Media Spin

While I’m on my box, I was appalled, but not surprised to find the French Sports Media attacking Lance Armstrong. The allegations are not new when ever you have an athlete that dominates the sport like Lance did you get suspicion. They French are just miffed that he wasn’t like Lancé Armstrong from Paris rather than from Texas. Le Tour is a part of the French identity the fact that a Frenchmen hasn’t won for a long time is hard for them to stomach. The fact that the guy that came and dominated the Tour was American does go down well in France. One French commentator suggests that it was appalling “used” cancer as an excuse to take drugs and win the tour is absolutely ridiculously. He suggested that Lance’s comments that it was cancer that gave him motivation to win the tour were a cover up for the drugs. Lance said that cancer was the reason he competed because he wanted to prove that cancer is not a life sentence that only can you survive cancer but it can make you stronger. So how did Lance win then without the drugs? Well I think it is a mixture of two things determination and freaky genetics. Since Lance was young he was into endurance sports and the Tour was the natural place for him, he was determined to win and looked a world-beater before the cancer. Cancer only made Lance more determined and more convinced that he need to win the Tour. He lives and breathes the Tour; trains for it like no other cyclist in the world. It helps that he was born with a heart 10% bigger than most babies that size certainly helped. Having a huge lung capacity also won’t do an endurance athlete any harm; his body can process oxygen and pump blood way more efficiently than other athletes. The French can’t prove that the samples are Lance’s and Lance can’t prove they are not. They waited till after he retired, despite the samples are from the 1999 tour and have been frozen since. Lance can’t go out and clear his name by winning the race an eighth time, so he has to fight these claims in court. The French have no gratitude for the fact the fact that Lance and the international viewers that followed him saved the Tour. Before Lance the Tour was a race raced by Europeans and not much viewership outside of Europe, the last tour saw 4 or 5 Americans in the top 20 and 1 French men, along with a record number of Aussies. Lance has made the tour worth watching and now he (not that the attacks are new) is being accused of bring the sport into disrepute