In an interview that was shot for “60 Minutes” and broadcasted on “CBS Evening News” on Thursday, Tyler Hamilton said he used performance-enhancing drugs with his former teammate Lance Armstrong.
“I saw (EPO) in his refrigerator…I saw him inject it more than one time,” Hamilton said. “Like we all did. Like I did, many, many times.”
Hamilton told “60 Minutes” reporter Scott Pelley that Armstrong “took what we all took…the majority of the peloton.” Hamilton went onto say that there was “EPO…testosterone…a blood transfusion.”
EPO is a drug that boosts endurance by increasing the number of red blood cells in the body, which obviously would help cyclists like Hamilton and Armstrong. This is now the second time that a former teammate of Armstrong’s has accused him of taking drugs to improve his performance on the bike, as Hamilton’s accusations come one year after Floyd Landis made similar allegations.
People are going to believe what they want to believe, but the fact of the matter is that Armstrong has never tested positive for PEDs. The question in my eyes is do we care?
The thing about performance-enhancing drugs is that they allow an athlete to perform at the absolute best of his abilities. Granted, if I were to juice for a year and tried my hand at professional football, I’d probably get killed – same as I would if I didn’t dope. If your skill level was low to begin with, sorry, but drugs aren’t going to turn you into a professional athlete.
But they will turn a special athlete into a superhero, which is where the problem lies. Barry Bonds was already one of the most gifted baseball players to have ever played the game, which people tend to overlook when his name is brought up. People forget just how good he was before he started taking PEDs, which only made an incredibly gifted athlete perform to the max of his abilities. He could already hit major league pitching, but thanks to the steroids his bat speed never decreased, he was able to hit the ball harder and farther, and was able to keep playing into his 40s.
It’s the same concept with Armstrong. He was already a gifted cyclist. If he took them, all PEDs did was make an already gifted cyclist max out his abilities on the bike (which includes being able to ride faster, longer, etc).
Here’s my take on PEDs: I actually don’t have a problem with athletes using them. I have a problem with the fact that they create an uneven playing field. Guys like Bonds and Armstrong are already special and if they use drugs, then they’re creating an even bigger gap between them and the next guy.
I don’t mind the alpha male when it comes to sports. Tiger Woods has been great for golf for over a decade. Lance Armstrong has been great for cycling. The pure act of watching Barry Bonds hit a home run every 10 at bats in 2001 was fun.
But in the end, I want to see athletes go toe-to-toe with only their God-given abilities and their dedication to their craft at their backs. If Tiger puts on an amazing display to win a major, I want to know that what I watched was an athlete performing at his best not because he was on drugs, but because he was more special than the next guy on that given day. The same goes for Armstrong, Bonds or whomever.
So if Armstrong did dope, he was wrong. Again, I don’t care that the best cyclist in the world used drugs to make himself superhuman. I care that what I witnessed wasn’t natural. I want my sports to be 100 percent pure.
