I will be regularly posting on this.

Pursuit of Tour's Champion Begins With Head Games

As the Tour de France approaches its start in Paris on Saturday, the two questions most asked by casual fans, especially Americans, are: "Will the French boo Lance Armstrong?" and "Is Lance Armstrong going to win again?"

On paper, where nobody has yet managed to conduct a race, the answer to both is "probably."

The booing first. There are 60 million French citizens, and surely five or six of them will be standing on a mountain road under a hot sun, having in all probability consumed wine in the hours before Armstrong rides by during the 3,427-kilometer (2,142-mile) three-week race.

As they did last year, that handful may jeer Armstrong, the leader of the United States Postal Service team. They shouted "dopé, dopé," for drug addict, as he climbed Mont Ventoux.

That was the second time Armstrong was heckled, a rare occurrence in the sport. In 2000, after his team dropped a popular French rider from its Tour crew, Armstrong was booed in the north, where the Tour started and where the rider lived.

Despite the criticism, Armstrong, a Texan, is respected by the French. A poll in the latest issue of the bicycling magazine Velo placed him second among "champions who best exemplify the Tour." Armstrong came in at 14 percent, just behind Bernard Hinault (16) and far ahead of Eddy Merckx (9) and French favorites like Laurent Jalabert (6) and Richard Virenque (5).
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That's quite a testament for Lance. The French take this *very* seriously. I do to. Well, maybe not as seriously as baseball.