his beloved Tugboat.

He thinks of the Tour de France.

He imagines himself
wearing the leader's yellow jersey as he cruises down the
Champs-Élysées, finally vindicated.

Not a cheater, but a champion.

"Even if I'm suspended for
two years, I'll come back just to show those people who
doubted me that they were wrong," he says. "I would come
back and win the Tour de France, for my sport, for me, for
everyone who has believed in me."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

You know the blood transfusion test is accurate? What are your facts
and what is your scientific degree?

It's amazing how you reduce what must be a complex scientific discussion
into political innuendo.

Don't ever sit on a jury Chicago boy.

Magilla



crit pro wrote:

Davey Crockett wrote in message ...

New York Times Nixes Hamilton



\----------------------------------------------------------/


Tyler says it would be a shame to lose all this (reference nice
colorado mansion). Should have thought about that before cheating.

Or, one could argue, none of it would have been his without cheating
in the first place.

Liars can't be trusted.


In Trying to Save Medal and Tour de France Hopes, Hamilton Faces
Uphill Course

November 14, 2004
By JULIET MACUR





From the living room of his Colorado dream house, Tyler
Hamilton sees miles of rolling hills covered with
evergreens. In the distance, snow-capped mountains form the
Continental Divide. The sky is muted orange, promising
another magnificent sunset.

Behind him, around the neck of a grinning carved wood
moose, hangs the Olympic gold medal he won in the cycling
time trial at the Athens Games. On the walls are
photographs of his golden retriever, Tugboat, who died in
July and whose tag Hamilton wore inside his helmet on that
winning ride. Next to the couch, a wood box holds Tugboat's
ashes, a long lock of his pale tail curling around the lid.


Cycling jerseys stitched for the Swiss team built for
Hamilton to win the Tour de France sit neatly stacked in
the laundry room. Nine custom bicycles line the walls of
his garage.

When he turns away from the windows, he frowns. "This is
the lowest point of my whole life," he says. "I could lose
all of this."

Hamilton, the American considered the heir apparent to
Lance Armstrong, learned in September that he had tested
positive for endurance-boosting blood transfusions at the
Olympics and at the Vuelta a España.

At 33, just as he seemed ready to claim center stage,
Hamilton is facing a two-year suspension from competition.
His lawyers expect the United States Anti-Doping Agency,
which has jurisdiction over the case, to make a formal
charge against him soon, and they anticipate going to
arbitration in January.

Hamilton's goal of winning the 2005 Tour de France is
slipping away. He stands a good chance of missing the Tour,
a race Armstrong has won six consecutive times but is
expected to skip.

Anti-doping experts involved in the case say Hamilton is
guilty, and Olympic officials are not convinced of his
innocence. That keeps Hamilton and his wife, Haven, awake
at night. They read arcane scientific data on blood doping
to learn what they will be up against when he presents his
case. If he loses, he plans to go to the Court of
Arbitration for Sport, the highest court of international
athletics.

He has a lot at stake. His Swiss team, Phonak, pays him a
high-six-figure salary. He also has endorsement deals with
companies like Nike, Clif Bar and Oakley, putting his
yearly income well above $1 million.

Now sponsors are wary. Some fellow competitors are
retreating. And recently, a World Anti-Doping Agency
spokesman said Hamilton had kept his Olympic medal only
because of a laboratory error. "After the Olympics, my life
was really secure, my career was really on track because
the gold medal can bring you a lot, you know?" Hamilton
says. "Now my life is on hold."

Hamilton, a sliver of a man at 5 feet 8 inches and 130
pounds, makes eye contact as he says: "I would be happier
without everything I have, with nothing, if I could just
clear my name. If I had to, I'd give up everything, down to
my last penny, to have my name back."

A Test Failed

Hamilton, the first American to win a road racing Olympic
gold in 20 years, left Athens in late August and headed for
the Vuelta a España. On Sept. 11, he won an individual time
trial. Five nights later, he rose from a massage table to
be met by Alvaro Pino, the director of his Phonak team.

"You've been accused of transfusing blood from a different
person," in the Vuelta, Hamilton said Pino told him.

Homologous blood doping, the practice of transfusing
another person's blood to increase the amount of
oxygen-carrying red blood cells, has been against the rules
in cycling since the late 1980's. It improves athletes'
endurance but can spread disease and even cause death.

Hamilton, the first athlete with a positive result since
the test's introduction this year, said he was stunned. His
requests for additional screening and a DNA test were
denied. "This can't be right," he said he told Pino. "Stay
calm. We'll work this out, don't worry."

Hamilton dropped out of the Vuelta that day and headed to
his condominium in Girona, Spain. Haven, his wife, was in
Massachusetts with her family. Tugboat was gone. He opened
the door to an empty, painful feeling.

Hamilton is known for coping with pain. A year after
leaving his job as Armstrong's lieutenant on the United
States Postal Service team, Hamilton raced the 2002 Giro
d'Italia despite a broken shoulder, grinding 11 teeth to
their nerves. In the 2003 Tour de France, he broke his
collarbone early but finished fourth. During the sixth
stage of this year's Tour, Hamilton flew over his
handlebars and landed on his back. But he did not drop out
of the race until the 13th stage, three days after the
cancer-stricken Tugboat was euthanized.

But that night in Spain, the pain sickened him. On the
Internet, he researched homologous blood doping. Hamilton
said he was restless, the sleeping pill from the team's
doctor useless. His mind raced. Was there a mix-up with
blood samples? Were Europeans out to get an American?

"We felt like all the air had rushed out of our lungs,"
Haven, 35, said.

The situation worsened two days later, he said, when he
learned that a blood sample at the Olympics had also shown
evidence of a transfusion.

During the next few days, Hamilton twice drove to
Switzerland, first for Phonak's news conference on his test
results, then to spend two days in a lab watching
scientists test his second, or B, samples from the Vuelta
and the Olympics. "It was so important to me to see the
procedure," he says. "They had my life in that vial."

The Olympics and professional cycling use the same testing
procedures. Each blood sample is divided. If the A sample
is positive, the B is tested to confirm the initial result.
Without confirmation, the entire test is deemed negative.

On Aug. 22, scientists at the Olympic drug-testing
laboratory marked Hamilton's A sample negative but labeled
it suspicious for a blood transfusion. On the
recommendation of external experts called in to examine the
results, the I.O.C. declared Hamilton's A sample positive
on Sept. 16, nearly a month after he won the gold medal. By
then, the I.O.C. knew that a lab technician had frozen
Hamilton's B sample, leaving too few red blood cells to
analyze. On Sept. 23, the Olympic B sample was called
inconclusive, so Hamilton kept his medal, but the B sample
from the Vuelta came out positive.

"It's obvious that the lab there had no idea what they were
doing, and it makes you question the entire drug-testing
process," Hamilton said. "But it's too late for me. I'm
just their guinea pig. They already ruined my life because
of their mistakes."

Drug testing and drug scandals have long played a part in
international cycling. In 1967, a rider died during the
Tour de France, and an autopsy revealed amphetamines in his
blood. Random urine screenings began in 1968, and random
blood testing began about four years ago.

In the 1998 Tour de France, the top-ranked Festina team was
expelled amid a doping investigation. This year, David
Millar was stripped of his 2003 world championship and
suspended for using erythropoietin, EPO, a synthetic
red-blood-cell booster.

Also this year, Hamilton's teammate Oscar Camenzind was
suspended for EPO use; another teammate, Santiago Perez,
tested positive for traces of another person's blood on
Oct. 27. Still, Hamilton insists that cycling "is not a
dirty sport" and that the blood-doping test is faulty.

But Michael Ashenden, an Australian physiologist and head
researcher on a team of scientists who this year developed
the test for homologous blood doping, said there was no
doubt of its reliability. The World Anti-Doping Agency
approved the test for the Athens Games. The International
Cycling Union began using it at this summer's Tour de
France.

The original test, Ashenden said, has been used for more
than a decade to determine if there is hemorrhaging between
a fetus and a mother with an incompatible blood type.

"The knee-jerk reaction of a team that is faced with a
sanction is that the test is new, so it's problematic,"
Ashenden said. "But you just don't use a test a million
times and then it suddenly doesn't work. This isn't a new
test. It just hasn't been used in sports for very long."

He added: "It's too bad that an athlete very seldom has the
moral courage to admit: 'Yes, I did this. I'm guilty.' "

Hamilton vows he's innocent. His wife said: "I want to
scream it from the rooftops and say Tyler is innocent. But
we have to be methodical now, like we're doing a really
hard crossword puzzle."

On the Offense

Days after Hamilton's B test results were announced, Haven
flew to Spain. They decided he should honor his
commitments.

"I'm not going to stay locked up in my house because of
this," Hamilton said. "I have nothing to hide."

He spent eight days in the Pyrenees filming an IMAX movie
about the brain's reaction to emotions and pain, to be
released next fall. Next, he flew to Las Vegas for the
Interbike trade show, beginning the journey to salvage his
reputation. He said his heart beat quickly as he arrived,
the Strip aglow, thousands of people in the tight-knit
biking world about to see him for the first time since his
positive tests.

The Interbike show, North America's largest cycling trade
show, covered 660,000 square feet in the Sands Expo and
Convention Center. Amid a maze of booths with $5,000 bikes,
$25 socks, energy bars, heart- rate monitors and hydration
backpacks was Tyler Hamilton, considered the nicest, most
polite person in cycling.

Hamilton, who has boyish looks and a freckled, tan face,
walked through the doors, nervous and blushing slightly.
But at 15 appearances over two days, he was treated like an
Olympic champion. People waited hours for his autograph,
asked for photos, shook hands. Some offered condolences for
Tugboat.

One of his sponsors, Bell Helmets, gave away "I Believe
Tyler" buttons. One man wearing that button proudly was
Andy Rihs, the chairman of Phonak, a Swiss hearing aid
company, and the boss of Hamilton's team. Rihs, who
suspended Hamilton with pay, said he had spent $800,000 on
Hamilton's defense, hiring five scientists to study the
blood-doping test and its validity.

"We wanted a clear second opinion because this new test is
a little black box with a thousand questions in it," Rihs
said.

One American cyclist at the show, Bobby Julich, had other
questions. Julich had roomed with Hamilton in Athens and
won the bronze medal in the time trial. He said the
suspicions about Hamilton "go against everything I've ever
known from the guy." But, he added: "The rest of us at the
Olympics passed the test. Why didn't he?"

Julich took a deep breath.

"I'm sick of people who cheat,
sick of cleaning up their mess and trying to explain it,"
he said.

Then, a pause.

"There is heavy evidence against him," he said. "With that
much evidence, I don't know how he's going to get out of
it."

Facing His Public

After the embrace at Interbike, Hamilton prepared for two
weeks of more difficult appearances at events for the Tyler
Hamilton Foundation, which raises money for multiple
sclerosis patients and for youth cycling. He started the
foundation this year, modeling it after Armstrong's cancer
foundation.

At his first stop, in a 437-seat San Francisco theater, 100
people heard him speak. When Hamilton's friend Chris
Davenport, an extreme skier who served as emcee, said,
"Tyler is innocent," most of the audience applauded.

But one man sat silent, arms tightly crossed, a disgusted
look on his face as Hamilton's Olympic gold medal was
passed around. He was Dr. Prentice Steffen, who had worked
with Hamilton and the United States Postal Service team.

In the book "L.A. Confidential, the Secrets of Lance
Armstrong," Steffen said Hamilton had been present when
another rider, Marty Jemison, hinted that
performance-enhancing drugs could help the team.

Steffen said he had refused the request and that his
contract with the team was not renewed.

"If he had the guts to show up in my town and talk, I
needed to be there," Steffen said of Hamilton. "I knew this
would happen. After the news got out that he tested
positive, I got lots of calls and e-mails, people saying,
'Yeah, Prentice wins!' "

Hamilton responded, "He's just mad that he got fired."


From San Francisco, Hamilton and his wife returned to their
refuge, their gray slate house high above Boulder, the home
of the University of Colorado. The 4,200-square-foot home
is appointed with a decorator's touch: animal-skin throw
rugs, paintings from Spain, Haven's grand piano.

It is far removed from the hubbub of European cycling, and
near friends and endless bike trails, one of which leads to
the door.

Because the Hamiltons are apart 200 days a year while he
trains and races, their time together is precious. But now,
they worry that the stress will crack their tight bond. She
says they argue more. He says their relationship is now
"all business."

Haven Parchinski was working at an advertising agency in
Boston when she met Hamilton at a cycling race in 1996.
Married to Tyler for six years, she now she has another
job: helping her husband restore his reputation. These
days, she is answering the phone, returning his calls and
rerecording their voice mail message in her voice. "I want
to protect him," she says.

For a distraction, they are thinking about replacing
Tugboat. Hamilton wants two golden retrievers. His wife
agrees.

"It's better, I think, to get two because they'll always
have each other," she says, looking him in the eye.

The next night, the Hamiltons took the stage for another
foundation talk, for about 300 people at the University of
Colorado. He raced on its ski team until he broke two
vertebrae in a mountain biking accident. Then he focused on
cycling and became an even bigger name in town.

When Hamilton was introduced, his father, Bill, was the
first to leap to his feet. "We believe in you, Tyler!" he
shouted.

The next morning, Hamilton and his father and brother - who
flew in from Marblehead, Mass. - rolled into a parking lot
on bikes for a charity ride. Counting friends, relatives
and foundation workers, the ride attracted 40 people. Two
weeks before, Armstrong's Ride for the Roses, a cancer
fund-raiser in Austin, Tex., drew 6,500.

The Yellow Jersey

In his bright living room, Hamilton
cradles his Olympic gold medal in his hands. He says he
lived a dream to feel it against his chest, to hear "The
Star-Spangled Banner," to be an Olympic champion. Not even
Armstrong achieved that.

"Cool, huh?" Hamilton says.

But Dr. Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee
president, and Dick Pound, the chairman of the World
Anti-Doping Agency, have suggested Hamilton does not
deserve the medal. And two national Olympic committees have
filed protests to strip Hamilton of it.

The Russian committee has asked the Court of Arbitration
for Sport to award it to Vyacheslav Ekimov, who finished
second in the time trial. The Australian committee has
asked that Michael Rogers, who finished fourth, receive the
bronze.

That only strengthens Hamilton's resolve. "I earned it fair
and square, and there is not a chance that someone else is
going to get it," he says of the gold. "I guarantee it."

An angry yet uncertain Hamilton says: "I'm a nice person
and I try to forgive people, but not this time, not with
this. I've lost a lot of trust in people because they have
backed off from me when I needed them the most. When my
name is cleared, I'm going to remember those people. They'd
better not come crawling back to me when this is all over."


Some friends have not left. Armstrong sent an encouraging
e-mail message. Davenport has set up www.believetyler.org,
which collects donations on the Web for Hamilton's defense.
Just as an injury led him away from skiing and toward
cycling, this ordeal may lead Hamilton to another phase of
his life. He talks about organizing a union to promote
cyclists' rights, including approval of drug-testing
procedures.

Whatever may happen, Hamilton has begun training for next
season. Pedaling through each workout, he says, he thinks
of one thing. Not of his uncertain future. Not of his
appeal. Not even of his beloved Tugboat.

He thinks of the Tour de France.

He imagines himself
wearing the leader's yellow jersey as he cruises down the
Champs-Élysées, finally vindicated.

Not a cheater, but a champion.

"Even if I'm suspended for
two years, I'll come back just to show those people who
doubted me that they were wrong," he says. "I would come
back and win the Tour de France, for my sport, for me, for
everyone who has believed in me."



Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company