Run to Win

Lance Armstrong has won his final Tour de France yesterday. Much is said about how he is one of the greatest individual athletes of all time, which I am not sure I necessarily agree (or disagree) with. He has certainly dominated his sport for most of the past decade. He has been accused continually of doping, and despite having been tested hundreds of times has never once been found to have cheated. Well, that isn’t quite true; they’ve found him to have cheated a few times, but each time they were either making stuff up or just wrong. The only time that he has used illegal substances (in the competitive world) was when he was going through chemotherapy.

My question is, how many times are they going to test him now that he is retired? Is there a statute on how long they can invalidate his win? Or if he says, “I’m retired, I don’t want to subject myself to this nonsense anymore” will they just assume that it would have been a positive test? Or is there a chance that he’ll actually be left alone and not forced to fill a cup every other day?

His 7th win in a row at the Tour was a great accomplishment. Only Eddy Merckx has worn the maillot juane more times; 111 times to Armstrong’s 83. I will miss reading about his races, but it is nice to see somebody determine a good time to get out of the game and is able to quit while they are ahead. I am sure that he could still be competitive for another year, but if he wants a chance to recover and actually have a life that isn’t dominated by his job for a few years, who can blame him?

Horseshoes is a good game. I am not sure if it is a sport or not, but you can sure get tired playing it. It’s a good game for a BBQ or some folks just hanging around; I recommend having actual sand pits though. My yard looks like a couple sand pits now, but we were just playing on grass with stakes pounded in the ground. There’s some good bounce going on there…and by good I mean that the bounce made it really difficult to score. My uncle’s backhanded flip method worked better for me though; no bouncing. I just have to learn to aim throwing that way.

Drew Rosenhaus is a reviled sports agent in the NFL world. He seems to be behind a lot of big names holding out for new contracts. Some people believe that this is okay, because it is his job to get people the most money that they can. The problem with that, though, is that a lot of his agents have contracts with their organizations that they are breaking. Shaun Alexander is a franchise player with no contract; I have no problem with him holding out (note: I don’t know who his agent is; I just use him as an example), but people like TO or Edgarrin James have no business holding out. They should not have signed the paper if they did not want to be part of their organizations.

All of that aside, no matter how much everybody seems to hate him, Drew Rosenhaus is a hero right now for saving a boy’s life after he sank to the bottom of the pool. He administered CPR on the boy and revived him, and for that you gotta give him props. In the Cairn’s Blog he notes that in ‘97 he rescued some of his clients from a drifting boat, so I guess Rosenhaus is a good guy to have around during water sports.

I just wish that he had a little more integrity. Not that he is alone in that department; I just hear his name a lot and it chafes.

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TO is having a ball in the media with yet more great quotes. Basically, he thinks that he should be traded or released, and if he is forced to go to training camp then he will cause trouble. I say, if he is not going to be traded to the Raiders, then TO should be left to either hold out or do his job. He wants the Eagles organization to begin acting like adults, because holding him to his contract while he threatens to hold out or cause problems if he doesn’t get what he wants is obviously more mature.

Over at Fantasy Football Notes they have the right idea, though: Send TO to Calgary. Wouldn’t that be a hoot.

According to the latest news release, Tedy Bruschi will be sitting out the 2005 season after his mild stroke last winter.

Losing a leader like Bruschi is going to be hard on the team; possibly as much as losing offensive coordinator Charlie Weiss. The Patriots prepared themselves as best they could through the free agent market and the draft, though, and will still have 16 active linebackers in training camp. Hopefully, Tedy will still be an active part of the organization this year even if he isn’t in pads and on the field.

I hope that he can continue to recover from his stroke and return next year, as long as he can safely do so without having to risk another stroke.

More fun with TO. Apparently, he thinks that he is the same as god, now. He told the Miami Herald, “I don’t have to worry about what people think of me, whether they hate me or not. People hated on Jesus. They threw stones at him and tried to kill him, so how can I complain or worry about what people think? How can you justify hating me after I worked so hard rehabilitating from a broken leg to get back to the Super Bowl to help our team try to win? Really, you’ve got to look at who the villain really is in this thing.”

TO is even more full of himself than I thought he was, which is saying a lot because I can’t think of many people that have their head that high in the clouds.

The Eagles need to talk to the Raiders…I think that Terrell Owens would be a great trade for Jerry Porter. The Raiders get another big name to use to pack their stadium, they will have the two best receivers in the game (arguably), Philadelphia gets a quality receiver and loses all that nonsense from TO in the locker room and in the media. Randy Moss could let TO take in the little yardage all day long, and he’ll make 2 or 3 great plays a game and steal all the points. The news would love seeing these two matched against one another every week. I sure as hell would.

In a continuation of yesterday’s story, a 16 year old driver in Germany plowed off an exit ramp from a highway into the Australian cycling team and killed 29-year old Amy Gillett. Two of her teammates are still in critical condition and three others are still in the hospital as well. The Australian cycling team has been decimated and the program has been put on hold for the time being.