Clinger had a contract with U.S. based pro cycling team Webcor at the time but his sponsors were not happy. After beginning a removal process to appease his team owners, he decided the process was too expensive at an estimated $25,000 and too painful. Instead, he paid a tattoo artist a few hundred dollars to have the mask finished. In the time since, his cycling career has had more descents than summits.

Like many of the decisions he'd made, the tattoo was easy to justify in his mind.

For starters, it was something he was in control of.

The facial tattoo, he said, also provided layers of protection — both physical and psychological — as he battled the demons on and off his bike.

"I did it partly to make the face stronger," he said. "I would see other people in the races and their faces showed pain and weakness. They're sweating and the sun is in their eyes and they are squinting and in pain. I got the tattoo to hide that. I wanted people to see me and think I was strong."

Instead, Clinger reinforced the notion he was a talented, but ultimately troubled cyclist.

He has since added more tattoos, such as the cobras sweeping up to strike on both sides of his neck.

"I ended up attracting the wrong people," he said. "People that didn't have my best interests in mind."

Hitting bottom

After being dismissed from the Webcor team, Clinger bounced from team to team.

Clean for periods of time, he'd suffer an emotional setback and begin using drugs again.

In 2006, training for an indoor track race in Pennsylvania, Clinger was arrested after a bar fight on charges of trespassing because he refused to leave the bar.

His reputation in tatters in 2007, he signed with the upstart Rock Racing team — a squad that relished its bad-boy image — and struggled for results before suddenly disappearing from the racing scene again.

But even Rock Racing, a domestic team filled with international cyclists who had doping violations and past suspensions, grew tired of Clinger's unpredictable lifestyle.

Instead of adding him to its professional roster, Clinger said, Rock Racing licensed him as a Cat 1 amateur and hoped he'd prove himself in lower-level races and he quit the team.

An arrest for driving under the influence was followed by a two-month stay in a rehab center. He got himself sober, rejoined Rock Racing in 2008.

Despite being sober for nearly a year, it didn't take long before he fell back into drug addiction. Before long, he said he was smoking crack, drinking heavily. Once again, he was without a team and his career seemed finished.

"I never tested positive on the bike," he said, insisting he has never used performance-enhancing drugs. "I did those stupid mistakes and got arrested. That right there was the downfall. The downfall definitely wasn't the tattoo. It was my actions off the bike."