Cyclist Tyler Hamilton gets 8-year ban for second doping violation, ending career

Admitted cycling doper Hamilton accepts 8-year ban

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Olympic champion Tyler Hamilton received an eight-year ban from cycling Tuesday, all but ending his drug-tainted career after he admitted to taking a steroid.

The penalty handed down by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency came two months after Hamilton acknowledged taking an herbal product to combat depression, knowing it included a steroid.

“There’s nothing to fight about,” Hamilton said in an April interview with The Associated Press.

This was Hamilton’s second anti-doping violation. At age 38, an eight-year ban for Hamilton is effectively a lifetime ban, said Travis Tygart, the CEO of USADA.

It is “an assurance that he is penalized for what would have been the remainder of his competitive cycling career,” Tygart said.

It brings to an end a career that included a win at the 2004 Olympics that was overshadowed by a blood doping scandal. The victory was followed shortly by a positive doping test, but Hamilton retained the gold medal because the backup ‘B’ sample could not be positively tested.

A month later, however, he tested positive again, and served a two-year suspension that ended early in 2007.

He long denied blood doping, though on the latest positive test, he denied nothing.

“I knew it was banned,” Hamilton said.

Some of his advisers told him to fight the latest positive but he decided against it, instead deciding to focus on battling his depression. Hamilton said going through a divorce and his mother’s breast cancer diagnosis made things worse in recent months.

“The eight-year suspension is unfortunate and disheartening,” Hamilton said in a statement he released Tuesday. “At this time, however, my focus remains on my mother, my family, battling my depression and getting better. This has been an extremely difficult and trying period, but I am determined to get through it.”