The career otherwise offered many highlights.
After helping Lance Armstrong to the first Tour victories in 1999, 2000 and 2001, and otherwise winning Around Denmark, Tyler Hamilton switched to Bjarne Riis & apos; CSC.
Here he was the favorite of many Danes at the Tour in 2003, which, however, became a painful affair when he broke his collarbone early in a crash.
He still managed to win a stage, making him an icon in the sport at the time, but 4th place in the overall standings that year became the closest Hamilton came to an overall Tour victory.
The following year, he won an Olympic gold medal in Athens, but then it only went downhill.
He was convicted of doping after a positive test in 2004, at a time when cycling as a whole had begun its deroute with one revelation after another.
Not many believed in Hamilton when he tried to explain traces of another person’s blood in his with that it must have originated from an unborn twin.
He attempted a comeback after a two-year quarantine, but without much success. He declared his career stop in the spring of 2008 after a new positive doping test. He later recounted that he had suffered from depression for many years.
Like Armstrong and many other of the bike’s top names, doping rumors had swirled closely around Hamilton.
And some years after the career break, Tyler Hamilton chose to go to confession in public.
First in an interview with the TV magazine “60 Minutes”, where he confessed to doping in his career. He also made accusations against Armstrong, leading to a public feud between the two.
In 2012, Hamilton elaborated on the story in an autobiography, “The Secret Race,” with several concessions and accusations.
He was officially stripped of his Olympic gold medal, which he had already returned, and has not been in contact with the sport since then.
Nowadays, he has moved to the mountains of Montana, where he runs a personal training company and works with investment.
Source: The Nordic Page
