Goldstein: No Doubt Hamilton Told Truth About Lance Armstrong

The latest book release from Mill Valley psychologist, author and former competitive cyclist Ross Goldstein has serendipity on its side.

Just one day after he celebrated the launch of his new novel Chain Reaction with a party at , the centerpiece of the book, the world of professional cycling and its underbelly of performance-enhancing drugs, was shoved back to center stage by a new 60 Minutes report.

In a lengthy interview that aired Sunday night, Olympic cycling gold medalist and former pro cyclist Tyler Hamilton, a former teammate of 7-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, said that both he and Armstrong had used banned drugs like Erythropoietin (known as EPO) on multiple occasions and during Armstrong’s years of dominance. He also said that international cycling authorities helped Armstrong cover up a positive test for EPO in 2001.

Armstrong is under federal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles, which is trying to determine whether he defrauded the U.S. government by allegedly taking illegal or banned drugs to win races for the U.S. Postal Service team. He has repeatedly denied taking performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs). Hamilton is among the cyclists who have testified before a grand jury.

In the interview, Hamilton said that the use of performance-enhancing drugs was rampant in cycling at the time and that at least two or three riders on every team were taking them. He also said that the drug use was not only encouraged by team management but in some cases mandated.

For Goldstein, it was a sad sight to see the one-time elite rider Hamilton admit that he’d been lying about doping for more than a decade. He also said he expects the grand jury investigation into Armstrong and U.S, Postal to speed up and eventually lead to indictments.

Mill Valley Patch spoke to Goldstein Monday morning.

Mill Valley Patch: What drew you into writing a novel that is set amidst the world of professional cycling?

Ross Goldstein: I started thinking about this book 18 years ago. I was doing some racing as a amateur and I started collected stories about the racing scene. It’s an incredibly rich world of competition and tradition and color and personalities. Amongst the people who know about it, it’s very textured and engaging world. I wanted to bring those stories to other people. I wanted to use the world of professional cycling as the platform to tell a deeper coming of age about a young American racer.

MVP: Did you draw on your own experiences of living hear in cycling-crazed Mill Valley?

RG: Mill Valley residents are going to recognize all sorts of places from around town. The main character is kind of a lost soul who was a professional cyclist and a hero among the local cycling community who is now working as a barrista at Peet’s.

MVP: Without giving too much away, performance-enhancing drugs is a strong thread of your book, correct?

RG: As I watched Tyler Hamilton describe it all last night, it was almost as if he read my book, especially his description of being confronted for the first time by team doctors about starting to use drugs. I was profoundly depressed and sad watching Tyler last night because his depression over this was infectious. It came right through the screen and hit me. I saw a beaten dog last night. I am worried that Tyler is not emotionally equipped to deal with the Armstrong cabal that is about to descend on him.

MVP: It sounds like you believe what he was saying.

RG: I don’t have a shred of doubt that what he is telling is true. It’s too detailed, too collaborated by other people. He has no reason to lie right now – he’s already been punished and already been thrown out of the sport.

MVP: What do you think happens next?

RG: The other shoes are going to drop in this story and it’s going to pick up steam. I believe that indictments are going to come out of the grand jury in Los Angeles, particularly if Lance continues this non-denial denial about having never tested positive, which might not even be true.

MVP: Why does it seem that cycling is forever dealing with the fallout from the use of PEDs?

RG: Cycling has been one of the worst offenders of PEDs partly because it’s been at the forefront of trying to address it. On the one hand, they get so much notoriety because they’ve been in the forefront. But performance-enhancing drugs are happening in many other sports, including baseball, tennis, swimming, soccer, among others.

What the public has to understand is that when you get top competitors competing at the very top level, the incentive to take every edge is irresistible because you don’t stay a top competitor unless you do what other people are doing. You do what you need to do to stay up there.

MVP: Why does that seem particularly true in cycling?

RG: In Europe, which is where the sport originated, cycling is a working class sport and for these kids at the top of the sport, if they fall out of the sport, they’re not going back to being lawyers or doctors or accountants, they going back to a tractor or a garage or working in a bike shop.

MVP: If all this bears out and it is proven that Lance Armstrong used PEDs during some or all of his Tour de France victories, how does that change his legacy, particularly given how rampant the used of banned drugs appears to have been during that era?

RG: As was pointed out in the story, for the seven years that Lance won the Tour de France, every guy that came in second and third was also involved in doping or admitted it or has been caught. Amongst knowledgeable cycling fans, there will be a minor asterisk next to Lance’s name. It will not diminish his accomplishments. He’ll still be thought of as a 7-time winner. But among your average sports fan, the impact will be much greater.

MVP: Where do you think Lance goes from here?

RG: He’s still in denial. Does he now come forward and say, ‘I’ll take my punishment,’ or does he continue with the vilification of the people who have come forward. I refer to them as the Lance Armstrong thugs – the people that work for Lance and go out and engage in this character assassination of anyone who implicates him in the use of PEDs.

People who know Lance know he’s no saint. Riders who have left that team on bad terms like Floyd Landis know that you cross Lance at your own peril.

MVP: Your sense is that Hamilton’s allegations are more credible than that of Landis?

RG: This is a different than the scandals before. Floyd Landis is a bit of a lunatic. Tyler looks like an altar boy by comparison, and George Hincapie has always been a loyal soldier. How does Lance handle this one gracefully and come out with his reputation intact?

MVP: Do you think he believes what is saying at this point?

RG: When people lie hard enough and long enough, they begin to believe their lie. When Tyler was found to be doing blood doping a few years ago, he would look straight into the camera and say, ‘I didn’t dope.’ Now we find out that he did.

MVP: Hamilton also implicated management in directing many of these doping procedures.

RG: Yeah he blew the lid on the fact that a lot of this came down from management. These weren’t rogue riders. In early days, doping happened, but riders would talk amongst themselves and do it. It became institutionalized in the 1990s. It became no more exotic than picking the right bike or pair of shoes.

MVP: Where does the investigation go from here?

RG: The U.S. Attorney’s Offive will keeping squeezing the riders. It’s like a narcotics investigation, where you just keep moving upstream and each time you squeeze someone, they give up the person above them. You squeeze the riders to get to Lance, you squeeze Lance to get to Tailwind and managment.