Last month, I wrote that the United States Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) had thrown the proverbial kitchen sink at Tyler Hamilton in suspending him for eight (8) years.

I was wrong. That honor belongs to the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), which is seeking a lifetime ban for Hamilton as a result of his second doping offense.

In response to WADA’s decision to seek a lifetime ban, Chris Manderson, Attorney of Record for Tyler Hamilton, released this statement yesterday.

"Tyler Hamilton took Mitamins, an herbal anti-depressant, in a moment of crisis while out of competition, with no intention or possibility of enhancing his cycling performance. Despite that, the rules do not distinguish between an intentional doping violation and Tyler's attempt to self medicate for depression. Based on their protocol, USADA imposed the minimum eight-year penalty in this situation, which was within the acceptable range of sanctions established by the World Anti-Doping Code, and we accepted that so Tyler could focus on his health and his future.

Now, contrary to Tyler's settlement with USADA, WADA is pursuing a lifetime ban as if Tyler's self-medication for depression had been an intentional violation to boost performance. There is no reasonable basis to have the maximum penalty imposed upon Tyler Hamilton for taking an herbal anti-depressant that happened to contain DHEA. Tyler has been diagnosed with and is battling clinical depression, an illness which many people suffer from, and which took the life of his grandmother and has afflicted his mother and sister.

Even worse, WADA has stated that the 8 year sanction "warrants scrutiny from an independent tribunal" because "it was the result of an agreement between USADA and the athlete," as though Tyler and USADA had somehow colluded in wrongdoing by agreeing to a sanction within the acceptable range under the WADA code. WADA did not even notify Tyler nor myself (Tyler's attorney of record) of its intent to pursue this action; we learned of it through the media.

WADA’s insistence on a lifetime ban against Tyler is a vindictive, personal and ruthless attempt to destroy a man who suffers from a serious illness, has ended his career, and has already accepted the penalty imposed upon him."

Rock Racing Team Owner, Michael Ball, added, “WADA continues to dig up graves and unjustly target undeserving individuals . The organization’s attempt to vilify Tyler Hamilton by pursuing a lifetime ban is despicable. This is clearly an athlete who did not take a banned substance for any performing enhancing benefits, yet took full accountability and responsibility for his actions. He cooperated every step of the way and accepted an eight year ban without a fight.

WADA claims to promote fairness and equality for athletes worldwide, principles that clearly do not apply to Tyler Hamilton. This action sends a very stark message to all athletes, that WADA can and will impose its will on certain individuals with absolutely no regard for the truth.

Cycling doesn’t need scapegoats to be cleaner. It needs fair anti-doping practices enforced by organizations that are truly interested in protecting the integrity of our sports.”

Huzhu, China — Rock Racing’s Tyler Hamilton is a short circuit race away from earning his first victory in a stage race in four years.

Hamilton survived a rather uneventful day in the yellow leader’s jersey Saturday in the penultimate stage of the Tour of Qinghai Lake, finishing in the lead pack of 19 riders at the end of Saturday’s 104-mile (168 km) race.

The final stage Sunday is a 61-mile (99 km) circuit race in the city of Xining. Time bonuses up for grabs on three of the 18 laps and at the finish are a concern, Hamilton said.

“It’s not over ‘till it’s over,” Hamilton said. “I have a 10-second lead (over Poland’s Marek Rutkiewicz), so really, anything can happen. We’ll just stay on our toes and control the situation, like today.”

Saturday’s race was the final mountain stage of the 10-day, 841-mile (1,354 km) event. But two of Hamilton’s chief competitors – Iranian climbers Ahad Kazemi and teammate Ghader Mizbani (Tabriz Petrochemical Team) – were stricken with mild cases of bronchitis overnight. Feeling less than 100 percent, they sought only to keep Kazemi’s lead in the king of the mountains classification.

Saturday’s race was won by Jure Kocjan (Perutnina Ptuj) who easily outsprinted Jackson Rodriguez (Serramenti Diquigiovanni-Androni) and fellow teammate Gregor Gazvoda. A third rider from the Perutnina Ptuj team, Kristjan Fajt, and Ukrainian Volodymyr Zagorodnyy, were on their way to contesting the finish themselves when the lead motorcycle led them off course with 2.5 miles (4 km) to go.

Hamilton won Friday’s Stage 8 in a two-up sprint to move into the overall lead. The Boulder, Colo., resident last won a stage race overall at the Tour de Romandie in 2004.

Photos: Copyright Tour of Qinghai Lake/Mark Gunter (www.pbase.com/gunterphotograph)

Menyuan, China — Rock Racing’s Tyler Hamilton won his first race in nearly four years Friday while grabbing the overall lead at the Tour of Qinghai Lake with only two stages of the race in China remaining.

Hamilton easily out-sprinted Mark Rutkiewicz (Polish National Team) at the end of Stage 8 as the pair finished more than a minute ahead of a decimated field that included previous race leader Hossein Askari (Tabriz Petrochemical Team).

Rock Racing Team Owner Michael Ball said Hamilton’s accomplishments complete a comeback that included the Marblehead, Mass., native having to rehabilitate a broken right wrist a month ago.

“No one believed in Tyler and I practically had to coax him out of retirement to ride for us this year,” Ball said. “Now he’s back and showing the form that won him the gold medal at the Olympic Games four years ago in Athens. It’s a tremendous story of how to make the most out of second chances.”

When Rutkiewicz attacked on the descent after the day’s only major climb on the 93-mile (150 km) race from Xining to Menyuan, Askari and teammate Ghader Mizbani were slow to react and Hamilton was the only one able to follow. The leading pair bombed down the 20-mile descent to put 1:13 on Askari and 1:17 into previous second-place David McCann (Giant Asia Racing) while Rutkiewicz climbed from fifth to second. He is 10 seconds behind Hamilton.

“You have to be realistic here – those two Iranian guys (Askari and Mizbani) are unbelievable, probably the strongest climbers in the race, so you have to take your opportunities,” Hamilton said. “You can do you best on the climbs, but I’d be kidding myself if I thought I could ride away from those guys on the hill.”

Hamilton climbed from fourth to first after scoring his first victory in UCI competition since Sept. 11, 2004 (a win in the Stage 8 individual time trial at the Vuelta a España) and his first in a road race since July 23, 2003, when he soloed into Bayonne on Stage 16 of the Tour de France.

Hamilton’s victory in the Vuelta a España was later taken away and the Boulder, Colo., resident sat out a two-year suspension, accused of using homologous blood transfusing. During that time, he won the prestigious (and non-sanctioned) Mt. Washington Auto Road Bicycle Hill Climb in New Hampshire in 2005 and 2006.

Teamwork has played an integral role in Hamilton’s ascent into the yellow race leader’s jersey. In Wednesday’s stage, Hamliton suffered two mishaps – a flat tire and a broken spoke – before the main climb. Rock Racing’s Kayle Leogrande and Doug Ollerenshaw each gave up their wheels and Fred Rodriguez and Sergio Hernandez dropped back to help Hamilton regain his position in the pack. Unfortunately, the efforts by Rodriguez and Leogrande proved to be too much and the pair had to withdraw from the race.

That leaves the team with only Sevilla, Ollerenshaw, Hernandez and Michael Creed to help Hamilton in the final two stages.

“With only four of us to defend, it won’t be easy, but we will give it our best shot,” Ollerenshaw said. “I’m pretty confident we can pull it off.”

Saturday’s 104-mile (168 km) race is the last of three major mountain stages in the 10-day, 841-mile (1,354 km) race with a profile that resembles Friday’s stage. It begins in Menyuan and includes a 16-mile climb that takes the riders from 7,709 feet to the summit at 11,312 feet. A 20-mile descent to the finish in Huzhu follows.

Sunday’s final stage is a 110 km circuit race in the city of Xining.

Photos: Copyright Tour of Qinghai Lake/Mark Gunter (www.pbase.com/gunterphotograph)

Xining, China — Rock Racing's Tyler Hamilton and Oscar Sevilla made big moves up the overall classification Wednesday at the Tour of Qinghai Lake in China.

Hamilton was second and Sevilla finished fifth on Stage 6 as Sevilla climbed to third overall and Hamilton to fourth. Sevilla is 14 seconds off the lead and Hamilton only one second behind him. Four stages remain in the 10-day, 841-mile (1,354 km) race.

Rock Racing nearly scored its first stage win in China when Hamilton attacked inside the final mile. The former Tour de France stage winner and Olympic time trial gold medalist was shadowed by race leader Hossein Askari (Tabriz Petrochemical Team) but it was Marek Rutkiewicz (Polish National Team) who passed the pair just before the finish.

“The last kilometer, it seemed to take forever,” Hamilton said.

On a day when blue skies and sun greeted the riders for the first time in days, the 71-mile (115 km) race climbed to a summit more than 12,500 feet above sea level – believed to be the highest point raced in any UCI-rated competition this season. But with the finish 34 miles away – all downhill – it was not decisive.

Hamilton and Iranian climbers Ghader Mizbani and Ahad Kazemi (Tabriz Petrochemical Team) separated themselves from the shattered peloton as it passed over the highest category climb. But the trio was eventually joined by Sevilla, Rutkiewicz and Rys Pollock (Marco Polo Team presented by Trek) on the long descent.

Although disappointed that he did not get the stage win, Hamilton said he is concentrating his efforts on supporting Sevilla.

“I don’t have my greatest climbing legs yet,” he said. “Had we stayed away, I could have taken the (yellow) jersey, but I think we have a better chance of winning the race with Oscar.”

Thursday’s seventh stage is a 133-mile (214 km) race from Xining to Minhe and back. The first 60 miles are downhill, while the final 60 miles (96 km) are all uphill.

Photos: Copyright Tour of Qinghai Lake/Mark Gunter (www.pbase.com/gunterphotograph)

Remember that Tyler Hamilton IMAX movie shot back in 2003 that we never saw as a result of Hamilton's two-year doping suspension? Well, bits and pieces of it are out there; here's some of it. And yes, it is compelling.

Two more stories worth your time:

• Phil Hersh, the long-time Olympics writer of the Chicago Tribune, has a guilt-by-association column on Lance Armstrong. He concludes that Ivan Basso + Tyler Hamilton + Floyd Landis = Our Boy Lance. Hersh allows Armstrong to point out that the French sports daily L'Equipe "is nothing more than a shill for the Tour management that belongs to the same parent company," but then adds that, "Why that management would want disgrace cast on its race is hard to understand." I think that management just wants to sell newspapers.
• Doreen Carvajal of the International Herald Tribunes writes about the difficulty cycling and cyclists are having getting sponsors these days. "It's a very serious problem for the sponsors and many are thinking about their activities," says Jens Seeberger of IFM, a sports research company based in Germany. "Our advice is not to invest right now in cycling. The sport has to be clean. There's a lot of negative news right now and it affects awareness and images.

If you've read Velonews the past couple of days, you've probably run across a couple of features about Tyler Hamiton (Tinkoff Credit Systems; Photo - Casey Gibson).

Are you happy that he's back in the peloton? Did you think he's served his time (after a two year suspension)?

Or better yet, do you think he should have been suspended to begin with? What!?

Athough Tyler Hamilton's appeal to the Court of Abitration for Sports was denied, many questions (gray areas) linger from a verdict that for most was decided in black and white.

"The real voyage of discovery comes not in seeking new vistas, but in having new eyes..." -Marcel Proust

Two years ago, Tyler Hamilton, asked us to simply BELIEVE. Maybe that charge was intended for his defense of doping charges, or maybe it was a charge to believe in the possibility(-ies); the possibility of humans erring, of erroneous tests that claim to be 100% full proof. But whatever way you've chosen to employ that charge, belief rarely belies reality. As they say, "the proof is in the pudding." Unfortunately for Oude Granny and the rest of cycling's fanbase, the pudding is a murking tapioca concoction. The LA Times article below is just another ingredient.

Cyclist blames 'flawed' test: Tyler Hamilton says the blood exam that labeled him a 'cheater' was rushed into use

By Michael A. Hiltzik, Times Staff Writer

To anti-doping officials, the case against Olympic and Tour de France cyclist Tyler Hamilton for an illicit blood transfusion ranks among their greatest victories: a sanction for "intentional cheating at its most sophisticated," in the words of Travis T. Tygart, general counsel to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

To others, including independent scientists who worked on Hamilton's defense, it underscores one of the most glaring flaws of the international anti-doping system - its reliance on scientific research performed hastily and on the cheap.

The novel blood test used to condemn Hamilton as a cheater and suspend him for two years was developed by researchers in Sydney, Australia, on a $50,000 USADA grant - that sum is a fraction of what's normally spent in medicine to develop and validate a diagnostic test.

"This test was not ready for prime time," says Carlo Brugnara, professor of pathology at Harvard Medical School.

Brugnara was a member of the peer-review committee that approved publication of an article outlining the test in 2003. However, he felt so strongly that it was prematurely implemented in Hamilton's case that he volunteered to testify at an arbitration hearing for the cyclist in 2005.

Hamilton, a native of Marblehead, Mass., was considered one of cycling's toughest and cleanest riders when he came under suspicion for blood doping shortly before the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens. He went on to win the gold medal in the individual time trial.

At Athens, the World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Olympic Committee had introduced a new field test that had to be fast-tracked for the Games. Authorities feared a rash of prohibited blood transfusions among endurance athletes seeking a boost from extra oxygen-producing red blood cells.

At the Games, Hamilton's blood sample was declared negative, though "suspicious" for blood doping, by WADA's Athens laboratory.

A month later, he was tested again at the Vuelta d'Espana, a grueling Spanish race akin to the Tour de France. This time, authorities said the test - performed by WADA's lab in Lausanne, Switzerland - had identified a small concentration of foreign blood cells in his sample. He was charged with doping.

Richard W. Pound, the WADA chairman, trumpeted the results as vindication of suspicions in Athens. "We got him on the second bounce," he crowed.

On the surface, Hamilton's alleged violation made little sense. Athletes seeking a blood-doping boost almost certainly would transfuse from a stored supply of their own ? not only because it is nearly undetectable in doping tests but also because it carries no risk of illness or infection.

Indeed, use of another person's blood is so unlikely that one WADA scientist speculated that Hamilton must have done it accidentally. "The most likely scenario is that he meant to get his own blood but was given someone else's," says Michael Ashenden, a member of the Sydney team that developed the test.

Experts supporting Hamilton contend the concentration of purportedly foreign cells in his blood at Athens and the Vuelta was too low to have boosted his performance in those events and possibly too low to be accurately measured.

They say the test results indicate that if Hamilton transfused at all, it would have been more than two months before the Olympics, a wasted effort, because performance-enhancing effects would have worn off well before the Games.

"If someone was really doping, it would be really obvious," says David Nelson, professor of cell and molecular biology at the University of Rhode Island and a consultant on Hamilton's defense. "But these results were wacky."

Hamilton declined to comment for this article. On his website, he calls the tests "flawed and inaccurate" and says he "did not transfuse."

There is little dispute the test was rushed to implementation. Sydney researchers had published results from trials on only 58 blood samples using a process known as flow cytometry when WADA summoned them to teach the technique to scientists at the Athens Olympics.

For any diagnostic test to be used in medicine, regulatory agencies often require hundreds if not thousands of trials in a variety of clinical and field settings to demonstrate reproducible results under all conditions.

"It was appalling for me to see the low bar they set," said one of Hamilton's expert witnesses, Dr. V.K. Gadi, a blood specialist and oncologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. "The way the test was designed and implemented would never pass muster in any other regulatory situation."

During its first field application in Athens, the test encountered problems. The lab failed a proficiency test just before the Games, lab director Costas Georgakopoulos told The Times in an e-mail.

As a result, he said, he refused to certify Hamilton's sample as positive for blood doping, a decision that infuriated his blood-testing team. They considered the cyclist guilty.

With the lab's proficiency in question, Georgakopoulos said, "reporting positive cases would endanger the whole Olympic doping control program."

Meanwhile, on opening day of the Athens Games, Ashenden sent out a blistering e-mail complaining that the Lausanne lab was "not yet capable of performing the test to an acceptable standard."

He cited changes the lab had made in the test that might produce false positives.

Ashenden said in an interview that Lausanne had corrected all its flaws before it examined Hamilton's sample from the race in Spain.

"Lausanne was keen to rush through the test, perhaps prematurely," he said. "But it was only a matter of days before they started to get the results we wanted to see."

One scientist testifying at Hamilton's hearing contended that Australian researchers had not taken even rudimentary steps to determine how susceptible their test might be to false positives. David E. Housman, professor of biology at MIT, also told The Times in an e-mail: "This process wouldn't cut it in the world of testing for any medical condition."

Australian researchers had argued in published papers that false positives "do not appear to be a problem," without showing they had investigated the issue.

That seemed a "cavalier" dismissal to D. Michael Strong, chief operating officer of Puget Sound Blood Center, a Seattle blood bank, who testified for Hamilton.

"I don't know of a test that doesn't have false positives," he said in an interview. Common scientific standards require developers of diagnostic tests to identify and quantify the possible causes of false positives, Strong said.

At Hamilton's first appeal of sanctions, arbitrator Christopher L. Campbell issued a rare written dissent, citing "a number of bizarre and inappropriate occurrences" in the case.

For example, soon after the Athens Games, anti-doping authorities hand-picked an expert panel to reexamine Hamilton's Olympic sample. One member was a developer of the controversial blood test, an arrangement Campbell called a conflict of interest violating the "cardinal rules of drug testing."

The panel did declare Hamilton's Athens sample positive. However, because a confirmation sample already had been destroyed, the official negative finding stood and the cyclist retained his gold medal.

Based on tests from the Spanish race, however, Hamilton was suspended for two years.

Campbell, highly critical of the entire test validation process, said that the arbitrators' decision to accept the test despite its deficiencies "establishes a dreadful precedent."

Hamilton's suspension ended in September, and he has resumed racing.

As for the feared crisis in blood doping that led to the crash implementation of the test, WADA never found it. Only two athletes have ever been declared positive, Hamilton and a second cyclist who chose not to contest his sanction.