Free 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 by Daniel Coyle, Tyler Hamilton Page A

more ; to push yourself farther and harder than you’d ever imagined, in both training and racing. It rewarded precisely what I was good at: having a great work ethic, pushing myself to the limit and past it. I felt almost giddy: this was a new landscape. I began to see races differently. They weren’t rolls of the genetic dice, or who happened to be on form that day. They didn’t depend on who you were. They depended on what you did —how hard you worked, how attentive and professional you were in your preparation. Races were like tests, for which you could study. Instantly, my results began to improve; I went from getting C’s and D’s to getting A’s and B’s. As the summer began, I started figuring out the rules of the game:
        1. Take red eggs for recovery once every week or two; make sure not to take them too close to races.
        2. Get EPO at races, from the team doctors. You don’t buy it; try to avoid keeping it in your house, except in special situations (like injury, or a long break betweenraces). You inject it subcutaneously, into the fat layer beneath the skin. That helps it release more slowly, and provides a sustained effect.
        3. Be quiet about it. There was no need to talk, because everybody already knew. It was part of being cool. Besides, if any laws were being broken, it was clear that the team was the one doing the breaking—they were the ones obtaining and distributing the EPO; my only job was to close my mouth, extend my arm, and be a good worker.
    As the summer heated up, I started delivering real results, finishing in the top twenty, the top ten. I felt less tense, more relaxed. When other riders joked about their hematocrit numbers, I laughed along. I smiled knowingly when someone made a joke about EPO. I was the newest member of the white-bag club.
    In June, we got the big news that Tour de France organizers had decided to invite Postal to the race. Then, a few weeks later, I got even bigger news when I was selected for the Tour team: I would be riding alongside Eki, George, Baffi, Robin, and the rest of the A team. I phoned my parents back in Marblehead and told them to fly over to watch part of the race. After all, this might never happen again. I was ecstatic—at least until the race began.
    The 1997 Tour was crazily difficult. Normally, Tour stages are tough, but this year the organizers, perhaps reacting to the increased speed of the peloton, decided to make them really tough—one stage was 242 kilometers through the heart of the Pyrenees; seven continuous, camera-friendly hours of suffering. As a bonus, the weather was hellacious, featuring freezing rain, fog, and hurricane-strength winds. If the organizers were looking for a way to inspire EPO use, they succeeded. Postal went through a lot of white bags, and I’m sure we weren’t alone.
    A lot of people wonder why doping seems more prevalent at thelonger, three-week races like the Tour de France. The answer is simple: the longer the race, the more doping helps—especially EPO. The rule of thumb: If you don’t take any therapy in a three-week race, your hematocrit will drop about 2 points a week, or a total of about 6 points. It’s called sports anemia. Every 1 percent drop in hematocrit creates a 1 percent drop in power—how much force you can put into the pedals. Therefore, if you ride a grand tour paniagua, without any source of red blood cells, your power will drop roughly 6 percent by the end of the third week. And in a sport where titles are often decided by power differentials of one-tenth of a percentage point, this qualifies as a deal breaker.
    EPO or no EPO, the Tour’s hardest day came on stage 14. On that day the French Festina team performed a circus strongman act the likes of which nobody had ever seen. At the foot of the 21.3-kilometer Col du Glandon, all nine Festina riders rode to the front, then went full bore, revving to unimaginable speed and carrying that speed over the climb of the