... beat him in the press!
Lance Armstrong is back in the news. The organizers of the Tour de France, never happy that; with Armstrong in the race, everyone else is there to see who comes in second behind him; have come up with a new strategy. If you did everything you could to stop someone, and none of it worked... complain that he cheated.
PARIS (AP) — The director of the Tour de France claims Lance Armstrong has ``fooled'' the sports world and that the seven-time champion owes fans an explanation over new allegations he used a performance-boosting drug.
The allegations stem from a research project wherein, among other things, 6 year old 'samples' (nevermind) were tested for a performance-boosting drug for which no previous test was effective. Armstrong was not immediately available for comment, but his website denies the allegations.
Armstrong, a frequent target of L'Equipe, vehemently denied the allegations Tuesday, calling the article ``tabloid journalism.''
``I will simply restate what I have said many times: I have never taken performance-enhancing drugs,'' he said on his Web site.
It doesn't help that the paper making the allegations is owned by the company which puts on the Tour itself, and has never liked the fact that Armstrong dominated the field.
L'Equipe is owned by the Amaury Group whose subsidiary, Amaury Sport Organization, organizes the Tour de France and other sporting events. The paper often questioned Armstrong's clean record and frequently took jabs at him — portraying him as too arrogant, too corporate and too good to be real.
``Never to such an extent, probably, has the departure of a champion been welcomed with such widespread relief,'' the paper griped the day after Armstrong won his seventh straight Tour win and retired from cycling.
It had to be like what happened when Jordan retired, and all-of-a-sudden, the winner of the NBA finals wasn't known before the season started.
If the paper hadn't been so virulently anti-Armstrong for as long as he was winning the tour, if it weren't owned by the company which organizes the tour, if it weren't for a lot of things, I'd suspect it could well have an element of truth. The way things are now, however, they'll have to do a lot better than that.
I know it's old, old news, but Contratulations again, Lance!
