One of the great sporting metaphors inspired by the Tour de France is that of the race as a road to Calvary. Le calvaire has been routinely used throughout the 100 years since the great race was born to describe the process of a cyclist continuing in the face of great affliction — be it injury, illness or the mental agony that follows the death of a close relative.
Tyler Hamilton has ridden on in spite of a broken collarbone, holding a high place overall as the race entered the Pyrenees this week. Doctors can barely believe it.
Hamilton’s challenge is le calvaire, against which all others will be measured in future.
Like all Tour cyclists, he is smaller than you would expect when seen up close. He has the same shuffling, strength-saving walk as the rest. But when he comes into the lobby of his Toulouse hotel, he shakes hands with the left. The right cannot be used.
An unassuming man from Massachusetts, Hamilton is no stranger to pain. A keen and talented skier, he broke several vertebrae in a fall and got into cycling when in rehab.
Last year, famously, he came second in the Tour of Italy, bearing a cracked shoulder blade. He ground his teeth in agony so fiercely that 11 have needed replacing. He lists his symptoms modestly and emphasises: ‘I feel I’m complaining a lot.†But much of the past two weeks has been spent in silence. Just him and the pain.
The first station on his route to Calvary was Avenue de l’Appel du 18 Juin 1940 in Meaux two weeks ago, where his front wheel landed on the prone form of sprinter Jimmy Casper, catapulting Hamilton over the bars at 48kph and on to his right shoulder.
X-rays showed a V-shaped double crack in his collarbone, and that, it seemed, was that. But the next morning Hamilton was on the start line. ‘When I saw the X-rays, I saw that my Tour de France was over. I’m not ashamed to say it, but I cried. For three or four hours I was devastated. Then I learned it was possible to try [again].â€
Critically, there was no displacement of his bones — the two parts remained in a straight line, meaning that in medical terms it was possible for Hamilton to go on without damaging it further. Riding with three layers of foam on his handlebars and reduced pressure in his tyres to ease the shocks from the road surfaces, Hamilton rode into Sedan that evening as pale as a ghost, but he came 100th.
His initial target was the team time-trial, to assist his team, CSC (the computer software company), to a respectable placing. That obstacle surmounted more than respectably, X-rays last week showed no further movement in the fracture.
Even so, he was expected to quit when the race arrived in the Alps. But at l’Alpe d’Huez last week he finished with Lance Armstrong to move to sixth overall. Casper, the man he fell over in Sedan, went home the following day. Twenty-two others quit in the Alps because of illness or injury.
‘A couple of days after the crash, I was in so much pain when I woke up that I thought it was over,†Hamilton says. He adds that the pain is ‘constant, numb. On a scale of one to 10 it was 10, now it’s seven or eight. On my bike I get sharp pains and every bump I can feel. When I put pressure on it, it tells me to stop.â€
The worst point, so far, came on Tuesday last week when the race left the Alps for Marseille.
‘I’d had a twisted spine since the crash, and they couldn’t put pressure on it to push it back into place. It was putting pressure on a nerve that runs from my back to my stomach. It got inflamed, and when I woke up I was in so much pain. Normally, to breathe, I push down with my stomach, but I couldn’t push it out an inch.â€
By sheer good fortune, that day’s route was mainly downhill.
‘They gave me a muscle relaxant and pushed it back. The night before my body was just too tense for them to do it. I was in so much pain.â€
Why does he do it? ‘One thing is my team, I owe it to them to push on. I didn’t want to give up at the first problem.†There is also the fact that Hamilton is now 32, and has only lately emerged from a career largely spent working for Armstrong. Time is not on his side.
On the final Alpine stage he was a few metres behind when Spaniard Joseba Beloki skidded on a patch of melted tarmac on a descent, flew over the bars and broke his hip, elbow and wrist. Going downhill through hairpin bends at 80kph is a supreme test of nerves and clear-headedness.
With one arm partly out of action and a shoulder in agony from every bump, it hardly bears thinking about.
‘You try to relax. If you’re tense on a descent, it just makes it worse. The descent where Beloki fell was incredibly dangerous, the tarmac was melting and it was one of those turns that just kept going.†Asked whether falling again worries him, he doesn’t get the question. It clearly isn’t among his mental terms of reference.
‘The doctors have said it will heal normally if I crash on it again. Maybe I’d need an operation with a plate in it, but that didn’t happen when I broke it the first time. For me it’s worth the risk. I worry, but you can only worry so much.â€
Dr Gérard Porte — 32 years on the Tour, 22 as chief doctor — says Hamilton’s is the most surprising case he has ever seen. ‘A normal person would have to have four weeks off work. It is the finest example of courage I’ve come across. It has amazed me.â€
Next year the first Imax film of the Tour, provisionally entitled Brainpower, will be released. Partly sponsored by the United States National Science Foundation, it is being shot on this Tour with a 49-strong team.
It deals with the mind’s ability to overcome pain and it is being shot largely with Hamilton and the CSC team. The scriptwriters could not have dreamed of the current scenario.
‘It’s quite extraordinary,†says writer-director Bayley Sillick. ‘He has a talent for pain that would kill the rest of us. I don’t know what it means for his brain, but it’s amazed the cycling world.†—