Tour de Lance: A Conspiracy?
While our friends at Austinist will probably take offense that we're being too hard on Lance, and our new friends at Parisist might claim too easy, we'd like to float some sheer, unverifiable, wild speculation out there. Even we don't think it's true, but stranger things certainly have happened. What rumor do we feel like starting? That in France this month, the fix is in.
That's right, we said it. The Tour de France is rigged, and surprisingly, it's rigged for an American. Now, don't get us wrong, we love our athletes juiced to the gills, but the fact is that cyclists are getting caught on all kinds of dope, and none of them are beating Lance. Sure, Texan grit and the lung capacity of a blue whale help, but we have a hard time believing that in a sport full of cheats, Lance can stay above the fray and remain competitive.
Next, you've got a 26-year-old up and comer David Zabriskie (Armstrong won his first tour at 26) racing for one of Armstrong's Discovery Channel team main competitors, CSC, going down in a rough crash, complaining of catching an elbow before going into a turn. Okay, we're biased -- we wanted to see the kid from Berkeley do well. But then Lance's perennial bridesmaid, Jan Ullrich slammed into a chase car crash so bad it required x-rays on the travel day because of potential broken ribs.
We're not sure entirely what the motivation is here, as we all know that many French hate Lance more than we hate the Yankees, but think about the untapped media and merchandise market America represents for the organizers of the competition? Michael Jordan was a godsend for the NBA, and nobody would argue that he didn't get the benefit of the doubt on a whole mess of foul calls. Okay, we know, take off the tinfoil hat. But seriously, if Ivan Basso has a 'mysterious fall,' you read it here first.