Alberto Contador won the Tour de France for the second time today, capping a dominating three-week performance. His Astana teammate, some guy named Lance Armstrong, finished third.
Over nearly 3,500 kilometers and 21 stages of races over three weeks, Contador repelled many challenges in the mountains, excelled in the two time-trials — winning a pivotal race against the clock in the 18th stage — and won the first Alpine stage.
Contador, the 2007 champion, also had to battle a rearguard action [hee hee! - Ed.] within his Astana team, where the comeback of Armstrong to the Tour after 3 1/2 years of retirement raised questions about who would be the team leader. [source]
This concludes With Leather’s cycling coverage until next year, unless Armstrong bangs Megan Fox or someone tries to have sex with a bicycle. Hey, don’t scoff. It’s happened before.
Tragedy struck the Tour de France this morning when a woman was hIt and killed by a police motorcycle.
French police say she was struck Saturday while trying to cross the road in Alsace in eastern France during the 14th stage…. [T]he motorcycle driver was from a unit of the Republican Guard and could not avoid hitting the woman. The driver was helping supervise the race.
The driver fell off his bike, which then hit and injured two other people. Their lives are not in danger. One of the injured was a mother with a child in her arms, but the youngster was not hurt.
Yeesh. A sad day for the Tour, and a bad way to start the sports weekend. And it’s not helping that the banner image is riddled with factual errors. For starters, there was no bicycle involved in the accident. And the vehicle that struck the woman was a motorcycle, not a car. And the driver of the motorcycle was a police officer, not a cat. Although that last point can be kind of confusing, since the French are pussies.
Somebody sent this to me yesterday; I always thought riding a bike and going really fast was easy. And then I saw this guy just ride over the edge of a cliff, and I thought, “Wow, maybe this cycling thing is tougher than I would have expected.” I’m guessing he just saw a graham cracker on the edge of that barricade and wanted to make a play for it. It’s so much harder to squeeze the brakes on a bike when facing temptation from such delicious cinnamon-y treats.
Before the latest Tour de France started last week, Lance Armstrong was saying all the right things in relation to his new team, Astana. Sure, Lance would play a support role for team leader Alberto Contador. Sure, Lance wouldn’t try and upset the hierarchy of the team format which is the status quo for all Tour competitors. Yeah…about that…
“I am not ok with that theory saying there can be only one team leader,” said Armstrong.
“I have won seven Tours de France, I will have to be counted in.”
Armstrong’s remarks come after his amazing push in stage 3 yesterday that saw him move within 40 seconds of the overall lead, 19 seconds in front of would-be leader Contador. Team Astana, to their credit, is downplaying the feat.
Astana sports director Alain Gallopin said there would not be any problems within the team even though Armstrong has somehow upset the hierarchy. “There are no troubles at all in our team, it’s even the contrary,” he said.
Contador said what happened on Monday was unlikely to change his fate. “I do want to comment on the tactics of the team,” he said. “Everyone can draw their own conclusions. Anyway, the Tour will not be decided with what has happened today. It’s just a race incident.”
That’s a relief, because the last thing I need is to start caring about cycling again. It’s like NASCAR without the…beer? I don’t care much about people on bikes unless they’re wearing conical straw hats and pajamas, if you know what I mean. But, seriously, Lance. You’ve got a lot of ball pulling stuff like that so early in the race.
France’s anti-doping agency is at it again with Lance Armstrong, better known as The Only Reason America Pretends To Care About Cycling. Armstrong is now under fire for not respecting, uh, “the obligation to remain under the direct and permanent observation” of a doctor assigned to him on the day of a substance test. Creeeeeepy:
At question is a 20-minute delay when Armstrong says the tester agreed to let him shower while the American rider’s assistants checked the tester’s credentials. AFLD said cycling’s governing body has given its permission to open disciplinary procedures against Armstrong, but did not say what the punishment could be.
AFLD president Pierre Bordry noted that the statement does not say that Armstrong is guilty of an infraction. AFLD is expected to make a decision on whether to proceed with sanctions after its nine-member ruling committee has considered the tester’s report.
I have no idea whether or not Armstrong is dirty, but I respect the “game within the game” that PED testing has become over the past 20 years. If you don’t get caught, that’s as good as not having done it for me, since all these other clowns are out there shooting each other in the ass with who-knows what. Just because The White Barry Bonds doesn’t shave his legs and take part in their spandex circle-jerk doesn’t ruin his standing in a sport where he’s the only reason I even care. Besides, anything that annoys the French is automatically awesome.
THE SPORTING BLOG is reporting that Armstrong still plans to race in the Giro d’Italia in about a month, even though his collarbone may not be healed by then. Like I said, it was a ridiculous theory.
When we last left Lance Armstrong, he had just been solicited for a hair sample–much to his surprise–by the French anti-doping agency. Such a reaction from the seven-time Tour de France seems curious, especially with the big race only months away. If only there was a way to heroically back out of the race without dealing with the scrutiny of being disqualified. From the DashBot at Deadspin:
Armstrong got caught up in a scrum about 12.5 miles from the finish of the first stage of the “Vuelta of Castilla and Leon” near Baltanas, Spain, yesterday. As the road narrowed, a couple of cyclists in the lead pack crashed, taking Armstrong down with them, breaking his right collarbone and possibly aborting his cycling comeback before it ever really got started. (And the same week Matt Lauer hits a deer on his bike? Spooky.) But why am I telling you this, when 140 characters could do the job just as well?
Look, I admit that I don’t know how these KGB-style doping agencies work, and frankly I don’t think you could swing a baguette in downtown Paris without swiping someone that wouldn’t leak a positive Lance Armstrong test. So I don’t really know if Armstrong missing the race would keep his name clear, not that such a thing ever did Barry Bonds any good. And the theory would be almost too ridiculous to mention, had Nick Tarnowski of On The DL not said nearly the exact same thing this morning. I guess great, paranoid, sleep-deprived minds think alike.
