LANCE STILL TAINTING TOUR

Disgraced cyclist Armstrong’s tweet takes aim at 2015 leader Froome, team

As a force for bad, Lance Armstrong remains unstoppable. Long since banished from cycling, he can no longer ruin the Tour de France with his diabolical cheating, but that doesn’t mean he hasn’t discovered other ways to taint the event and the poor soul in the yellow jersey who would dare to follow him.

On July 14, as he was about to fly to France to do a little bike riding for charity on the course ahead of the real cyclists, Armstrong did his best to discredit the Tour’s leader, Great Britain’s Chris Froome, on Twitter:

“Clearly Froome/ Porte/ Sky are very strong. Too strong to be clean? Don’t ask me, I have no clue.”

When Armstrong landed in France the next day, he naturally was asked all about it. He probably couldn’t wait to see the cameras. For those of you who pleasantly haven’t spent a mo-

ment thinking about Armstrong over the last couple of years but now might be curious to hear if he has learned anything at all from his epic, self- induced fall from grace, well, listen and judge for yourselves:

“Anything regarding a bike race is going to be closely scrutinized and questioned,” Armstrong told Sky Sports News. “I get those questions all the time, and the question is: ‘ Can this be believed? Are these guys clean? Is everybody like you, Lance?’ ”

I’m going to interrupt for a moment and try to answer that last one for all of us: “My goodness, let’s hope not.”

Armstrong continued: “I put it out there as, ‘ Don’t ask me that question, because I don’t know that answer.’ I tried to clarify it even later by saying I don’t have any credibility on that issue, I know that. I know what it’s like for a guy like Chris to be in the middle of a Tour to deal with the constant questions, which of course he is. And to be fair and to be honest to him, a lot of that is my fault.”

It’s not only Armstrong’s fault, it’s also his most significant career achievement. Not everyone has the special knack Armstrong has for being able to ruin things for everyone who comes after him, but a high- wire career of doping and cheating and destroying the lives of those who tried to tell the truth will do that for you. He doubled down on Twitter last week just to make sure.

Can you imagine the uproar if Barry Bonds or Mark McGwire, two of the many Lance Armstrong wannabes of baseball, posted a similar comment on Twitter about Mike Trout or Bryce Harper?

Armstrong’s tweet had the desired effect. Rumors started to circulate. France 2, the Tour’s host broadcaster, compared Froome at a particular juncture of the race to Armstrong at that same point. By the weekend, Froome said someone threw a cup of urine into his face and shouted, “Doper!” as he rode by.

Tuesday, Froome’s Team Sky reacted, taking the unusual step of releasing some of his performance data from one of his most impressive stages in an attempt to quash suspicions — not that that really is possible, not in this sport, not at this time or perhaps any other.

But here’s the irony in this: Cycling has never been more ready to be believed than it is today. Travis Tygart, CEO of the U. S. Anti- Doping Agency and the man who brought Armstrong to justice, said Wednesday that the sport had actually cleaned up its act.

“Cycling has one of the top ( drug testing) programs available now,” Tygart told USA TODAY Sports in a telephone interview. “Once new leadership came in ( at the International Cycling Union) in September 2013, they renewed their resolve and determination to protect clean athletes. They have new strong rules, have robustly improved the athlete biological passport; they test both blood and urine, and they have effective out- of- competition testing relying on independent national anti- doping organizations.”

So Froome, the 2013 Tour de France champion who is a few days from winning a possible second title, actually might be a safe bet to be clean in what once was the dirtiest sport in the Olympic world.

“Obviously, during the Armstrong era, most of the sport was shown to have been corrupted by the use of performance- enhancing drugs where the clean athletes had little chance,” Tygart said. “Sadly and unfairly, that generation’s choices continue to cast a dark cloud over the sport. The bad actors unfortunately have tainted it for everyone who wins in this sport.”

Lance Armstrong, that’s you. As Froome rides on, tweet away.

STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN, AFP/ GETTY IMAGES Lance Armstrong said of his tweet, “I put it out there as, ‘ Don’t ask me that question, because I don’t know that answer.’ ”