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The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs

Book by Tyler Hamilton · 5 quotes · Doping, Abnormal, Acid

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The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs Quotes

“I discovered when I went all out, when I put 100 percent of my energy into some intense, impossible task - when my heart was jack-hammering, when lactic acid was sizzling through my muscles - that's when I felt good, normal, balanced.”

“One day I'm a normal person with a normal life,” he said. “The next I'm standing on a street corner in Madrid with a secret phone and a hole in my arm and I'm bleeding all over, hoping I don't get arrested. It was completely crazy. But it seemed like the only way at the time.”

“People think doping is for lazy people who want to avoid hard work. That might be true in some cases, but in mine, as with many riders I knew, it was precisely the opposite. EPO granted the ability to suffer more; to push yourself farther and harder than you'd ever imagined, in both training and racing.”

“We got through it. Haven made excuses for me to friends, and made an appointment with a terrific doctor, who put me on Effexor, 150 milligrams a day, enough to get my brain straightened out.”