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SACRÉ BLAH
The French resistance
BY CHRIS WRIGHT

It must have been particularly galling to the French when cyclist Lance Armstrong, riding in the Tour de France on Monday, donned the leader’s yellow jersey yet again — en route, perhaps, to his fifth straight victory in the Tour. It was, after all, Bastille Day. And this, the venerable race’s 100th anniversary, will mark the 18th year in a row the French have failed to win the thing — a fact that will have merde bubbling in the throat of the most levelheaded Gaul. Most pertinently, perhaps, the seemingly unstoppable Armstrong is — ptoo! — an American. A straight-shooting Texan American at that. A FOG, no less, as in Friend of George W.

No matter what magnanimity they may claim for themselves, the French do not like Lance Armstrong. They do not like his lack of humility, his Bushian "bring ’em on" manner. And they certainly do not care for his continued success in their beloved race. Imagine a French baseball team winning the World Series, a French singer winning American Idol. This is worse. How could an American have mastered the punishing French terrain more effectively than a native son? How could a loudmouthed Yank even begin to grasp the tradition and grandeur that surround this event? How dare he?

Even Armstrong’s heroic battle with testicular cancer — he was diagnosed in 1996 — has failed to win him any camaraderie. During the 2000 Tour, for instance, French authorities launched an investigation into performance-enhancing-drug use by Armstrong’s team, an investigation that has since been dropped for lack of evidence, and which Armstrong now derides as "a joke." It was as if the French simply could not accept the fact that a man like Armstrong could have beaten them so soundly, and so consistently, at their own game. It must be trickery of some sort.

But it’s not only the French who are loath to give Armstrong the respect he deserves. On Monday, Armstrong came within inches of joining last year’s runner-up, Joseba Beloki, in a nasty accident — one that led to Beloki being whisked away in an ambulance. To avoid the crash, and certain injury to himself, Armstrong swerved into a hay field and juddered across a bumpy stretch of grass before picking up his bike and hot-footing it up an embankment and back onto the road. In an article about the incident, the English broadsheet the Guardian described Armstrong’s quick thinking as "his third lucky escape of this Tour."

In the US, meanwhile, Armstrong is almost universally adored — or at least admired. Perhaps Americans are more inclined to believe that we make our own luck. It could be Americans are more willing to forgive a touch of arrogance in their champions. Or maybe Americans just appreciate an athlete who will go to France and take a bit of joie out of their vivre. In naming Armstrong its Athlete of the Year in 2002, USA Today could not resist crowing: "If he wins one more Tour de France, give him the Eiffel Tower." Fittingly, this year’s race began, and will end, at the foot of Paris’s most famous landmark. If Armstrong does come in first again, though, chances are the only thing he’ll be given is the cold shoulder.


Issue Date: July 18 - 24, 2003
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