Tyler Hamilton: 'Truth and Transformation'

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. – Tyler Hamilton was the "elite of the elite" in the cycling world, from the Tour de France to winning Gold at the Olympics.

But for 14 years he was racing from the truth, which he thought would ruin him. In the end, he says in a TEDx PiscataquaRiver talk May 9, the truth saved him.

Hamilton spoke of how he first used performance enhancing drugs, and how he and other dopers called EPO "Edgar Allan Poe."

"Everybody was going it," he says of how he justified it, and how it seemed like the team saw value in him when he was given access to more doping cheats. "In a strange way, it was a badge of honor."

It came with a price, and not just being stripped of that Olympic gold and banned from the sport. He spoke of how he became depressed and abuse of alcohol.

He spoke of having a cell phone with code names in it, of shady doctors and blood transfusions in Spain and, after one blood doping session, he walked out on the street to realize the mini puncture on his arm from the needle had opened, and his entire sleeve was soaked in blood.

Hamilton retired from cycling in 2009. In 2012, his memoir – "The Secret Race: Inside the Hidden World of the Tour de France: Doping, Cover-ups, and Winning at All Costs" – became a New York Times bestseller and the William Hill Sports Book of the Year.

All the 2014 TEDx PiscataquaRiver videos will soon be online.