Rick Reilly + Lance Armstrong = Pain

 Rick Reilly has written a column about Lance Armstrong. This sucks. Armstrong is almost as infuriating as Reilly, so I’m telling you right now this will be hard to slog through. But hey, at least this article is ostensibly about sports.

Lance’s long climb

After a big day on the Tour, Lance Armstrong loosens up

Stage 4 of the Tour de Is He Really Doing This? was at a square here in Montpellier, France, called Comedy Plaza. Which was perfect, since most of the world thought Lance Armstrong’s attempt at an eighth Tour de France was a large joke.

Oh man, I’m giddy over here about that Tour de Is He Really Doing This? line.

Let’s just say that jokes about the Tour de France are lame in general, but especially lame if all you do is write Tour de Insert Name, Place, Phrase Here. It’s just dumb.

Acutally, Rick, most of the world didn’t care. And most of the world still doesn’t care. Sure French people are excited, and some enthusiasts here in the States(and I respect that), but there is no Tour de France buzz. There just isn’t. Just like there’s no Wimbeldon buzz. It’s a fun event, but no one cares until it’s actually happening…and even then, not so much.

 They’re not laughing now.

Nope. And they should never have been laughing. Lance is a serious, serious dude…except when he’s making bank by appearing in Dodgeball.

 By the end of that stage Tuesday, his Astana team had won the time trial and the nearly 38-year-old Armstrong — the sixth-oldest rider in the race — was a butterfly’s blink off the yellow jersey.

Such a delicate sentence. So pretty, Rick.

 And we haven’t even hit the hills yet.

Oooh boy. By then, he’s going to be a mouse’s ass whisker off the yellow jersey. The excitement. The pageantry.

 He was already the oldest winner in 57 years when he claimed his seventh in 2005. Then he took nearly four years off, went through about 17 girlfriends, had a child in June (Max), raised God knows how much hope and money to fight cancer, and then decided, “You know what? I’m not done.”

Yeah, and then he kicked poor Sheryl Crow to the curb when she got cancer, cuz you know, he can’t deal with that shit. Here’s a yellow bracelet. No hard feelings, baby.

Sorry. That was kind of mean. Too bad there’s no delete button on this thing.

 Armstrong is pushing himself so hard on this Tour that if you want to see him, you have to see all of him, butt naked, on the massage table. And so it was to this famous rump I asked: What would be sweeter, the first one, after surviving 14 tumors, or this one?

He has a famous rump? Huh.

 Rub. Knead. Pound.

Useless sentence. Thank you for describing what a massage is, Rick.

 ”This one,” he finally said, “because, even to me, it seems impossible. Even in the eyes of the experts, this is absolutely crazy. You can’t get away from the facts: I’m an old guy. But, damn, I’ve worked hard. If I win, I’ll have worked harder for this one than any of the other seven.”

In the eyes of everybody else, no one cares. But I’m glad you worked hard.

True story: This summer, John Henderson, a writer for The Denver Post, kept asking for time with Armstrong and couldn’t get any. Finally, he went to the top of Independence Pass — the road in Colorado connecting Leadville to Aspen — and waited. Within an hour, Armstrong rode by. Not a coincidence. Armstrong rode it nearly every day. “Had to,” he says now. “Had a lot to make up.”

When you preface something with “True Story:” what comes next should be shocking or surprising. That a journalist worked somewhat hard to get an interview with Lance Armstrong is not surprising. That Armstrong had to train for the Tour de France is not shocking. So why the True Story bit? It makes no sense.

 The world is starting to wake up to the fact that the Ancient Pedaler is actually going to be a cog in the Tour de France over the next three weeks. It boggles even Armstrong’s mind.

The Ancient Pedaler is probably an apt nickname for Rick Reilly.

 ”People didn’t expect this,” Armstrong says. “They’re all like, ‘Ah, the guy cheated his way to the top.’ But now? Nearly 38 years old? Out of cycling for four years? Tested more than anybody on the planet? Right in it for the yellow jersey? There can’t be a shadow of a doubt left now.”

Oh, here we go again. Lance Armstrong climbs up on his oversized circus bike and begins proclaiming to the world, once again unprompted, that he is clean. Tested more than anybody. Blah blah blah. Dude, we’ve heard it a million times. You’re a victim. You’re sooooo awesome. You beat cancer, you have yellow bracelets, you couldn’t possibly have cheated. That’s all well and good, but just shut about it. You don’t have to bring up the fact that you’re clean every 4 seconds. Bringing it up any time anyone will listen is a bit suspicious anyway. “The Ancient Pedaler doth protest too much.”

 Oh, trust me.

Never have, never will, Rick.

 But hearts are melting toward the old guy, even French ones. One French reporter stood up Tuesday and said, “Lance, in four days, you have brought more excitement back to the Tour de France than we had in four years here.” When the French start admiring Armstrong, you know the worm has turned.

 We still have so much to go — Spain, the mountains, the pitiless Mont Ventoux in the second-to-last stage — but this could really happen. Lance Armstrong could pull off the greatest American comeback since the fedora.

Ahhh!! Shut up! That tiny paragraph put a big hurtin’ on my brain.

 To be sipping champagne as he steers one-handed down the Champs-Elysees in Paris on July 26, Armstrong will have to do something he’s never done before — attack a guy riding on his bus.

Well, I’d recommend using a spare bike chain, and sneaking up from behind while he’s asleep.

 Teammate Alberto Contador, the 26-year-old Spaniard who won in 2007, will be a very steep human hill to climb, especially since he’s wearing the same jersey.

The mental images here are abundant. But that’s just a very poor metaphor.

 On any bike team, there is one star, whom the rest of the team works for — blocking wind, “pulling” up hills, literally delivering water and food and instruction from the coach. But what if nobody wants to stop being the star?

 ”Those are the unwritten rules,” Armstrong says. “The strongest man wins the event. The other riders work for him. That’s what I’d hope he’d do. I know that’s what I’ll do.”

Freaking LiveStong, Lance!!!! Whoooo!!! You got this one buddy! Everyone knows you’re the strongest!

 But Armstrong’s Spanish isn’t good and Contador’s English is even worse. They sit at the little table in the Astana bus but they haven’t talked about it. Spassky and Fischer never sat around in the green room discussing strategy either.

Hmmm…a chess allusion. Interesting choice, Rick. I guess if you’re going to try to make cycling sound exciting, you have to pick something even more boring to compare it to.

 ”One way or the other, it’s not going to go according to somebody’s plans,” Armstrong says. “When that moment comes, there’s going to be some emotions. Some hurt feelings. It’s not going to be easy.”

 And if he could top Contador, hold off the other 177 riders, and conquer his own aching body to win a preposterous eighth Tour de France? That’s bigger than Jack Nicklaus winning a Masters at 46, because Nicklaus didn’t quit the sport for four years. It’s bigger than Michael Jordan’s second comeback after three seasons away, because Jordan didn’t even make it to the playoffs. It’s the biggest comeback since, well, since Lance Armstrong coming back from a 40 percent chance to live to win it the first time.

It’s not bigger than either of these things, because no one cares about cycling. I’ll watch a couple stages, maybe, but by and large it’s just not a sport that Americans care about. Listen, sure people care about Lance Armstrong…but more because of his celebrity. At this point, 8 wins is eight wins, on more than seven. Is there a significance there? Yeah, he’s old, but he’s already the oldest to win and he already has the most titles, so we’re talking about differences of degree here…in cycling no less. This just isn’t that compelling.

 And yet as epic as this could be, it’s also been stupidly fun. Armstrong is looser than I’ve ever seen him at one of these things. He is seeing old friends. “It’s kind of like a five-year high school reunion for him,” says his agent, Bill Stapleton. Armstrong even drinks a glass of wine with dinner now. Unheard of! What’s next? A mint?

Whoa ho! Seeing friends is just stupid, stupid fun! I wonder if Matthew McConaughey is there. Just the guys, having some loose fun.

 The other day, cycling’s Dorian Gray was clicked into his pedals, about to get pushed out to the start line, when he launched into Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.”

So does this mean we’re going to find a dead and withered Lance Armstrong in closet, clinging to a beautiful photograph of himself in a couple years, the torture of guilt from the way he treated poor Sheryl Crow finally becoming too much? It’s literature, look it up.

 You can say that again.

OK. The other day, cycling’s Dorian Gray was clicked into his pedals, about to get pushed out to the start line, when he launched into Black Sabbath’s “Iron Man.”

I know that he means the Iron Man part. I know. I know. But it’s a poorly constructed ending, with a stupid comparison that Reilly doesn’t fully understand. Just par for the course over here I guess.