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Professional cycling goes on even after the Tour de France, but you'd never know if if all you did was follow Lance Armstrong. Even before his comeback, he rarely took part in late-season events after the Tour was finished.

So there's little news to report about what Armstrong is up to these days. (We could tell you that he's been motorcycle riding with some righteous buddies, yadda, yadda, yadda....but you can read his Twitter stream just as well as we can.)

What we can offer in the way of Armstrong news comes from our viewing last night of the I Love You, Man DVD, which was released this week. (Even better the second time around, by the way.)

Anyway, in among the extras on the DVD were some deleted scenes, one of which contained some gentle ragging of Armstrong by Andy Samberg.

In the scene, Paul Rudd's character, Peter Klaven, has dropped in on a gay bowling league to see his gay brother Robbie (played by Samberg).

Peter is excited about his new 'bromance' with Sydney Fife (Segal), but he's worried that the guy has too many other friends to share his time with. That's when Samberg, as Robbie, warns him...

Samberg: "Just make sure this Sydney guy isn't a 'friend slut' like Lance Armstrong."

Rudd: "What's that mean?"

Samberg: "Lance Armstrong every week is in Us magazine working out with a new celebrity...one week it's Gyllenhaal, the next week it's McConaughey. It's disgusting."

Ouch! Well, at least they stayed away from an Ashley Olsen zinger. 

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You've probably already heard the news that Alberto Contador, the 2009 Tour de France champion, returned to his home country of Spain yesterday and promptly trashed Lance Armstrong, the teammate who helped him win his second Tour championship.

What a pendejo, our friend Gustavo "Ask a Mexican" Arellano might say.

But actually, we're very pleased. Here's why.

Throughout this year of watching Lance Armstrong on his comeback, our excitement to see the man back on his bike was tempered with the frustration of his maddening team situation.

What's the point of a comeback, we have asked repeatedly, if the greatest Tour de France champion in history is just going to take a back seat to a teammate?

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​Well, this is what we've all been waiting for.

For the first time ever, the final Saturday in a Tour de France features a high mountain climb, and what a climb! Mont Ventoux is about to begin, and we're ready: we have our coffee and the race playing on Versus.

When this course was announced last fall, we knew this would be a giant of a day.

So we note with some disappointment that third place is all that seems to be at stake. Still! This should be a great day, and one never knows what will happen.

The climb is approaching, and Astana is whipping up the peloton. Bring on the attacks!

9:22 Versus did a typically great job this morning setting up the situation. Best moment: when Frankie Andreu asked Andy Schleck whether he'll be worried about Lance Armstrong trying to take away second place from him. The youngster replied that it's Armstrong who should be worried. That's the spirit!

With first place probably out of reach, the top riders will be thinking "podium." It means a lot to be standing on that platform in Paris, and that's why a race for third place is a bigger deal in cycling (or horse racing!) than it might be in American sports.

The Schlecks, therefore, will be looking to get Frank into third next to Andy in second. But Astana no doubt dreams of a Contador-Armstrong-Kloden podium. Keeping that in mind might explain how some of the attacks go in a few minutes...
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Sipping coffee this morning with Versus on the telly. The Tour de France should become a brutal slugfest in another hour or so, and we figured we'd tap out a few notes as it happens...

For some background, take a look at our recent posts on the great French race, or look at our full archives of the Armstrong comeback.

9:39 am: Uh-oh. We already don't like what we see. On the final warm-up before the Verbier, the Col des Mosses, Lance Armstrong has been hovering in the back end of the peloton. This might mean nothing, but we can't help feeling queasy over it. We're having flashbacks to 2006, when the first indication that Floyd Landis was going to have a horrible stage was the way he kept falling back in the peloton on early climbs.

But we also can't help thinking of Armstrong's own rope-a-dope tactics, when he faked out Jan Ullrich in a key stage one year by pretending to appear weak.

Breakaway and peloton now zooming down the other side of the Col.


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The Tour de France got a lot more interesting today, one day ahead of schedule.

We already knew that tomorrow's stage into the Swiss Alps would turn up the fireworks in what has been a "slightly boring" race (according to Armstrong himself).

The surprise today was that Lance's old teammate George Hincapie, who selflessly helped Armstrong win his previous seven Tour championships, missed out on taking over the Tour's legendary yellow jersey by five seconds, and then bitterly blamed Lance's team for it.

Explaining this spat between good friends requires a pretty technical understanding of the Tour's workings, but we'll try to keep this simple...


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We've been thinking it, but Lance went ahead and said it.

At the end of today's stage of the Tour de France, which is now nearing the end of its second of three weeks, the seven-time winner used his Twitter account to sum up his feelings about today's leg of the legendary race:

"Wet and cold. And slightly boring."

Ah, so it's not just us.

For months, we've been looking forward to this Tour, which the Versus channel keeps telling us is the MOST EPIC TOUR EVER.

But we've hardly been able to keep awake.

Except for a thrilling few moments when the race passed through the tiny principality of Andorra last week, this race has been a real snoozer.

We're not sure why. For the first time, we get to see the race here not only live but in beautiful HD. (On the big screen, this thing is jaw-droppingly gorgeous.)

And this year's race does feature a stellar lineup of recent Tour winners and top contenders.

Maybe our disappointment has something to do with the way none of the other teams have been able to counter the sprint wins of Mark Cavendish, a British lad with all the charm of a steaming turd.

Or maybe it's just that the Versus host, Craig Hummer, makes us want to throw bike wrenches at the television. (Al Trautwig, where are you when we need you?)

Well, for whatever reason, we've been very uninspired.

Sunday, that should change.

The Tour finally reaches the Alps, where a series of tough stages culminating on the following Saturday will decide this battle between Lance Armstrong and his young Astana teammate, Alberto Contador. (The Italian fellow currently wearing the yellow jersey will likely give it up on Sunday.)

We can only hope, however, that the race between those two really is decided on the road, and not in the Astana team bus by director Johan Bruyneel.

Tomorrow, Lance Armstrong begins cultural learnings of the Tour de France for make benefit glorious nation of Kazakhstan.

The 7-time champion is making his return to the Tour as part of a rocky comeback that has included a broken collarbone, some flashes of brilliance, and steadily improving results. Despite the setbacks, Armstrong seems to have convinced the experts that he has a chance to place high in this race, or even win it.

However, predicting winners can be extremely difficult in a race that has so many oddities. Among them: that Armstrong, who formerly rode for all-American sponsors like the U.S. Postal Service and The Discovery Channel, is employed this year by a team sponsored by the Kazakh government. (The Team, Astana, was originally built around a Kazakh cyclist who turned out to be a big doper.)

This week, we learned that the Borats back in Kazakhstan want their team back, and plan to give Armstrong and director Johan Bruyneel the boot as soon as possible.

But for now, anyway, Lance rides for Central Asian, post-Soviet glory.

Sexy time!

As we predicted back in December, this may be the weirdest Tour de France in a long, long time.

For many Americans, the Tour de France is the one and only cycling event they actually watch -- and then only to see what Lance is up to. For these casual fans, the race can prove to be utterly incomprehensible. So here's a half-assed, tossed-together guide to help you understand what the hell is going on...

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As we noted several months ago, this year's Giro d'Italia -- Italy's answer to the Tour de France -- was given a very strange layout to celebrate the race's centenary.

That layout was designed before race organizers knew that Lance Armstrong was going to make a comeback and race in the Giro for the first time. But even if they had known he was coming, the layout couldn't have been designed in a more favorable way to the legendary Texan.

Specifically, I'm talking about tomorrow's stage 12, the longest individual time trial I can ever remember seeing.

Armstrong is so strong in individual time trials -- which are raced solo, against a clock rather than against other riders -- he racks up major time gaps on other competitors over relatively short distances. (Never more dramatically than when he actually caught and passed his biggest rival, Jan Ullrich, over a short time trial that began the 2005 Tour.)

Tomorrow's race, however, is simply insane...

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After an unplanned collarbone fracture, Lance Armstrong's comeback gets back on track this weekend with one of his big goals: Italy's three-week grand tour, the Giro d'Italia.

For most casual Americans fans, cycling means the Tour de France, and Lance will race in that spectacle in July. But the Giro is also a major event on the international cycling calendar. And this one is special, not only because it's been 100 years since the first Giro in 1909.

There will be a couple of interesting firsts at the Giro this year:

It's the first time Armstrong has ever participated.

And it's the first time that Italy's national champion will not be racing.

Interestingly, there's a reason to believe those two things are related.

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Seems like just days ago we were posting photos of Lance Armstrong showing off his big new scar after a metal plate and twelve screws were installed to hold together his shattered collarbone. But he's mended so quickly, he's making his return to racing tomorrow in New Mexico.

As late as yesterday, Armstrong didn't think he'd get to race in the Tour of the Gila, but it had nothing to do with his injury: arcane cycling rules prevented top-level international players like Lance from competing in local events like the 5-day race based in Silver City, New Mexico.

But after some wrangling with international cycling officials, those rules were suspended, and Armstrong will compete on a 3-man team, with Levi Leipheimer and Chris Horner. The three have had to scramble after making other plans. They'll be racing to N.M. tonight to line up for tomorrow's start.

Want to send him your well wishes? Write him an e-mail!