After the World Cup ended (What, was it already two weeks ago?), I found myself casting about for another internationally popular sport to ignore.  No self-respecting American-Athletics fan can let an inferior (a.k.a. not invented here) sporting event go by without dedicating a considerable amount of time to snubbing it.

And I found the best one around:  The Tour de France.  This has everything you need!  It's popular in other countries, but not so much in the U.S.  It has a difficult to grasp scoring system, requiring experts to tell you who is winning at any given moment (hint: he's not in the lead, ever).  It takes place in a foreign country (bonus: France!).  But the true pièce de résistance (soup of the day) is that, in recent memory, Americans always win!

That's right.  We don't care about the event, we don't understand why anyone would want to ride their bikes in the mountains, but we win the darn thing every year.  

It's not really surprising that we win.  After all, America has a tremendous cycling history, as I'm sure you're well aware.  For example, we had the U.S. Army 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps back in the late 1800s.  Can you imagine the enemy, perched on a hillside, watching in dumbfounded disbelief as a group of riders came charging down the opposite hillside, trying to balance themselves upon bikes as they aimed their rifles, only to land in a heap of twisted spokes at the bottom?  They'd be immobilized by laughter, and easily taken by the Marines.  This worked much better than the U.S. Air Force 33rd Battalion of Hot Air Balloons, which could only invade according to the prevailing winds.

In recent years I had slacked off in my scoffing at the Tour de France.  Frankly, I'd become bored with it.  Lance Armstrong had won something like 400 in a row, so you didn't really have to pay much attention.  Also, it had started to get on my nerves.

Lance Armstrong is an awe inspiring guy.  Not only did he compete and win in one of the most grueling physical competitions imaginable for many years, but he did much of it after being diagnosed with cancer and undergoing treatment.  Cycling already bugs me as a sports fan, because it's not really about talent.  It's just unbelievable will power.  It takes incredible discipline just to get into shape to compete, and then inhuman fortitude to push oneself up a mountain faster than other crazy people are doing it.  So watching this is like sitting through a long infomercial, the entire point of which is to tell you that you are a big, fat, lazy bum.

"We're riding bicycles up a mountain as fast as we can every day for a month!  When's the last time you worked out?"

Thanks and click.  Ooh, professional beach volleyball!  

I prefer sports where the participants possess so much raw talent that I can focus on that, and not a lack of similar will power, as the reason that they are making lots of money playing a game and I'm not.

But this year, Lance wasn't competing, so there was some intrigue.  Would a Frenchman win the Tour de France for the first time since, wait a second, have they ever won?  Well, they haven't since 1985.  

It turned out another American won - Floyd Landis.  Normally, that would be great.  I could mock the event, mock the host country, and then gloat that an American won.  But Floyd had to do it with a hip that will be replaced any day now.  That's right, apparently my grandmother just won the Tour de France while I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince myself to do a sit-up this month.  I figured if I started with just the one, by January I could be up to, say, three. 

Now I'm too demoralized.  It's a good thing baseball is going strong.  I can watch a fat relief pitcher waddle out to the roar of the crowd and be myself again by Friday.  Might even do that sit-up.