Bemused Amusements

I have to admit that I'm not a big cycling fan, and I'm annoyed by the sudden presence of yuppie guys with those tight little outfits on their pricey bikes getting in my way on the road. But the Lance Armstrong thing has me really amazed.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding of the situation is that Lance Armstrong was just another guy on a bike until he was stricken with cancer. Then he comes back -- well, he does more than come back -- he wins 7 straight Tour de France races against the world's top competition. And we fault the French for finding all this. . . shall we say. . . unlikely?

We all want to believe the story -- that a person can turn around an adverse situation and become invincible. And there's ample evidence supporting this possibility -- I saw a movie just last week in which Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie stood in the middle of a room and killed about 3 million professional assassins -- a feat unmatched by anything achieved by Jennifer Aniston over the course of several seasons on Friends.

Now I don't know if Armstrong doped. But if he could dope and escape detection for several years, you know that a lot of those other guys were doping too. As for the overcoming adversity theory, didn't any of those other guys have to overcome their own problems?

We'll probably never know -- we want to believe the story, but the best guess is that the cancer, or the chemo, or some other part of the treatment, physically changed something for Lance Armstrong. I know it sounds pretty lame, but 7 straight victories? This guy wasn't exactly Tiger Woods before he got cancer. Something changed.