Tyler Hamilton on Real Sports?: Bikefanclub.com

Anyone see it?
The HBO show. (Yea, the Bryant Gumbel show)

Anyhoo...
He was interviewed by Frank DeFord. Probably one of the best sports journalists around -- to me.

Basically, Tyler's story comes down to this:

Yes, he has somone elses blood in him, but it came from his mother, in the womb. It's a scientific thing that is controversial. But they had some MIT doc on there talking about how true it is. It's referred to as a "vanishing twin" which doesn't help it's credibility. Basically, stuff happens in the womb, at the very early stages, with eggs and embryos and stuff, where it's all still kinda murky, and until one thing happens over another, anything could happen: single kid, twins, andros, whatever. But it's all very ordinary, we all went through it, and what they detected was leftovers from that stage, when the possibility of twins developing was still viable.

Here's some stuff I hope I remember right, I'm not a scientist (as you can see from what I wrote above):
--MIT guy said probably 50% of the population has this, it can be detected in 50% of us
--We never knew about it before because up till now nobody looked for it, or rather, nobody looked at blood at this level of detail, no reason, it was essentially detected by accident
--One or two of the judges/scientists on the UCI(?) panel accepted this piece of science probability, others wouldn't comment, main head judge guy does not.
--MIT guy says, I'm a little unclear here, that our blood, or all blood kind of ebbs and flows in a way that it's not something you'd find or detect all of the time.
--MIT guy says (and I think one of judges agreed -- only one agreed to be interviewed) that the levels found/detected in Tyler's blood are neglible, not worth even discussing in any context that it could gave him a performance advantage, the level they found offered zero advantage from what they detected
--Also I think the MIT guy contacted Tyler after he heard what Tyler was going through, the doc was already studying this thing, already had the evidence that the UCI wouldn't accept

Thought I'd offer this up. I'm going to choose to believe him for now. He knows he's basically done for. But he's sticking with it, including his training. And hell, the guy was easily a top 5 guy on the planet, he had already arrived, he was there. A stage win and 4th place with a broken collar bone? He had nothing to prove, and therefore no reason to cheat, and nothing to cheat for.

If you get the chance, look for the show. It's good. If you know someone with HBO (or especially TiVo) get them to tape it. I'm sure it'll be repeated.