Samuel Abt
PARIS: Anybody yearning for great theater in Paris on Wednesday afternoon should skip the matinee at the Comédie Française and head instead to the presentation of the next Tour de France.
Will there be high drama? Aplenty. Laughs? A dime a dozen. An audience on the verge of tears? That too.
The lead role when the 2009 race is presented at the Palais des Congrès will go to Christian Prudhomme, the Tour's beleaguered director. In his big scene, always a show-stopper in years before, he will explain how the race emerged virtually unscathed from the doping scandals that saw seven riders flunk drug tests, including the winners of most of the big mountain stages and the two time trials. (At least the overall winner, Carlos Sastre, emerged unscathed, unlike Floyd Landis two years ago.)
Prudhomme will declare, if the usual speech is followed, how the fact that these riders were caught cheating with the third-generation EPO drug, CERA, was a triumph in the fight against drugs.
Shame on you, Riccardo Riccò, winner in the Massif Central and the Pyrenees. You too, Leonardo Piepoli, winner at Hautacam, And you, Bernhard Kohl, king of the mountains and third overall when the race ended in Paris. As for you, Stefan Schumacher, first in the two time trials, hang down your head. The lesson is that winners never cheat and cheaters never win, except when they do.
What Prudhomme may not say is that, except for the 37-year-old Piepoli, the others are young - Riccò, 25, Kohl, 26, Schumacher, 27. So much for the usual speech about how the new generation of riders has chosen to break with the past and ride clean. Molière it isn't, but, hey, what is nowadays?
In an unaccustomed role of second banana - a bit old at 37 to be the juvenile lead - will be Lance Armstrong, emerging from a three-year retirement to shoot for his eighth victory in the Tour.
Or maybe not. Armstrong, who enjoys mind games the way most people enjoy a morning cup of coffee, has announced that he will race in selected countries next year to improve knowledge about cancer, which struck him in 1996.
It's a commendable goal and he will pursue it in backward countries like Australia (the Tour Down Under), the United States (the Tour of California), Italy (the Giro d'Italia) and possibly France (the Tour).
Why he is not racing instead in the Tour of Burkina Faso or the Tour of the Philippines, where his crusade might find more unturned ground, is a puzzle.
Armstrong will not be available to answer questions Wednesday since he is a definite no-show. According to a spokesman, he will be training and riding in a race he sponsors in his hometown of Austin, Texas.
Yet, he will be the elephant in the room. Not everybody is happy that Armstrong may ride again in the Tour.
The disgruntled are thinking about the report in the French sports newspaper L'Équipe three years ago that a newly developed drug test that was used on six urine samples from Armstrong in the 1999 Tour, the first he won, detected erythropoietin, or EPO.
He strongly denied it and challenged the validity of the retroactive tests. An independent, if disputed, inquiry supported him. Others felt differently.
Jean-François Lamour, France's sports minister during part of Armstrong's reign and now vice president of the World Anti-Doping Agency, an organization that is a loud critic of Armstrong, called word of the Texan's comeback "a return to the dark years.
"He's a troublesome guest of the Tour, like a rubberband that will lead us back to a page that seemed to be turned."
Armstrong replied last week, saying: "There are still doubts for the Tour. Everyone knows its importance, but the problems that I have with the organizers, journalists and fans could distract me from mission - focusing the world's attention on the battle against cancer."
So will he? Won't he?
One person waiting on a response is Alberto Contador, who won the Tour last year, did not compete this year because his Astana team was banned, so won instead the Giro and the Vuelta a España.
Contador is just 25 and the major star at the moment. If Armstrong does return to the Tour, does he ride to help his teammate Contador win or does Contador ride for Armstrong to win again? There's a question. Another one is whether their Astana team will even be invited to the Tour de France.
There have been some setbacks in the fight against doping. Two German television channels, ARD and ZDF, said last week that they would not transmit the Tour next year because of the scandals.
In response, the Amaury Sport Organization, which organizes the race, said the decision could "sadly encourage those fighting against doping to ease up in order to guarantee a broadcast."
"ARD asks that we fight doping but then takes offense when doped riders are found," the organizers continued. "We must look and find nothing."
For Prudhomme, the easy part will be announcing that the Tour will begin in Monaco and finish in Paris three weeks later. The hard part will be making this sordid situation palatable.
That, as they say, is show business.
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