Tyler Hamilton: 2004 Tour de France

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Outside Magazine, July 2004

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2004 Tour de France: The Ultimate Guide
The Agony Is the Ecstasy (cont.)

THAT EXPLORATION reached new territory this winter when Ochowicz helped arrange an agreement for Hamilton to join Phonak, a Swiss team, sponsored by a hearing-aid company, with a $9 million budget and equally large ambitions. Their offer—to build a team solely around Hamilton for the Tour de France, to give him say on personnel and equipment and a high-six-figure salary—was too good to refuse. Being team leader brings with it new pressures, which Hamilton welcomes with a metaphor that one hopes will prove less than apt. "If I fall on my face," he says, "there's no one to blame but me."

Having friends will help—particularly when one of them happens to be the peloton's

"The brain of a guy like Hamilton is wired differently," says a psychiatric researcher. "To endure what he endures and stay in control, there's no question that something unique is going on."

unquestioned boss. Unlike some of Armstrong's departed teammates, Hamilton has gone out of his way to maintain a good relationship with the Texan. When Postal's team director, Johan Bruyneel, urged then-domestique Hamilton to go after his first major victory at the 2000 Dauphine Libere, Hamilton would not ride ahead until he got the OK from Armstrong himself. A year later, before departing Postal for CSC, Hamilton involved his team leader to the extent that by the end it seemed almost like Armstrong's idea. And when a certain Girona apartment became available in 2001, Hamilton called Armstrong, who'd already bought the first floor, to see if he'd be OK with the Hamiltons living above. "He didn't want it to be weird," Haven says. "And of course Lance was happy about it."

Travel schedules being what they are, the two top Americans cross paths mostly at races but remain, in Geoff Hamilton's estimation, "professional friends," exchanging occasional e-mails. When they arrived in Girona this winter, Armstrong and girlfriend Sheryl Crow hosted the Hamiltons at a small dinner party. It's the sort of relationship that suits both riders, and has suited the sport's headline writers no less well: Lance and Tyler, the bold Texan and the reserved New Englander, two American archetypes.

"Lance and I have two different characters," Hamilton says. "Lance is good at talking, and he's got what it takes to back it up every step of the way. I'm quieter. What he does works for him, and what I do works for me."

A blessedly sunny Friday in March. Team Hamilton heads to the office—namely a short, innocuous stretch of gently rolling two-lane a few miles north of Girona known as the Strip. Today is a motor-pacing day, which means that Haven drives their Audi Quattro a few inches in front of Hamilton's front wheel, shielding him from the wind. She motor-paces him for one stretch, then he does a lap alone, then they repeat, riding back and forth along the Strip for two or three hours.

"Boring, isn't it?" says Haven, who is Hamilton's confidante, chef, and partner in the Tyler Hamilton Foundation and the company Inside Track Tours, which, among other things, gives clients a view of the Tour each summer. But like any good New Englander will tell you, boring can have a higher purpose: in this case, the subtle but profound changes her husband's body is undergoing in preparation for the Tour. Already slender, he will lose five more pounds, a task made difficult by his sturdy skier's physique. His body fat will drop to practically nothing, and his skin will become, Haven says, like cellophane. "If I touch him in the middle of the night," she says, "his body will be red-hot, like his metabolism is revving."

There are other changes, too. When races approach, particularly before time trials, Hamilton slips into what Haven calls "race mode." Life will get quieter—no visitors, no media, no distractions. His family knows the rules: no phone calls the day or two before a major race, longer before the Tour—or, if you do call, plan on it being rather brief. His brother, Geoff, calls it the "no go" area.

"I'm not sure what he does," Geoff says. "I just know that this is how his mind works, getting ready to take the pain, to do what it takes."

As it happens, the area of the human brain that handles pain signals is the same area that helps create and interpret emotion. It's a roughly walnut-size spot called the anterior cingulate cortex, and its influence on our personality is gigantic—"the seat of the soul," some biologists have called it. "I think the brain of a guy like Hamilton is wired differently," says Dan Galper, a senior research associate in the psychiatry department at the University of Texas. "To endure what he endures and stay in control, there's no question that something unique is going on."

The notion that pain—as opposed to, say, sight or smell or musical ability—is intertwined with our essential personalities is one that would seem to apply to Hamilton. Perhaps he's nice because he's tough, and he's tough because he's nice. At least to a point.

Yes, now it can be told: There are times when Tyler Hamilton is not nice. During a race a couple of years ago, Hamilton handed his sunglasses to a mechanic in his team car to be cleaned. Seconds ticked away, riders sped past, and the mechanic was still fervently wiping and rewiping the glasses. Finally, Hamilton had had enough. "How long does it take," he yelled, "to clean a pair of fucking glasses?!"

Back in the Girona café after training, however, afloat on a pleasant river of conversation, such an outburst seems very far away. Except for one moment, when Hamilton is asked what he thinks about while in race mode.

"Ummm," he says, his eyes focusing on something in the middle distance. "That's a good question."

He answers eventually—talking about memorizing the course and mulling tactics—but there are no widened eyes, no nod, no friendly intimation of shared ground. You can't help but get the feeling that here begins the no-go area. Perhaps there are some sorts of wilderness that are best explored alone.

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