“If Armstrong was a Frenchman and we had seen the same data, we would do the same thing,” Claude Droussent of l’Equipe told French TV station LCI. I guess we can assume that means not a single of those urine samples from the 1999 Tour has been linked to a Frenchman. Certainly FdJ directeur sportif Marc Maidot thinks so. At least, I think he does. It’s kind of hard to tell. Here, you be the judge:
“Armstrong crushed the Tour de France for seven years without the smallest failure, even momentarily. His method, immutable, was infallible: to strike his adversaries at the prologue and to close the race on the first mountain stage. If one believes the revelations of L’Equipe, it corresponds with the timing of catching [those who used] EPO. Armstrong was very strong: he transformed cycling into a mathematical equation.”
Yeah. So: is he circumspect or simply a moron? Maybe the translation is just bad. I’ll let you make the call.
Meanwhile, the UCI has stopped calling the Grand Tour organizers childish names long enough to make a response to l’Equipe’s (somewhat innacurate) claim that the cycling governing body had not responded to Armstrongate. The UCI’s press release can be found here, and it is not inspiring. For those of you to lazy to read the all 77 of the words, the main verb phrase is “the UCI confirms that it is pursuing its global assessment of the situation.”
Finally, Cycling.TV continues its efforts to fill the gaping hole left in the English-speaking cycling world by, well, everybody. It’s currently replaying high profile races from this spring, such as the Tour of Romandie and the Rund Um Dun Henniger Turn. I didn’t link to results, because, if you’ve forgotten who the winners are, the action is still pretty exciting.