Tammy Thomas Photo Story
Well, for the unitiated or for newer posters, a photo often times pops up that is about as confusing gender wise as it gets. I until recently thought this to be a man. Lo and behold, it is not. It is Tammy Thomas, former US Cycling Track Star.
I have also found an interesting article about this woman and the resulting aftermath from the NY Times. Interesting read, but also depressing. She deserves what she received, as her lifetime ban was AFTER her Year-Long ban. So clearly, she could have after the 1-year ban decided to monitor her PED intake. Howevr, she decided to cheat after that. Anyways: here is the article:
NT Times Article
Every morning is the same inside Tammy Thomas's world of white.
White bedding. White walls. The white, bright California sun streaming in her window to remind her that, yes, she must rise and face another day of white noise.
Once one of the world's top sprint cyclists, she rode to raucous cheers. Now, she is still. Once she had Olympic dreams. Now, they are like delusions. Suspended from competition for life in 2002 after testing positive for steroids, Tammy Thomas is 34 years old, lonely, all but broke, and adrift in troubles, most of them her own making.
She has gone from silver medalist at a world championship to pariah, the ultimate cautionary tale in a sports world increasingly disgraced by drug use.
As if she were a criminal, her photo is posted at the door of the nation's main sports drug-testing lab, advising employees to call the police if they see her. Broad-shouldered and buff, she is no longer an Olympic hopeful but a woman who hears a waiter say, ''Can I take your plate, sir?''
''Every day is the same day,'' she said in her gravelly voice. ''I used to be well respected. I made my parents proud. Now I've embarrassed my family. For the rest of my life, wherever I go and whatever I do, I'm going to be known as a cheater.''
Thomas neither denies nor confirms the charges against her. Still, because of the ban, her name will always be associated with the underworld of performance-enhancing drugs, the side of sports that is rife with shady supplement makers, seedy pharmacists and unethical doctors.
Being treated as an outcast makes her cringe, but when asked whether steroid use is wrong, she said: ''Is it cheating if everyone does it? I devoted 10 years of my life to this sport. Why me? Why me? Why can other athletes live a glorified life and my life is tainted forever?''
A scandal preceding this summer's Olympics has suggested the extent of drug use in sports: athletes from world class to amateur, famous to unknown, have been shown to be willing to risk their honor and health for an edge in competition. At the high-dollar end, there is Kelli White, a world-champion sprinter with a sponsorship from Nike. This spring she acknowledged taking a previously undetectable steroid and was barred for two years. Now she is cooperating with the investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, a nutritional company whose founder and three others have been charged with distributing illegal steroids.
Then there is Thomas, whose sport, track cycling, delivers little in either attention or money. She is one of only two athletes barred from competition for life by the United States Anti-Doping Agency (the hurdler Tony Dees is the other). Nearly as rare, she is one athlete willing to talk about drugs in sports because, she said, she hopes others can learn from her mistakes.
Living in the Shadows
Soon, she may have company. The anti-doping agency is seeking lifetime bans for four athletes connected to Balco, including Tim Montgomery, the world-record holder in the 100 meters, and Chryste Gaines, an Olympic and world champion in the sprint relay. Like Montgomery and Gaines, Thomas testified before a federal grand jury investigating Balco last fall. She said she was asked about her connection to Patrick Arnold, a chemist who is being investigated for possibly manufacturing tetrahydrogestrinone, or THG, a steroid once undetectable in drug screenings.
After testifying, Thomas, who had not been in the news since her 2002 suspension for a second drug offense, retreated into the shadows of the sports afterlife, her world a purgatory not for retired athletes, but for dishonored ones.
''I told her, 'You're going to take a hit, but you have to try to get on with your life,''' said Larry DeSario, 50, a friend from Miami.
Last fall, Thomas moved from her hometown, Yazoo City, Miss., to California to work on a legal case she is pursuing against the drug lab at U.C.L.A. and its director, who discovered the previously undetectable steroid norbolethone in her urine sample, leading to her suspension.
Now she lives here, renting a room in the apartment of a 70-year-old woman. She works six days a week as a personal trainer at a private gym owned by Scot Mendelson, a professional powerlifter. Her paycheck, about $240 a week, does not go far, so she often eats at McDonald's or at a chicken joint called Koo-Koo-Roo. When she telephones her family in Mississippi, she says she hides her troubles.
''My family loves me, and they think I'm kind of a victim of this whole process,'' Thomas said. ''I can't bear to tell them how I've been living, so I make everything sound really great.''
Her mother, Gwen Thomas, said Tammy would ''get through everything just fine because she is a lot stronger and braver'' than most people.
Still, Thomas struggles to keep her dignity, holding her head high, caring about her appearance. She always wears the gold hoop earrings her mother gave her. While she scrimps on food, she saves for haircuts at a chic Beverly Hills salon. Inside her small purse there is Lancôme's Berry Tart lipstick, which she applies meticulously throughout the day.
Yet her purse is dwarfed by her strong hands. At 5 feet 7 inches and muscular, Thomas says she is mistaken for a man several times a week. Called sir, she quickly says, ''That's ma'am.'' She realizes she is not a stereotypical woman, so it doesn't bother her much. Besides, she said, she likes the attention that comes with being different.
At least that attention is better than the solitude that has become the norm of her life, part of the price Thomas has had to pay for being discredited by her sport. Her only friends in Los Angeles are Mendelson and his family, whom she met through a friend in Mississippi.
''I don't really know much about her suspension, and it's none of my business,'' Mendelson said, adding that he is against performance-enhancing drugs. ''She has the qualifications to work for us, and that's what counts.''
Mementos of a Lost Dream
As much as Thomas wants to escape the painful memories of her cycling, she surrounds herself with them. Her GT racing bike leans against a wall near her bed, red helmet hanging from the handlebars, gathering dust. Four racing wheels without tires are propped under the windows. In a room with bare walls, they are her melancholy artwork.
If she were asked to compete tomorrow, she would be ready. Her closet is a kaleidoscope of red, white and blue, her 13 national team jerseys hanging side by side. Next to them, neatly folded on hangers, are a half-dozen black cycling shorts and bibs. Old handlebars are shoved into a shoe rack alongside two pairs of size 5 1/2 cycling shoes. She said she had ridden her bike maybe 10 times in the past two years.
With the Olympics coming up, Thomas dreads each day because the Games were her life's work, her one dream. Just before the 2000 Olympics, she tested positive for a high ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone and was given a one-year suspension, the first time she was branded a cheater. Now the brand is permanent. She said she would watch the Olympics from home again this year, but only the gymnastics, maybe the swimming.
''Cycling was my joy,'' she said. ''I have some good days, but mostly bad days.''
Lately, her days have been consumed by her legal case.
In June 2003, Thomas, acting as her own lawyer and working on computers at Kinko's, filed suit in a Los Angeles state court against several defendants, including the Olympic Analytical Laboratory at U.C.L.A. and its director, Dr. Donald H. Catlin. Her suit claims that Catlin used her urine samples as human subject research without her consent. Among other things, the suit sought punitive damages and her reinstatement to cycling.
But last March, a federal judge granted the defendants' summary judgment motion and dismissed the case. Thomas is appealing the decision, and her first brief is due Thursday.
Catlin, who is a scientist and medical doctor, tested Thomas's urine sample and discovered norbolethone, a drug first manufactured in the 1960's but never marketed. He also broke the code of THG, the designer steroid sent anonymously to the United States Anti-Doping Agency that was the catalyst for the Balco investigation.
''The drug testers just can't ignore the law, and I want to make sure that they realize that,'' Thomas said. ''I'm all for hard-core drug testing, as long as the rules are the same for everyone.''
Though she said she has never tried to contact Catlin, her photo is posted at the front door of the drug-testing lab at U.C.L.A. Below it, a notice says she tested positive for a banned steroid and that the campus police should be called if she tries to enter the building.
When a reporter told Thomas about the photo posting, she filed a discovery request for a copy.
''They probably think I'm a psychopath and that I'm going to blow up the building or something,'' she said. ''I'm not an ax murderer, I'm an athlete. There's a big difference.''
Under advice from his lawyers, Catlin declined to comment on the matter. To keep busy otherwise, Thomas has found another outlet for the competitive instinct that once made her an elite athlete. While working at a gym in Mississippi, she tried powerlifting, a non-Olympic sport. Now her coach is Mendelson, who tried to reclaim an American Powerlifting Federation record at 1,005 pounds in the bench press on Saturday.
''We expect her to be world champion,'' he said of Thomas. In June, Thomas bench-pressed 365 pounds to win the federation's national championship in the 198-pound class, a competition where there was no drug testing. The winner's medal hangs around the neck of another powerlifting award, a foot-high statue of a bronze buxom woman in a bikini that sits in her closet. Those victories, she said, have not come close to replacing the ones she had in cycling.
Speaking generally, Thomas gave her explanation of how honest athletes turn bad. First, coaches, or ''hook-ups,'' give athletes what the coaches call vitamins, she said. Then those coaches slowly start changing the routine, giving their athletes pills of different colors and dosages. By the time the athletes figure out they are taking performance-enhancing drugs, Thomas said, it is almost too late to turn back.
The Power of Addiction
''At some point, the athlete has a choice to stop or keep going,'' she said. ''But you start to think that if you don't take something, you're going to lose. And who's going to cheer for someone who finishes last in a heat?'' She added: ''Athletes don't really care about their bodies. They care more about winning.''
Thomas doubts that anyone in the Olympics is clean because every athlete has ''access to a whole medicine cabinet full of drugs.'' In 1999, for instance, she said she injected herself with an iron supplement for suckling pigs that she had bought from an online veterinarian. She could not find injectable iron for humans, which is supposed to boost performance. Five years later, at the injection site on her buttocks, there is still a lemon-size black-and-blue mark.
Athletes are not deterred by the financial cost of doping, Thomas said. She said she has known coaches who have often bought drugs for their athletes, sometimes from cheap Mexican pharmacies, because the coaches, too, profit from any success.
When asked directly about any personal steroid use, Thomas said, ''I can't comment about that now.'' She did say, though, that she believes steroid use creates a chemical dependency. Careful to use the third person, she said that athletes become addicted to winning and the self-esteem steroids create.
''You have to treat it like a disease,'' she said. ''Someone needs to figure out the root of the problem and heal the person.''
Though the United States Olympic Committee, the anti-doping agency and some sports federations spend money on education to prevent drug use, Thomas said she hoped they would start mandatory counseling for athletes who test positive. Bitterly, she said she had never received even an offer of counseling from USA Cycling or any other organization.
''I think it's criminal because they use the athletes and throw them away when they're done,'' Thomas said. ''They just want everything to look clean and nice because they want more sponsorship money.''
These days, she tries to stay healthy and, as she puts it, walk ''a straight line.'' She knows she has to if she is going to live a full life, which, for her, includes marrying and having children. Taking a first step, a few weeks ago, Thomas asked to borrow an acquaintance's 12-step book.
''I'm in the process of recovery,'' she said. ''I have to heal.''
''When I get up, I don't like what I see in the mirror,'' she added. ''Where did the old Tammy Thomas go? I need to find her.''
Old Habits Die Hard
Every day, she takes a multivitamin, iron pills and supplements like glucosamine and chondroitin for her joints. For extra energy, she said, she occasionally takes ephedra, an adrenaline-like stimulant that has been linked to cases of heart attack, stroke and sudden death. The sale of ephedra has been banned by the Food and Drug Administration.
''I haven't taken it in a couple of weeks,'' she said. ''Isn't that good?''
Then she switches again to the third person. ''It would be the best thing if an athlete admits that they have a problem and make some changes,'' she said. ''So it would be better for them if they quit the sport because, less temptation. It's not a supportive environment.''
A few weeks ago, she drove to Carson, 30 miles south of her apartment, for the junior national track cycling championships, seeing people she knew from her racing days. But she said that people ignored her when she said hello, even Des Dickie, the former national team coach. She said she sent Dickie an e-mail message that day, saying he should not be afraid to talk to her.
''It's like I don't exist anymore, like I never did,'' Thomas said.
Dickie, USA Cycling's national development director, said he did not see Thomas that day. He said he was reluctant to contact Thomas because she has threatened to sue him over the suspension. Dickie said he worries that the cyclists he coaches and their parents will deem him guilty by association if he talks to her.
''I don't have anything against her because she has always been a very genuine person,'' Dickie said. ''Personally, she created a big problem for herself and I feel terrible about that. But she did what she did.''
Thomas has recently found a way to look forward. One day, while working on her case, she decided to apply to law school. ''I feel on top of the world when I walk into a law library,'' she said.
On Thomas's bedroom floor is a study guide for the Law School Admissions Test. Last month, she received an application to the University of Mississippi's law school, taking care not to bend the edges when the package came in the mail. On that application she wrote her work experience: personal trainer, trainer at the Y.M.C.A., cyclist for the United States who traveled around the world.
Between recent workout sessions with clients, she drove to the post office to send the application by priority mail because she wants to begin her new life A.S.A.P. After handing the envelope to the clerk, she walked away with a vacant look, seemingly stunned at what she had done.
For the first time in a long while, she said she was ready to start over, realizing that her new life is a blank piece of paper, all white, waiting to be filled in.
''Sometimes I believe that there could be happiness in the end,'' she said. Then she swung open the post office's glass door. There, in the white California sun, she sighed.
Last edited by VT Biker; 06-29-07 at 09:56 AM.