Tour de Truth rights ship
As one of the first professional cyclists to confess the shocking details of the sport's rampant doping culture, Tyler Hamilton is used to getting a few curly questions at his speaking engagements.
But when a man took hold of the microphone at his Perth Convention and Exhibition Centre breakfast this week, what came out of his mouth stopped the former US Postal rider and Olympic gold medallist in his tracks.
"You have to ask, who is the winner?" the man said.
"You're getting paid to be a liar and a cheater here today."
The man with the microphone was Bob Addy, a 72-year-old British cyclist who rode the Tour de France in 1968 and now lives in Pinjarra.
Addy claimed he had been forced out of the sport because he refused to dope and questioned the ethics of Hamilton profiting from more than a decade of cheating to win.
It was a point which wasn't well received by the audience, but one which Hamilton says he can't completely disagree with.
"He was one of the guys who got burned, I guess," he said.
"He should be angry and he has every reason to be angry.
"I've made mistakes but I'm trying to right the ship. The only thing I can do is tell the truth and talk about it and try to encourage others to tell the truth."
Hamilton rode alongside Lance Armstrong on the US Postal team in the disgraced champion's first three Tour de France victories in 1999, 2000 and 2001.
During this time he was introduced to the world of doping in elite cycling, starting with a simple testosterone pill for recovery before quickly descending into the seedy underbelly of EPO and blood transfusions.
First suspended for two years after a positive doping test at the 2004 Vuelta a Espana, Hamilton initially refused to come clean and break cycling's notorious code of Omerta - an unwritten rule to not rat on your fellow riders.
It took a subpoena from the FBI years later for the 42-year-old to finally tell the truth.
His testimony played a key role in stripping Armstrong of his seven Tour de France victories last year. It also ostracised Hamilton from many of his former teammates and set him on the long and difficult path of earning back the trust of family and friends he had been lying to for more than a decade.
He said there were plenty of people, just like Addy, who would never forgive the sins of his past.
"It's not easy, you saw me, I'm not comfortable up there, it's tough, but it's a lot better since I've fully come and told the truth," he said.
"I used to walk into a big room like that and get a lot of stares. I'm an open book now, it's a great feeling when you have nothing to hide."
One aim of Hamilton's international Tour de Truth speaking tour is to encourage the powers that be to make it easier for more riders to come forward and tell the truth about the sport's dark past.
He says the more detail that is known about the past 15 years - the height of doping in the sport - the easier it will be to stop it happening in the future.
One man who he says can move the process along in leaps and bounds is Armstrong, who admitted doping during a tell-all interview with American talk show host Oprah Winfrey, but is yet to make the same admissions to the authorities or give the names of the people who helped him.
"If I could talk to him I'd tell him he needs to fully come clean first for himself, for his family and obviously for the sport of cycling," Hamilton said. "He's got a lot of information that he hasn't given out.
"We all know the basic truth but we need more of the details.
"If we exclude those details there's going to be a lot of bad eggs who remain in the sport.
"He answered the biggest question of the century, whether he doped or not during his seven victories, and I applaud him for that.
"But he needs to go in front of USADA and be 100 per cent truthful. The sooner we hear about the truth of the past from Lance, the quicker cycling can shift gears and move forward on the right path."
