Cycling

It seems that, in cycling as everything else, when the facts become intolerable it's no longer credible to insist upon them. That being the case it's not, perhaps, a great surprise that the Facts for Lance website appears to have disappeared. In one sense the question of whether or not Lance Armstrong ever took illegal performance-enhancing drugs is immaterial. He cannot prove a negative but nor do all those negative tests establish his innocence either. The difficulty for Armstrong and his legion of admirers is that the circumstantial evidence against him has become so substantial that you need to be unusually credulous to suppose that none of it can be true or that all of it is motivated by greed, dishonesty or personal issues.

There was no racing in the Giro d'Italia yesterday. Instead the peloton rode at a funereal pace to honour Wouter Weylandt, the Belgian sprinter killed in a crash on Monday. Then Weylandt's Leopard-Trek team-mates came to the front to lead the field into Leghorn. With them was Garmin-Cervelo's Tyler Farrar, Weylandt's best friend in the peloton. Watch from the 25 minute mark if you like: Dignified. Emotional. Perfect. And something you never want to see again. As I said on Monday, however, it's amazing how rare these deaths are (and Weylandt, the pathologist reported, almost certainly died instantly).

Lance Armstrong, shattered, is surrounded by the press after hauling himself to the finish line at Morzine on Sunday. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images When a great champion cracks in the mountains it's like the moment when a once-mighty battleship is superceded by a new competitor and rendered hideously obsolete. All sports have their moments like this and it's always poignant even when you never cared for, or even disliked, the champion in question. As is often the case, cycling has an especially brutal way of showing this. It's final and, like a broken-backed battleship sinking, just a matter of minutes. One minute you're there, the next you're not.

I'm not going to write about the Tour de France every day - just as I won't about the cricket season as soon as anything interesting or significant happens - but this was a great day in the Tour. Commenting on this post, Ronnie was right to suggest that a stage that involved a few kilometers over the cobblestones posed a risk that someone's Tour might end today. He was right: Frank Schleck is done. But that, brutally, is a small price for a superb race and, anyway, could have happened absent the pave too. There was a time and not so long ago that the racing in the first week was, well, a little dull. That's not been the case this year. Incentives matter in cycling as in anything else and now most of the contenders for the GC must attack when we (they) reach the mountains.

Fabian Cancellara is one hell of a bike rider, but Sartacus blundered today. That's him on the left and in the Yellow Jersey reminding the peloton that they wouldn't race one another on the approach to the finish of Stage Two yesterday. This is what had happened: it was cold and wet and on the descent of the Stockeu some 30km from Spa there were multiple crashes. Armstrong and Contador both fell. So, most dramatically, did both Schleck Brothers. Conditions were, apparently, made still worse by petrol spilled from a motorbike that had itself fallen. The race was blown apart.

  As you know, it's Ivan Basso in the picture here and on Saturday, for the first time and on the penultimate stage, in this year's Giro d'Italia he will wear the race leader's Maglia Rosa. He deserves it too. On the Zoncolan and then yesterday on the Mortirolo pass Basso has been the pride of the field in this year's superb Giro. Increasingly I rather suspect that the Giro is a better and, in some ways, tougher race than the Tour de France. The frequently terrible weather conditions play a part in this but so too do the unforgiving Italian mountains. In any case this has been a Giro to cherish and one that reminds one that, no matter how chequered the stories of the protagonists, cyling is the sport of a certain kind of truth.

Cadel Evans wins Stage 7 of the 2010 Giro d'Italia in Montalcino. Photo: Luk Beines/AFP/Getty Images. What with being deprived of, for various reasons*, Contador, Menchov, Valverde, Pellizotti, di Luca, the Schleck brothers, Armstrong and Cancellara you could have been forgiven for thinking that this year's Giro d'Italia might be a disappointment. Not a bit of it. In fact, I wonder if these days the Giro doesn't often provide better racing than the Tour de France. It certainly did today. On paper the stage from Carrara to Montalcino was interesting but not obviously threatening even though it included some 20km over the Tuscan strade bianche - that is, gravel and shale roads that offer a small reminder of the conditions the giants of yesteryear battled every day.

Tuesday's stage in the Tour de France was interesting and, in its way, revealing. Ultimately, it was about power and interest. Should the race be run be its organisers or, effectively, in partnership with the peloton and the teams? And, just as importantly, should the interests of the teams be placed ahead of the interests of the fans? The Tour organisers decreed that yesterday the riders would ride without the radios they've come to rely upon. The teams, unsurprisingly, objected and, equally unsurprisingly, the riders agreed not to race properly until the closing kilometres of the stage.

The Tour de France begins tomorrow and it will not surprise long-time readers that my main concern is that Lance Armstrong does not win it again. Like any sensible enthusiast I recognise Armstrong's greatness even if, as detailed here and here, I think that the Case for Armstrong is frequently overstated. Fairly or not, I've never warmed to him. This has nothing to do with him being an American since, if that were the case, it would be odd for me to admire* Greg LeMond so much. But I do admire LeMond hugely and, at the risk of being mischievous, wonder how he and Armstrong's records would compare if it was LeMond who had survived cancer and Armstrong who had overcome being shot. But that's not really the point of this post.

I'll give Lance Armstrong's fans this: they know how to count to seven. Beyond that, however, they're rather like members of a cult who refuse to accept that there could even be such a thing as another way of looking at matters, let alone the idea that there might be some merit to that alternative view. For daring to suggest that there could be a different view, it turns out that I'm "an absolute loser" who should, since I apparently think it so easy, try winning the Tour de France myself. This, of course, is the school of opinion that must demand that if you can't write music like Mozart you can't comment on his music or, in a different arean, if you couldn't win a Presidential election yourself you forfeit the right to comment on those who do. In other words, it is absurd. And infantile.

The Giro d'Italia isn't the only cycling story around right now. Not by a long shot! Consider this: Close to 200 prisoners will cycle around France next month, watched by scores of guards on bicycles, in the first penal version of the Tour de France. The 196 prisoners will cycle in a pack and breakaway sprints will not be allowed. They will be accompanied by 124 guards and prison sports instructors. There will be no ranking, the idea being to foster values like teamwork and effort. "It's a kind of escape for us, a chance to break away from the daily reality of prison," said Daniel, a 48-year-old prisoner in the western city of Nantes, at the official launch of the event. His last name was not given.

When he finally gets off his bike (again), does Armstrong see a future in politics? Looks like it. Interviewed by the Daily Beast he puts it like this: If you feel like you can do the job better than people who are doing it now, and you can really make a difference, then that’s a real calling to serve, and I think you have to do that. I felt a strong desire to come back and race right now because I felt we had a place and I could have a real impact and that’s why I’m doing it. I don’t think you want to enter political life unless you really think you can really have an impact. Don’t do it for a bet, or a dare or for your ego. Or for any other competitive desire you have. Do it because you can get in there and change people’s lives.

More Culture11: I've a piece arguing that no-one should be terribly happy about Lance Armstrong's decision to come out of retirement next season. Snippet: Unlike fans in other sports, such as baseball or track and field, many cycling fans simply don't see doping as a criminal or ethical offense. In its way, then, cycling is the purest distillation of the logic behind elite sport: Super-human performance demands supra-human resources. It is the cost of doing business. We might more profitably ask why our attitudes to drug-use have changed. Everyone has known for decades that the peloton has been a pharmacy on wheels. Until recently, this bothered few people.

The other day I was all poised to praise Riccardo Ricco, whose two stage wins in this year's Tour were thrilling pieces of cycling. I was going to suggest that if Damiano Cunego could show some better form there might be some hope that we could enjoy a modern rivalry that might offer a pale echo of the great Coppi-Bartali tussles of the past. Not so fast, my friends. Ricco has been kicked out of the tour (though, as always in cycling, the details remain less than clear) and the Saunier-Duval team has withdrawn from the race. Perplexingly, the organisers say this shows they are winning the battle against doping.

Since yesterday was Bastille Day, this seems as sensible a moment as any to ask: whatever happened to France? How did a once-great nation fall so low? And, are there any grounds for hoping that France may recover from this shameful, pitiful, nadir? I speak, of course, of cycling. No Frenchman has won the Tour de France since Bernard Hinault took his fifth yellow jersey way back in 1986. Worse still, apart from Laurent Fignon (winner in 84 and 85 himself), no Frenchman has since come even close to hauling on the Maillot Jaune in Paris. It gets worse: Fignon won the Giro d'Italia in 1989 and Laurent Jalabert took the Vuelta d'Espana in 1995  but those are the only two French triumphs in the grand tours since Hinault's final Tour win.