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The Secret Race

Daniel Coyle

The Secret Race is the new book by Tyler Hamilton and Daniel Coyle about the Tour de France and doping.

Even if, like me, you aren't much of a cycling fan and are prepared to take a no-first-stone-from-us-sinners attitude toward whatever exactly Lance Armstrong might have done, this may be a compelling sociological study about a particular and very competitive subculture.

I say "may be" because I'm not prepared to pretend to having read it.  A couple of quick points from the publicity though: the first named author, Tyler Hamilton, is the former denizen of that subculture. He rode with Armstrong on 3 of those Tour de France races. He teamed up with Coyle (whose photo I have installed above)  to borrow some writing chops for this project.  

Last weekend's New York Times Review  of Books contained a piece on this result by Geoffrey Wheatcroft, who turns a nice analogy.

"We are left with Armstrong, who  increasingly looks like the sporting answer to Alger Hiss: he will go to his grave protesting an innocence in which nobody else apart from his family any longer pretends to believe."
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