David Runciman writes:

Tyler Hamilton started taking drugs, as he reveals in this gripping tell-all memoir, to give himself a shot at being part of a successful team. It meant the difference between scraping a living on the fringes of the circuit and becoming rich. Not Lance Armstrong rich; but non-sportsman rich. When Hamilton got onto Armstrong’s US Postal team he went from living on scraps to earning a six-figure salary. When Armstrong won the Tour de France with Hamilton’s help, that salary went up from $150,000 to $450,000. Hamilton’s fear when he was starting out was that he would not make the cut to be a Tour rider: blood-doping gave him the boost he needed to get in the game.

(LRB 22 November 2012)

Bantam Press | Hardback 304 pp. |ISBN: 9780593071731