Secret Race
Over the course of two years, Daniel Coyle conducted more than 200 hours of interviews with cyclist Tyler Hamilton and spoke candidly with numerous teammates, rivals, and friends. The result is an explosive book that takes us deep inside a shadowy, fascinating, and surreal world of unscrupulous doctors, anything-goes team directors, and athletes so relentlessly driven to succeed that they would do anything - and take any risk, physical, mental, or moral - to gain the edge they need to win.
Stats for nerds
7recommend
12mentions
10people
2012–2025years
67% recommend33% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Or, consider that the causation could have been the other way around. The EPO could have made him more susceptible to cancer.
There is a mountain of evidence that the drug cheating was systematic. You can read The Secret Race, or draw your own conclusions from the $5 million false claims act settlement.
- This is a more broad interpretation of "getting things done," but The Secret Race is an excellent book about what it was like to be a professional cyclist in the late 90s/early 2000s, doping and all
- The book "The Secret Race" by Lance Armstrong's teammate Tyler Hamilton gives a good perspective on what was happening at the time. At one point Hamilton was standing on an Italian street trying to hide the blood dripping down his arm from a botched transfusion, which was simultaneously horrifying and hilarious.
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/212873/the-secret-r...
- This year I've put myself to the challenge to read at least one book per week which I primarily could complete by reading in the middle of the night while holding our sleeping baby in my arms. It has been an interesting challenge which gave me a lot of fulfilment and has certainly changed my mind on how I view the world. This comment became quite a long read, apologies for that.
Books I highly recommend:
Churchill by Andrew Roberts (p:1105)
A biography about one of the most interesting figures in politics and WWII. Roberts gives a very detailed description of the life of Churchill and manages to keep you interested the entire length of the book.
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins (p:374)
In The God Delusion Dawkins gives arguments why there is no God, why we do not need a God and why religion is damaging to our society. If you are religious it might not be the book for you unless you are open to hear his arguments and line of reasoning. Dawkins will challenge your worldview.
The Bomb by Fred Kaplan (p:384)
Kaplan describes the policy of different US presidents on the atomic bomb and war in general. And primarily on the inability of US presidents and policy-makers to tune down its military. A chilling read which makes you appreciate a nuclear holocaust did not happen (yet)....
Poor Economics by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo (p:320)
Banerjee and Duflo give a gripping portrait of how poor people live. They offer an insight in the choices and decisions people make surviving on less than 1 USD a day (corrected for purchasing power). It made me completely rethink my own view on poverty and development aid; stressing even more that in order to help one need to have a complete understanding of the individual's situation and the local boundary conditions.
Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (p:476)
This book triggered my science fiction reading. For some reason I never was interested in science fiction. Most likely triggered by reading Foundation by Asimov a few years back which apparently is not a book to my taste. But Andy Weir completely annihilated that wrong perspective on science fiction. Project Hail Mary is interesting, funny and gripping book.
Kindred by Octavia Butler (p:287)
This book.... From page one I was hooked and almost read it in one go. Butler is a wonderful author and Kindred is a must-read. The book is about a woman traveling back in time to end up on a slave plantation. It's a chilling account of slavery.
Other books I read this year, ask me anything about one of these books. I've added a + if I think its worth a recommendation
Biography:
Navalny by Dollbaum, Lallouet and Noble (p:280); The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattacharya (p:354) +
Sociology; Politics; Economics; Business:
Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove (p:224); The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli (p:140); Winter is Coming by Garry Kasparov (p:290); Twilight of Democracy by Anne Applebaum (p:224) +; Man's Search for Meaning by Victor E. Frankl (p:164) +; We Are Bellingcat by Eliot Higgins (p:272); De Zeven Vinkjes by Joris Luyendijk (p:200); Waarom vuilnismannen meer verdienen dan bankiers by Rutger Bregman (p:104)
Comedy: The Dilbert Principle by Scott Adams (p:336)
History:
Band of Brothers by Stephen E. Ambrose (p:432); The Nuclear Jihadist by Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins (p:413) +; The Spy and the Traitor by Ben Macintyre (p:384) +; De Heineken Ontvoering by Peter R. de Vries (p:347); Red Famine by Anne Apllebaum (p:384); Night by Elie Wiesel (p:115) +
Science, Technology, Mathematics:
Fermat's Enigma by Simon Singh (p:315) +; A Mathematician's Apology by G.H. Hardy (p:153); The Great Influenza by John M. Barry (p:546); The Rise and Fall of the Dinousaurs by Stephen Brusatte (p:404) ++; The Double Helix by James Watson (p:144)
Sport:
Run or Die by Killian Jornet (p:208); The Secret Race by Tyler Hamilton (p:290) +; The Rise of the Ultra Runners by (p:304); Tom Dumoulin by Patrick Bernhart (p:203)
Fiction:
Anthem by Ayn Rand (p:105); Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (p:704); The Bourne Identity by Robert Ludlum (p:566); Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton (p:466); Live and Let die by Ian Fleming (p:229)
Classics:
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (p:104); The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka (p:201); The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzergerald (p:180); Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (p:139); Animal Farm by George Orwell (p:122) +; Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury (p:227) +; The Time Machine by H.G. Wells (p:118)
Science Fiction:
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin (p:399); All Systems Red by Martha Wells (p:144) +; A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine (p:462) +; A Psalm built for the Wild by Becky Chambers (p:160); Dune by Frank Herbert (p:658); Foundation by Isaac Asimov (p:244); The Martian by Andy Weir (p:384) +; The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (p:278)
- No they weren't.
Read the Tyler Hamilton book ("The Secret Race"). That's the book which really brought down Armstrong.
In it he makes clear how much better organized the US Postal Service team was than anyone else (except maybe T-Mobile and ONCE).
When he left and went to Phonak he was on his own and had to organize his own doping (which went pretty badly).
Yes it's true that there were no clean winners in that era, but there were clean riders. Christophe Bassons' book talks about it a lot, but Wikipedia has a decent summary[1].
It's also worth noting that there are no real allegations of drug use against Pereiro, Sastre, Andy Schleck, Evans and Nibali, who all rode against Armstrong or immediately after him.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christophe_Bassons#1999_Tour
- I try to mix it up now and then. I usually go for at least one "classic" a year, although I don't think I finished one last year. I started Crime and Punishment but set it aside and never finished it. Somewhere around here there is also a copy of Madame Bovary that's half read, that I need to revisit at some point.
That said, last year, my big thing - outside of "utility" books, were books on running and bike racing. I read things like Running Through The Wall, Born To Run, Slaying The Badger, Running on Empty, Racing Through The Dark, Eat & Run, The Belgian Hammer, Run!, It's Not Just About The Bike and The Secret Race. Fascinating stuff, for anyone who is interested in either running or bicycle racing.
