The Unyielding Harrassment of Lance Armstrong
Hey France. You see this? This is Lance Armstrong’s back. I know you don’t need me to tell you that, you’ve been on it for years.
It’s time to get off.
Is is the crepes or just an incredibly strong conviction you show toward undoing a man because he’s both extraordinary and not French?
Actually, maybe it isn’t the crepes. That second one sounds more accurate.
The French police went dumpster diving for trash belonging to each team involved in this year’s Tour de France. Lo and behold, the only garbage bag the officials said smelled like rotten eggs was the one belonging to Armstrong’s former team, Astana.
Fifteen containers of hazardous waste and the only one out of the ordinary was Astana’s? That’s, um … Astanashing.
The poor blokes charged with rooting through medical waste claimed to have found an abnormal amount of syringes and equipment for intravenous infusion. (NOTE: Doesn’t it seem like a syringe is an all-or-nothing item to be allowed in sports? Shouldn’t one syringe found in a medical waste container be equally acceptable (or unacceptable) as a dozen?) Whatever. If they found it, they found it. They’re going to test it and then – and I’m editorializing here – they’re going to do their best to trace an illegal substance back to Armstrong’s DNA. And that DNA? They’ve got plenty of it. It’s easy to get when you’re as far up someone’s butt as the French police are with Armstrong.
But this isn’t about him. It never is, really. This is about the ego of France’s highfalutin’ anti-doping agency known as the AFLD. Not only are they targeting Armstrong, but they might be picking a fight with the International Cycling Union (UCI) in order to justify the antagonism.
They don’t trust each other. Officials at the AFLD suspect the UCI isn’t doing everything it could to combat doping. In a 10-page report to the UCI that leaked to French media, the agency this month accused the cycling body of messing up drug tests at this year’s Tour [... and] claimed that the UCI’s testers granted “privileged treatment” to Astana.
The view at the UCI is that AFLD officials are unreliable publicity hounds. To rid cycling of its drug-tainted image, the UCI has spent a small fortune building one of the most sophisticated anti-doping programs in sports. It rejoiced that, for the first time in years, no rider tested positive at this year’s Tour. It is miffed at AFLD suggestions that its efforts are still full of holes.
So that’s 10 different types of terrific, huh? The AFLD discredits the major international cycling organization in hopes of stirring up enough doubt that Astana would have to be scrutinized all over again. It’s like the new prison inmate who finds the biggest dude in the yard and puts him in the infirmary immediately. Usually that happens when an inmate wants to be left alone, but in this case, the big dude in the infirmary turns out to be the guy protecting the new inmate’s enemy.
That metaphor was awesome. Go ahead and read it again. I’ll wait.
The French police aren’t commenting on why they’re rummaging through medical waste boxes in the first place. It’s a shame because such behavior is abnormal anyway and I bet there’d be a good story there. It would also be a good story if Armstrong just started slapping these people. I’m not even sure the specific identities of “these people” and so I don’t know how many such slappings would need to occur to get the job done. Armstrong might run the risk of developing a sore palm, his arm might get tired, his soft gold rings might start to form into a cheek shape on one side. Undoubtedly there are down sides to slapping a bunch of threatened, muckraking, witch-hunting French folk. Still, the juice is probably worth the squeeze.
Let’s say Armstrong and his Tour de France-winning teammate, Alberto Contador, were cheating, would they really throw the damning evidence in a nearby trash bin for anyone to pick up and sell on eBay? The French seem dead-set on Armstrong having been a cheater for years, but even the French would admit that if Armstrong has been cheating this entire time, he’s been astoundingly covert about it. Seven Tour de France victories in a decade and they’ve got nothing on him but their hunches. It doesn’t make sense for this evidence AFLD claims to have to be what they hope it might be.
Does AFLD’s history of targeting Armstrong mean that this finding is bunk? Not necessarily. Go ahead and investigate, you’ve come this far.
But I’m telling you France, there’s only so long you can jockey on one man’s back before he turns around and smacks you off it.
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1 Response for “The Unyielding Harrassment of Lance Armstrong”
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It seems like Lance can’t catch a break, the guy is obviously a cardio machine and has run a sub three-hour marathon. In 2009, he will also compete in the Pike’s Peak marathon. http://cmsmort.blogspot.com/2009/04/lance-armstrong-to-enter-pikes-peak.html