The McBournie Minute: Lance Armstrong, avid bike rider

Damn you, Lance Armstrong.

For those of you who haven’t heard by now, Lance Armstrong has been stripped of his seven Tour de France (or in English, “Tour of France”) titles amid some pretty conclusive evidence that he was doping the whole time. He has been battling these allegations for years, but a recent report was the nail in the coffin for him. I’m not upset with him because he cheated. To me, that’s perfectly acceptable, at least in this context.

No, I hate him because he made me side with the French.

As soon as Lance Armstrong began winning back-to-back titles, the Frenchies were on him. It was inspiring. First, here was a guy who came back from cancer, raised awareness about the illness, and beat the French at the only sport they are any good at: Riding Bicycles Over Long Distances, Sometimes With a Baguette in Tow. They couldn’t believe that someone was so good at it, especially because that someone was an American, one of France’s most hated countries in the world. So their journalists went after him, writing articles and books alleging he was doping.

I stood by Armstrong, and not just because the skill boasted in his last name has little to do with winning a bicycle race, but because he made the French, and much of Europe, so mad. That’s America, right there: the rest of the civilized world jeers and hopes you fall, but you just plug along, cheating where you can. And he did it five times in a row, how awesome is that? I’ll tell you how awesome it is, it’s so awesome that I was able to overlook the fact that he was dating that shrill Sheryl Crow and pimping piss-water Michelob Ultra.

But then it all fell apart. As it turns out, he really was doping, and somehow it was able to be proven years after the fact. (Kind of makes you wonder what kind of Howard Hughes type is saving those urine samples after all this time.) And it happened in October, of all months! Lance, don’t you know that this is booby-cancer month? Save your indictments for man-bag-cancer month, whenever that is.

If anything good has come out of this, it’s that I don’t feel the need to buy the Tour de France exercise bike until PED prices come down a bit.