the big ring said:
Oh. The. Irony.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/sport...840e-f928-11e1-a93b-7185e3f88849_story_1.html
Can anyone attest to remorse in the book? Has it even been released in Switzerland yet?
Yes, there is remorse.
Two things shine out for me, and give the book its power:
1) the detailed descriptions of doping. Tyler really lays it out, tells the reader exactly how it was done, and with the vivid descriptions of when, where, with who, etc., you'd have to be beyond skeptical to think all of this could be made up. And all of this is just presented, neither as good nor evil, really, but in a way that let readers make their own judgments.
If McQ actually read the book, this might be what he means when he says TH shows no remorse. He does not constantly say that doping is evil. He makes it seem like an ordinary part of racing, which of course is exactly what it has been. This makes the story much more powerful, not letting his judgments get in the way of a clear-eyed view of what happened. Readers don't need to be told that doping has severely damaged the sport, or that Tyler feels enormous remorse for his part in it. These conclusions drip from every page, and frankly, only an idiot, it seems to me, would fail to see that.
2) the remarkably even-handed description of LA. Tyler describes both his strengths and flaws, and never comes across as hating him or obsessed with him in any way. A lot of the book is about LA, as indeed it should be given how important a role LA played in Tyler's life, but Tyler never goes beyond just recounting what happened, never goes off on a rant. Indeed, one could almost think Tyler is still intimidated by a guy he should have every right to loathe. Either that, or he has a remarkable power of forgiveness.
I had hoped the book would solve the mystery of the HBT positive, but it doesn't. A footnote says that Ashenden speculated that during the process of freezing RBCs, they might have become contaminated with someone else's blood. Given that Fuentes had so many clients, I can imagine that could happen. This is also consistent with the fact that the actual test data indicated a very minor contamination, not the larger amount that would occur with a month or so following a transfusion. But Tyler had two positives--the Olympics and the Vuelta--and they involved different minor antigens, i.e., different blood samples. So there would have to be two slip-ups, not one.