Lance Armstrong

I could care less if it were to turn out that Lance Armstrong did indeed have some illicit substance in his blood that increased his energy level by increasing the amount of red blood cells in his system during the 1999 Tour De France. Becuase, the way it stands now, it actually probably wouldn't mean a damned thing.

Here's how I see it. The 1999 race was coming just off the heels of Armstrongs recovery from testicular cancer, for which he was obviously obliged to be in treatment, and probably chemotherapy. Now the question becomes, what exactly does chemotherapy do, in part? Well, it kills cancer cells, duh, but in the meantime it has got to be accompanied by some form of regimen that would aid in replacing the red blood cells that have been decimated by the cancer.

In other word, it seems obvious to me that the illicit substance in Armstrongs urine might have been, and probably was, a remnant of whatever medications Armstrong had previously been obliged to take in order to assure and to hasten his complete recovery.

Thus, in other words, the drugs Armstrong had been taking might indeed have contained the illicit substnce as a minor component, but in too minor of an amount to show up in the original test. Another possibilty is that prior testing in 1999 might have been accomplished in such a way as to cause the present test results to show up as a false positive.

And of course, another possibility is that the French are simply lying like dogs. Not the "French" per se, just the one newspaper-of couuurrrsssse. Naturally, this wouldn't be an attempt to increase readership among the French citizens whom the cultural elite of France assumes to the person hates all Americans. Nor would it possibly be a way to distract attention from the growing unpopularity of Jacques Chirac.

In reality, does the average French citizen hate Americans really that much? I've always wondered about that. It is possible of course, that the current situation as regarding Franco-American relations are worse even than is normally the case, and I certainly believe the French are jealous and resentful of our dominance on the world stage, despite the supposed superiority of their own culture over ours. But are they really so upset over an American cancer survivor winning their national sport seven times in a row?

And not just any kind of cancer, but testicular cancer, at that? Think about it.

Hell yes, they're pissed.