TOUR DE FRANCE: Since 1903, riders in the world’s most famous cycle race have been injecting ‘go faster’ liquid into their veins and littering the French countryside with syringes in a bid to have a competitive advantage.
But this year, competitors are trying a different tack. The only things to have been tossed to the side of the road so far have been the riders themselves, and the only objects to have punctured skin have been collar bones as, one by one, lycra-clad participants have crash landed on cobblestones and tarmac.
When the route was announced Lance Armstrong wrote on Twitter: “Going. To. Be. Carnage.” And so it has been.
After stage three, the seven-time tour winner, dropped to 18th in the overall standings. “You see a lot of times in these races, it’s a question of luck, good or bad, technical issues, flat tyres and crashes,” he said.
“Sometimes you are the hammer and sometimes you are the nail, today I was the nail.”
Or sometimes you’re the vein, other times you’re the syringe full of performance enhancing drugs. Not that you’d know about that eh Lance?
