Read The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour De France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour De France: Doping, Cover-Ups, and Winning at All Costs for Free Online Page B

leading rider in order to help him with feeding and mechanical problems; violating this rule is unthinkable, the equivalent of a NASCAR pit crew abandoning their post in the middle of a race. But Weisel had no more patience, not for protocol, not for anything. He ordered Eddie B to leave Hampsten, to drive around him, to catch up with the leaders so he could see the fireworks. Weisel wanted to scout new riders for the 1997 team. The engine revved; Hampsten watched in disbelief as the Postal car disappeared up the road. The message was clear: Weisel wasn’t going to wait around for losers.
    Two days later, at the foot of Susten Pass (17 kilometers at 7.5 percent grade), co-leader Darren Baker blew a tire. I gave him my wheel and by the time I got a replacement, I was alone. I gave everything I had, but couldn’t catch up. I spent the day alone, trying to make it under the time limit. I remember seeing desperate riders hanging on to rearview mirrors, hitching rides. I remember telling myself I’d never do that. In the end I missed the cutoff, and the next day I was on a plane back home, wondering if I had what it took.

    The Tour of Switzerland was the kind of experience that might have made me think twice about my sport, to wonder why I was working so hard for nothing. I might have been tempted to quit, if bike racing had been the only thing in my life. But it wasn’t. You see, a few weeks before that race, I had fallen in love.
    Her name was Haven Parchinski; we’d met at the Tour DuPont back in the States that spring; she’d volunteered at the race, checking badges at the hotel dining room. She was beautiful: petite and dark-haired, with a huge smile and hazel eyes that seemed to catch the light. I was nervous about talking with her, so I asked my teammate Marty Jemison’s wife, Jill, who worked PR for Postal, to introduce us. It turned out Haven lived in Boston, and worked as an account executive at Hill Holliday, an advertising agency. I started arriving at meals early and having four or five coffees afterward, just to have an excuse to be in the same room. We started to chat, and to flirt. My heart was thumping, and it wasn’t the coffee.
    The race that year was being dominated by Lance, who’d showed up bigger and stronger than ever. § But in one of the last stages of the race, I found myself in the lead group, and I was feeling strong. It’s funny how much racing depends on your emotions; my crush on Haven was a shot of rocket fuel. With about four kilometers to go I launched a solo attack and nearly made it to the line before the pack caught me. I won the day’s most aggressive rider award, and was called to stand on the podium, and was handed a beautiful bouquet of flowers. That night, I sent the bouquet to Haven’s room. At first, she thought it was some kind of mistake. Then she connected the dots, and called to thank me, and we talked for an hour. At the end of the race, there was a party, and afterward I walked her to her room and gave her a good-night kiss—a single kiss, nothing more, and nothing less—and from that moment on we were together.
    We were a good match. Haven wasn’t impressed by bike racers, and didn’t know a whole lot about cycling, and I loved that. She knew about business, the ad game, politics, the bigger world I’d been missing.
    The real test for our new relationship came when Haven went to visit my family in Marblehead for the annual Mountain Goat Invitational Crazy Croquet Tournament in our backyard. Haven dove right in, proved she could take it and dish it out with the best of them. She sent my parents a thank-you note afterward, mentioning that she’d never realized that croquet was a full-contact sport. My folks loved her; they’d often meet her for dinner when I was out of town. We used to joke that with my race schedule, they had more dates with Haven than I did.
    Haven’s parents were less enthusiastic about our relationship, maybe because “aspiring bike