Le Monde is the "intellectual" newspaper, in the sense that French society
is extremely polarised: people either read Le Monde or L'Equipe but
not both. As far as I can tell, the only interest Le Monde has in bike
racing is to continually insinuate that all bike racers are dopers,
including completely erroneous reasoning, such as finishing articles
with: "Armstrong's cancer, whose presence has still not been explained."
Or course, anyone with any knowledge of epidemeology knows that you
can't explain any one single cancer, except for a few exceptions like
the one you get from asbestos or plutonium.

As for the increased racing speed compared to previous years, it's
clear that, apart from good weather, the UCI rankings, internationalisation
of the race, and no more "patrons" are all responsable. In particular,
in the old Hinault day you went 30 kph at the start, or else Hinault
would seek you out and make sure you got dropped. Also, riders realise
that winning a stage will make their whole career, so you now see
the race starting from the gun, which almost never happened, even in
1999. The first mountain stage this year literally started this way,
with an attack as soon as the start was given, whereas in 1999, it
was a procession for the first climb, with Cipollini at the front
for the whole climb.
I bet that they didn't mention any of this in the article.

I've having to say all this stuff all the time recently, and I'm
getting pretty annoyed by it.

-ilan