American athlete, Hamilton is the first American to win the 161-mile Liege-Bastogne-Liege in France in April 27, 2003, he also won Switzerland’s Tour of Romandie in early May that year. Hamilton participated and finished fourth in the 2003 Tour de France with broken collar bone sustained toward the end of the first stage, on July 6, 2003. This is not his first accident: in Stage 5 of the Tour of Italy in 2002, his rear wheel’s hub crumpled and he was tossed over the handlebars, hitting the pavement at 40 miles per hour. In that race, Hamilton sustained a broken left shoulder, torn tendons, bruised ribs, and road burn, but rather than quitting, he switched bikes with a teammate and rode over the next 14 stages for the two weeks following. He completed a 2nd place finish; then shortly afterwards, raced in the Tour de France, finishing 15th out of 189 starters, still in agony. In 1991, he broke his back.
The 2003 Tour de France was Hamilton’s seventh Tour; his team placed first in the team standings.
He did not complete the 2004 Tour de France because of injury but he took a gold at the summer Olympics held in Athens on August 18, 2004.
On Monday, April 18, 2005, the Olympic gold medalist was suspended from cycling for two years after blood tests revealed the presence of another person’s blood in his bloodstream. Injection of another’s blood, called blood-doping, increases red corpuscles and adds endurance. Hamilton denies the charges, explaining that the foreign blood was his twin’s who died in utero. He plans to appeal the ruling to the Court of Arbitration for Sport at Lausanne, Switzerland.
The ruling suspended him from competition until April 17, 2007 and forces him to forfeit all competitive results since September 11, 2004, the day his tests at the Spanish Vuelta turned up positive for blood doping. Hamilton had also tested positive at the Athens Olympics but the sample was accidentally frozen and deemed unusable; he therefore gets to keep his Olympic gold medal. However, admitting to doping, he surrendered his medal on May 20, 2011.
Link to Wikipedia biography