Tyler Hamilton

This article is about the cyclist. For the Canadian Idol contestant, see Tyler Hamilton (singer). For Toronto Star columnist, see Tyler Hamilton (reporter)

Tyler Hamilton

Personal information
Full name	Tyler Hamilton
Height	1.72 m (5 ft 7+1⁄2 in)
Weight	65 kg (143 lb; 10.2 st)
Team information
Current team	Rock Racing
Discipline	Road
Role	Rider
Rider type	All-rounder
Major wins
Tour de France, 1 stage Giro d'Italia, 1 stage Liège-Bastogne-Liège (2003) Tour de Romandie (2003, 2004) Dauphiné Libéré (2000) United States National Road RaceCycling Champion
Medal record Representing the United States Road bicycle racing Olympic Games 2004 Athens Time Trial

Tyler Hamilton (born March 1 1971, Marblehead, Massachusetts) is an American professional road bicycle racer and Olympic gold medalist. He served a two-year suspension for blood doping, which expired in September 2006. In November 2006, Hamilton joined Tinkoff Credit Systems, an Italian UCI Professional Continental team for the 2006-2007 UCI Europe Tour season. He was suspended on May 9, 2007 after links emerged to the Operation Puerto drug scandal.

Biography

Hamilton attended Holderness School in Holderness, New Hampshire, where he started cycling. After graduating in 1990, he attended the University of Colorado at Boulder as a ski racer and received a BA in economics in 1994 (although it has been alleged that he did not graduate). A back injury (two broken vertebrae while mountain bike training on ski jump) at the University of Colorado developmental ski team in September 1991 ended his skiing and he switched to cycling.

He turned pro in 1995 for the U.S. Postal Service cycling team in the 1998, 1999 and 2000 Tour de France. Hamilton protected Lance Armstrong in the mountains. Hamilton also acted as a scout in individual time trials, riding as hard as possible to provide time-split comparisons for Armstrong.

In 2001 Hamilton left U.S. Postal for Team CSC. He was made a leader under manager Bjarne Riis. Hamilton fractured a shoulder in a crash in the 2002 Giro D'Italia yet managed to finish second. Hamilton won the Liège-Bastogne-Liège and the Tour de Romandie in 2003. In the 2003 Tour de France he cracked a collarbone in the first stage, but stayed in the race. He won stage 16 with a 142 km solo breakaway, and placed fourth overall. For his stage win, Hamilton was awarded the Coeur de Lion (French for Heart of the Lion) prize, as the most daring racer of the stage.

In the 2004 Tour de France Hamilton raced for Phonak Hearing Systems. He dropped out on stage 13, after back pain mostly due to a crash on stage 6.

He had a reputation for bad luck, crashing during important races, but also for being a courteous, affable cyclist and spokesperson for the sport, especially in the United States. His wife Haven Hamilton and golden retriever Tugboat became recognizable at the races, appearing in photos and interviews. Late in 2003, Hamilton founded The Tyler Hamilton Foundation to raise funds for the Multiple Sclerosis Society, and to help amateur cyclists rise through the ranks.

The bicycle racing publication VeloNews reported that Hamilton and his wife Haven amicably separated in spring 2008 after nine years' marriage.

Olympic gold - and a doping suspension

At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Hamilton won the gold medal in the men's individual time trial. That medal was placed in doubt on September 20, 2004, after he failed a test for blood doping (receiving blood transfusions to boost performance) at the Olympics. Two days after the announcement of his positive test at Athens, the IOC announced Hamilton would keep his medal because results could not be obtained from the second sample. The Athens lab had frozen the backup, which made it impossible to repeat the test. The Russian Olympic Committee appealed to the International Court of Arbitration for Sport to give Hamilton's medal to Russian silver medalist Viatcheslav Ekimov. However, on June 27 2006, the court rejected the request.

Hamilton had just withdrawn from the Vuelta a España. He won the stage 8 time trial on September 11, 2004, but left the race six days later, citing stomach problems. As winner of the stage, he had a doping tests. He was told by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) on September 13, 2004 that his two samples from two days earlier showed the a "foreign blood population." After supporting Hamilton, Phonak team managers withdrew their support after a second member of the team, Santiago Pérez, was found positive for the same offense at the 2004 Vuelta a España.

The positive sample at the Olympics, and the positive test at the Vuelta were not the only indications that Hamilton was manipulating his hematocrit level. In April 2004 his blood was found to have a high ratio of hemoglobin to reticulocytes (young red blood cells), indicative of EPO or blood doping. His score was 132.9; a clean athlete would score 90. The UCI suspends a rider if the score exceeds 133. This sample also showed someone else's blood was in his bloodstream. However, neither piece of evidence in isolation constituted a positive drug test (and the test for a mixed cell population had not yet been adopted), so no action was taken.

Given the two weeks between the Olympics and the Vuelta, it is likely the positive test for blood doping in the Vuelta was for the same blood doping detected at the Olympics (because foreign blood cells used in homologous blood doping remain in the body for months), confirming the positive test at the Olympics. Hamilton had blood-doped before the Olympics but had retained the medal on a technicality.

On April 18 2005 Hamilton was sentenced by the United States Anti-Doping Agency to a two-year suspension, the maximum sentence for a first offense.

On May 18 2005, he appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport but, after allowing Hamilton to gather evidence, the court dismissed his appeal. Hamilton claimed the UCI-sanctioned test was insufficiently validated (and may have returned a false positive result) and that some of the agencies involved had concealed documents that would support his case. He also maintained that, even if foreign cells were present, they were natural and not the result of a transfusion. Hamilton's lawyers said he might be a Chimera, something Hamilton later disavowed.

Hamilton was banned until September 22 2006, two years from the date his "B" sample in the Vuelta a España was found positive. Although current UCI ProTour rules would have doubled his suspension (until September 22 2008), his positive test occurred before those rules were in effect.

Operación Puerto

On June 26 2006, the Madrid daily El País alleged that the Spanish civil guard investigation of doping in Spanish professional sport, "Operación Puerto", had found that Hamilton paid more than 50,000 USD to Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes between 2002 and 2004 to plan and administer his use of performance-enhancing erythropoietin (EPO), growth hormone treatment, blood doping, and masking agents. El País charged that Hamilton's 2003 win of Liège-Bastogne-Liège followed by days a "double" blood transfusion planned by Fuentes. The evidence presented by El País also implicated Hamilton's wife in facilitating Hamilton's doping. Fuentes was arrested with team director Manolo Saiz in May 2006 as part of the Operación Puerto investigation.

On June 26 2006, Hamilton stated on his website: "I was very upset to read the accusations against me and to see my name associated with the Operación Puerto investigation in Spain. I have not been treated by Dr. Fuentes. I have not done what the article alleges. In addition, I have never been contacted by authorities in Spain regarding these allegations. Therefore, it is impossible to comment on a situation I have no knowledge of."

The Copenhagen daily, Politiken, published further charges stemming from Operación Puerto on August 19 2006. The article summarizes Hamilton's alleged doping program during 2003. It quotes Danish doping researcher Rasmus Damsgaard on the organization Hamilton's program would have required. It cites Bjarne Riis, Hamilton's directeur sportif in 2003, denying knowledge of Hamilton's doping. And the article states that the reporters attempted to contact Hamilton on numerous occasions but were unable to reach him. The article's allegations are based on the rider's doping and racing calendar obtained by the paper. The calendar was seized in Operación Puerto. The doping calendar indicates use of EPO, growth hormone, testosterone, blood doping, and insulin on 114 days over seven months during the 2003 season. The racing program correlates with Hamilton's races in 2003, according to Politiken. The calendar includes two blood transfusions during the Tour de France. “The first time before the three stages in the Alps and the second before the 12th stage -- a 47 km individual time trial,” write the reporters. The article stated that such an ambitious program would have required assistance - “at least four or five people,” according to Damsgaard.

The next day, August 20 2006, the Belgian Dutch language Het Laatste Nieuws newspaper published more details of Hamilton's doping diary. Among many allegations, the article claims he took EPO 30 times between December 2002 and February 2003 while riding for Team CSC. In 2003, claimed Het Laatste Nieuws, Hamilton used doping on 114 of his 200 racing days.

On September 14 2006, USA Cycling announced information from the (UCI) "regarding Tyler Hamilton and his alleged involvement in 'Operación Puerto' along with a request to move forward with disciplinary action." USA Cycling referred the case to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

On April 30, 2007, La Gazzetta dello Sport published allegations that Spanish authorities had completed a second dossier on Operation Puerto, 6000 pages long and naming 49 cyclists. Hamilton was again named, with the detail that he was #11 on Dr. Fuentes's coded list of clients.

Hamilton has never admitted wrongdoing, and his defense has been based on personal integrity. As US cyclist Bobby Julich who finished third in the Athens time trial that Hamilton won noted:

"It goes against everything I've ever seen or known from the guy. But the rest of us at the Olympics passed the test. Why didn't he? I'm sick of people who cheat, sick of cleaning up their mess and trying to explain it. There is heavy evidence against him. With that much evidence, I don't know how he's going to get out of it."

After the ban

Hamilton pictured in November 2007

Beginning in spring 2007, Hamilton began cycling again, having completed his two-year ban. He rode briefly for Tinkoff Credit Systems. It supported Hamilton in the face of Operation Puerto rumors. However, on May 9, with rumors circulating about Hamilton's role in the April 30 dossier, the team dropped him for the 2007 Giro d'Italia.

On his website, Hamilton claimed that on May 3, Tinkhoff asked him to sign a new contract "with very different financial terms than [his] existing contract," and refused to let him ride until he signed. He says he brought suit in an Italian court and won, that the team appealed and lost. The dispute is now in civil litigation.

In September 2007, Tyler competed at the US national championship in South Carolina, coming sixth in the time trial and 12th in the road race. In December, Rock Racing said Hamilton would ride for them in 2008. Rock Racing is a professional team on the US circuit. Hamilton did not ride in the team's season-opening Tour of California because of that race's rules against riders caught doping.

Wearing his Rock Racing gear, Tyler Hamilton finished second of approximately 60 category one and two riders March 9, 2008 at a collegiate criterium in Denver's City Park.

In July 2008 he won the Tour of Qinghai Lake in China which is a top ranked race (UCI 2.HC). In August 2008 he completed his comeback by winning the US National Road Race Championship.

Major achievements

1993

Captained University of Colorado at Boulder road cycling team to NCCA championship; named collegiate cyclist of the year.

1996

Stage 3 and overall, Teleflex Tour

Overall, Fitchburg Longsjo Classic

1997

Mount Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hillclimb

1999

Stage 4b and overall, Danmark Rundt

Mount Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hillclimb

2000

Stage 4, 5 and overall, Dauphiné Libéré

Stage 4, Ronde van Nederland

2002

Stage 14 win and 2nd overall, Giro d'Italia

2003

Liège-Bastogne-Liège

Stage 5 and overall, Tour de Romandie

Stage 16, 2003 Tour de France

2004

1st Time Trial, 2004 Summer Olympics

Stage 5 and overall, Tour de Romandie

Stage 8, Vuelta a España (subsequently stripped for doping violation)

2005

Mount Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hillclimb

2006

Mount Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hillclimb

2008

Stage 8 and overall, Tour of Qinghai Lake

United States National Road Race, Cycling Champion

See also

• List of doping cases in cycling

External links

• Tyler Hamilton's Rider Profile
• Tyler Hamilton Foundation Website
• Text of decision by International Court for Arbitration in Sport
• Tyler Hamilton's Last Stand Cycling News, February 15, 2006
• Hamilton and Ullrich linked to Operación Puerto
• Tyler Hamilton profile and news
• [1]

Template:Persondata