In this final update before we all stop caring about cycling for another year, the sport may have finally found the key to its future success—a hero and a villain. But which one is which? I can probably guess how most of the readers of this site feel, but the truth is that most Americans still love Lance Armstrong. A lot. And most of the world hates America and its champion. A lot. If that's not a recipe for smash mouth, cutthroat, in-you-face bike riding I don't know what is.

Contador arrived back in his homeland to the strains of his national anthem—which Tour officials forgot to play when he accepted his trophy—and then quickly mouthed off about his non-friend Lance, who was obviously not that helpful.

He is a great rider and has completed a great race, but it is another thing on a personal level, where I have never had great admiration for him and I never will."

Lance fired back via his only form of communication, Twitter:

Seeing these comments from AC. If I were him I'd drop this drivel and start thanking his team. w/o them, he doesn't win.

hey pistolero, there is no "i" in "team". what did i say in March? Lots to learn. Restated.

Burn? I guess. Anyway, in just 11 short months both men will be back in France with new teams and then the cycling smackdown is on. If only they would give the riders wifflebats to smack each other with as they dodge spectators on 45-degree inclines, then we'd have a real sport.

With Tour Over, Contador Reveals Dislike for Armstrong [NY Times]
AFP: Armstrong hits back at Contador criticism [AFP]
Armstrong sets the stage to be a Tour de France force in 2010 [USA Today]

Or maybe he's just fine with standing on the podium. Right now he's third, about five minutes and change behind Contador, who kept the lead after the last competitive leg of the race. Usually on the final stage to Paris, cyclists clink champagne classes and play Axis & Allies amongst one another as they pedal to the finish.

The pride Armstrong carries is by no means a secret, but he seems to be content, this year, to be part of a team that includes a champion. At least until next year, when Armstrong slips some extra testosterone into his teammate's bottle of Evian. That'll teach him who beat cancer!

Garate Takes Tour Stage; Contador Virtually Seals Win [Bloomberg]
Chugging Along, His Ego in Tow [New York Times]

* * * * *

Boy, these days sure are dull when athletes stay alive and privacy isn't invaded. There's nothing left to do but buy a foam Wii baseball bat and try to re-live lost childhood moments. Enjoy the textual orgasm of Cohen, Daulerio, And Associates tomorrow. Rinse.

Barring an unforeseen "accident," Contador is in the driver's seat and in great shape to win the Tour next week. Meanwhile, Lance Armstrong has been laid low with painful reminders of his own mortality. After two weeks of posturing and feints and impassioned Tweets, Sunday's Stage 16 sealed the deal. Late in a day of tough mountain climbing, Contador made a break for the finish line and Armstrong could not follow.

I suppose I should lay off a bit and give the man credit for admitting what few other elite athletes are able to—he is not the best anymore. He was beaten soundly on Sunday and because of the odd team/individual nature of the sport, Lance was forced to confess in front of God and Jeremy Schaap that Contador was the man now, and he was merely his supporting cast. Lance will swallow his pride and do his best to help Alberto get his second tour victory. Then he will finish second—okay, after three years off, that's pretty good—and ride off into a sunset of nubile movie stars and rock star orgies. I mean ... being a family man and growing old with Robin Williams. Not a bad deal.

The real winner in all this? Kazakhstan, the Stone Age autocratic backwater that sponsors Contador and Armstrong's Team Astana. Doesn't this inspiring story make you want to move Kazakhstan now?

Alberto Contador says he believes Lance Armstrong's assertion of full support [ESPN]
Cadel Evans tips Bradley Wiggins to win yellow jersey [Telegraph]
LiveStrong, RideWeird [TNR]

You see, back in the ye olde times of the early 1990s, cyclists had to make their own calculations and decisions in the middle of a race. Then some kid named Armstrong came along with his cellphone-sponsored walkie-talkie team and won the whole thing and now riders would apparently forget how to pedal if they didn't have someone whispering in their ear all day. So to try and make things interesting, Tour officials have banned the now omnipresent radios for two stages just to see what happens. (So far nothing. Today's stage unfolded exactly the way everyone thought it would.)

There was some grumbling about the whole thing, but the good news is that it gave Robin Williams an opportunity to do what he does best—make fun of deaf people. Now before you watch this video and say "Wow, Robin Williams is old!" and then feel guilty when he shows off his heart surgery scar, I just wanted to say ... Robin Williams is old. How he became best buds with Lance is anyone's guess, but I guess cycling races are the new like Laker games for insufferable Hollywood types. Until Armstrong stops winning, that is, which will never happen as long as he has his trusty radio and magical wristbands.

With 10th-stage radio silence, Tour undergoes new twist [USA Today]
Lance Armstrong Chats With Robin Williams [Livestrong]

Maybe this is an ungenerous reading. But it's hard not to see the commercial as another expression of Armstrong's galactic persecution complex, one that completes the process whereby the cyclist has wrapped himself so completely in his own worthy cause that anyone who questions the one is necessarily questioning the other. Slate.com's Bill Gifford is exactly right to argue this is a move cribbed from the playbook of resentment politics ("Sarah Palin in spandex?" the headline asks). Gifford writes of the commercial:

Over somber piano music, we see black-and-white scenes of doctors at an operating table, cancer patients in hospital gowns, a bald man hooked up to a respirator, a man with one leg on a treadmill. All of this is intercut with scenes of Armstrong riding his bike. "The critics say I'm arrogant," Armstrong says. "A doper. Washed up. A fraud. That I couldn't let it go." Pause. "They can say whatever they want. I'm not back on my bike for them."

It's jarring, dramatic, and memorable-and not in a good way. While it's curious that a multinational company chooses to sell athletic wear in this fashion, the ad is even more interesting for what it tells us about Armstrong's psyche. On its surface, it reinforces the idea that Lance is standing behind the victims of a disease that nearly claimed his life. That is indisputable. It also, however, pushes the idea that Armstrong is some kind of savior. His Shepard Fairey-designed bikes are emblazoned with two numbers. The first, 1,274, is the number of days between his last race and his comeback. The second, 27.2, represents the number of people, in millions, who died from the disease during that time. Is Armstrong suggesting that there's some kind of causal link between him not riding his bike and people dying from cancer?

The ad also implies, disturbingly, that the cyclist's "critics"-and that includes everyone who thinks he's arrogant-are equivalent to cancer. It is apparently not enough for him to ride his bike and lead a positive campaign. He can't help but go after his detractors at the same time. And you thought Sarah Palin was divisive.

Armstrong's petulance is understandable, at least to a point: He's been held up as the face of doping in a sport that owes its very existence to doping. Its earliest practitioners were, as author John Hoberman has written, "continuing the work of of experimental physiologists interested in learning how much abuse animals or humans could take" and who, to weather the stress, spiked their coffee with cocaine and strychnine and took nitroglycerin to aid their breathing. If he has been persecuted, it has been for the sins of his own sport.

The result, however, is that he has curdled into the joyless, scowling Nixon-on-a-bike we see today, one who snarks at his critics from his Twitter account and who needs useful idiots like Rick Reilly to lighten up his image. (Seriously, read Reilly's latest. He talks to Armstrong's bare ass.) This may render him largely insufferable to a segment of the public, but it makes him a perfect pitchman for a shoe company that sells a certain spirit of sporty resentment, and sells it hard. The Nike commercial is the latest step in Armstrong's personal evolution. He has critic-proofed himself. In his mind, he is beyond any questions of guilt and innocence now. He is the Messiah of the infirm.

JerkStrong [Slate.com]

Armstrong's Astana team tore up a time trial today leaving him in a virtual tie with Fabian Cancellara of Switzerland for leadership of the Tour. (Cancellara will wear the yellow jersey based on fractions of a second.) But when Armstrong joined Astana it already had a leader, Alberto Contador, who won the race in 2007. Surely, he would be the one that the team would back as its premier rider?

But then in Stage Three, Lance saw his moment and burst off with the lead pack to gain 40 seconds on Contador. And Armstrong was clearly doing most of the pushing in the team trial. Now four stages in, Lance is tied for first, Contador is in third, and his team is going to have to make a decision about which horse to back.

That's if Lance doesn't decide to chuck it all and head back to Hollywood. He was fined by race officials yesterday for showing up late to a pre-stage registration. Where was he? Talking Dodgeball sequels with Ben Stiller. (Seriously. Stiller was there to award the yellow jersey to Cancellara today for some reason.) I don't understand why the French are so down on this guy!

This all could all mean nothing, of course, because the riders haven't even reached the mountains where ... say it with me ... "the race really begins." There's also the possibility that I have no idea what I'm talking about. Cycling on TV is surprisingly difficult to follow. What's the deal with all those European accents, Versus?

Stage 4 Astana Wins TTT, Armstrong Misses Yellow [Bicycling]
Lance rewrites the script [Yahoo]

Tour de France: Stage 1 [East Coast Bias]

This comes to us via True/Slant. In 2006, Craig S. Atwood and Richard L. Bowen published a paper in provocatively contrarian Medical Hypotheses — sort of the Slate.com of medical journals — in which they argued that Armstrong actually derived an athletic advantage from the treatment, in 1996, of his testicular cancer, known leg-crossingly as an orchiectomy:

While it is perceived that cancer, surgeries and chemotherapy might actually impede sports performance, the above evidence would suggest that unilateral orchiectomy promotes physiological maturation and athletic performance by enhancing fuel metabolism, muscle repair and erythroid function. Therefore, Armstrong's athletic advantage is most likely due to his unique genetic and physiological makeup coupled to the endocrinological changes induced by his unilateral orchiectomy, not drugs as suspected by certain reporters, cycling enthusiasts and French cycling authorities. Indeed, the use of drugs such as erythropoietin would be foolish given that there is evidence to suggest this mitogen can promote tumor growth.

Not that any of you athletes out there should try this at home:

The question remains then, would you give your left testicle to win the Tour de France? Only the foolish would undergo orchiectomy or administer drugs to alter sex hormone levels to enhance performance in endurance sports given the long-term risks to health and longevity. Likewise, the use of exogenous LH/hCG would be similarly problematic. Irrespective of this, artificially modulating these hormones for increasing human endurance performance is difficult due to the short half-life of LH in the blood. And while recombinant hCG has a longer half-life, it would be easily distinguishable from endogenous hCG. We do not recommend unilateral orchiectomy or endogenous sources of these hormones as performance enhancing modalities.

I have no idea if any of this is plausible, but the paper does boast an impressive array of footnotes and multisyllabic words, which leads me to believe the theory is not — you'll excuse the pun — entirely nuts. Science, however, has yet to answer the most important question about Lance Armstrong, which is what on earth compelled one of history's finest and most respected athletes into the arms of an Olsen twin?

Lance, enhanced [True/Slant]
Metabolic clues regarding the enhanced performance of elite endurance athletes from orchiectomy-induced hormonal changes (PDF) [Medical Hypotheses]

Actually it was a surprise doping test by Tour de France officials, who took blood, urine and hair samples in their neverending quest to prove Armstrong isn't on the up-and-up. Perhaps the biggest news here is that Armstrong said he was "surprised" by this. If you're a part of his Twitterati, you got these messages:

"Yet another 'surprise' anti-doping control. 24th one. This one from the French authorities. Urine, blood, and hair! Classic.."

"So I'm clear - never complaining about these tests. Def part of the job. Feel targeted? Of course. But anything to prove I'm clean. Onward."

Forgive me, but it kind of does sound like he's complaining. And as far as a cyclist proving that he's clean, it's been established that that's impossible; there are just too many loopholes. Armstrong should get used to the fact that as long as he races professionally, someone in a lab coat is going to be following him with a small glass jar.

Armstrong will compete in the Giro d'Italia in May, and will try for his eighth Tour de France title in July. Perhaps he'll reach the triple-figure blood test plateau by then as well.

UPDATE: Apparently they took "six clumps of hair" from Armstrong for testing, and he's still going on and on about it.

Lance Armstrong Twitter Feed
Armstrong Feels 'Targeted,' Hair Sample Taken [NBCSports]
Can Athletes Prove They're Clean? In A Word, No [ESPN The Magazine]

According to NBC Sports: "The seven-time Tour de France winner will race in the Amgen Tour of California, Paris-Nice, the Tour de Georgia, the Dauphine-Libere and the Tour de France — for no salary or bonuses." Armstrong will also post all of his drug test results online.

So where does this rank on the unretirement scale? Kate Hudson thinks it's more impressive than the first time Michael Jordan came back.

Report, Armstrong to return, ride in 09 tour [NBC Sports]

Minutes after the victory, it was announced a rider from Kazakhstan used a banned stimulant.

Dmitriy Fofonov tested positive for a "very heavy dose" of heptaminol after Thursday's 18th stage, said Pierre Bordry, the head of France's anti-doping agency. Fofonov was immediately fired by his Credit Agricole team.

A French police official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, told The Associated Press that Fofonov was arrested at his team's hotel and held for questioning.

The Kazakh rider was quick to blame both the "shape-shifting Jews" and the "assholes" from Uzbekistan.

The nut cream was first invented for Tour de France competitor Dave Zabriske (the DZ of the product's name), who is now attempting to make a profit from his raw groinal area. Yes, of course this appears to be an Onion article. That's what I thought at first, too. But this apperas to be real.

“Proper MainTAINTanance of the perineal area is essential during high level training and racing. Nothing can ruin stage race success faster than an infected saddle sore.” — Dave Zabriskie

Questions: Is it waterproof? Can I also use it as sunscreen? Can I get extra spicy?

The more I learn about cycling, the happier I am that I own a car.

dznuts — Protect Your Junk
This Is Real [Deuce Of Davenport]

This is the third rider, from a third different team to test positive this year. East Coast Bias, a blog providing excellent coverage of the Tour throughout, assesses the damage:

Unfortunately, I think this casts doubt over most of the Tour field. Cyclists from three different teams have now tested positive during the first half of the Tour, and one whole team has been withdrawn. Tour officials did indicate that about 20 riders were under suspicion at the start of the Tour after testing near the limit for a blood component commonly associated with EPO use. While I'm happy that the cheaters are being caught, I'm unspeakably disappointed that professional cyclists continue to feel it necessary to use performance-enhancers. It's also quite dumb for them to use EPO, for which there is a reliable test. Regrettably, one is left to wonder if the other teams are clean, or if they're just better at hiding their usage.

Unfortunately, the latter seems more plausible.

Tour de France Doping Scandal #3 [East Coast Bias]

How do we know that the Tour is finally cracking down on the use of performance enhancing drugs? An Australian is in contention to win it.

Schumaker Upsets Big Guns To Take Lead [Reuters]
Evans Happy With Lead In Tour de France [Radio Australia]

Actually, it got blog Vandermint Auditorium to thinking, and it got us to slowly nodding our head. When you look at the people Armstrong beat over the last six years of Tours de France. Almost every single one of them has been nailed for blood doping.

Now, it is possible that Armstrong just had such natural ability that he was able to win every race while being the only person not to be doping. It is possible.

Lance Armstong Could Not Possibly Have Cheated [Vandermint Auditorium]