Lance Armstrong in contemplative mode

In any case, the Tour so far this year is not the rock-star farewell that Lance might have expected when he announced this would be his final go. There’s still plenty of time for the situation to change, but if the Tour keeps serving up twists and turns on a daily basis — as happened with the Giro this year — then the mere unpredictability and excitement of the stages will distract the press corps and public attention from Lance, especially if he isn’t in the thick of things.

A dope-free Giro would have been a laughable prospect just a couple of years ago. Italian racing legacy is full of substance abusers, most notoriously the sad case of Marco Pantani.

Yet a clean Giro is apparently (so far) what happened this May. And it was two former banned riders — eventual winner (and Italian) Ivan Basso and leading contender Alexander Vinokourov — who led the way (additional contender Cadel Evans has maintained a clean record and anti-doping stance all along) in saying they wanted a clean slate.

But the post-doping era is about to get its toughest test with the upcoming Tour de France. The Tour is where the biggest dollars get invested, and where the stakes are far and away so much higher that the temptations are irrevocably greater.

Still, there is reason to suspect that this will be the cleanest Tour in years as well.

Not only is the pressure on from within the ranks of the athletes themselves, the French anti-doping authorities are upping their administrative role. The French long have clashed with the official cycling governance body (and doping regulator), the UCI, whom they accuse of being intentionally lax and sloppy in testing and oversight. In this Tour the French have promised to conduct their own testing above and beyond the UCI’s.

Then there’s the issue of the doping cloud hanging over several Team Radio Shack competitors, notably Lance Armstrong, as well as team manager Johan Bruyneel. As charming as Bruyneel can be, he’s been a bit thin-skinned lately in responding not only to the doping allegations but in mishandling Team Radio Shack’s rejection by Tour of Spain officialdom. He and TRS will be even more in the glare during the Tour and need a bit more aplomb if they want to deflect scrutiny and curry fandom.

For his part, Armstrong already has embarked on his tried-and-true “I’m not worthy” strategy after finishing a surprising and impressive second in the Tour of Switzerland.

For Lance, who answers doping allegations by patiently pointing out he’s never tested positive, the Tour is a damned-if-you-do-and-don’t scenario.

The guy is closing in on 39. The oldest Tour winner in history was 36, and that was nearly a century ago. If Lance somehow were to win or even fiercely contend, he will face more brutal scrutiny and suspicion than ever in his storied career.

If he fails to contend, however, cynics will suggest it merely goes to show that in a post-doping environment, Lance cannot win.

We doubt Lance will be in the thick of this year’s race, but it may have nothing to do with doping. He has not done enough riding this spring to be competition-hardened. Other contenders, notably Contador and Andy Schleck, have the same problem. But the Giro headliners of Basso, Vinokourov, Evans and Vincenzo Nibali, this year’s surprise star, do not have that excuse, and there are enough other toned riders to challenge that Lance may find himself a victim of training and youth.

We also wonder if this isn’t Lance’s final Tour. The doping investigation is bound to take a toll eventually, and Team Radio Shack’s disinvites from the Giro and the Vuelta have sent a pretty clear message that something is awry with TRS’s reputation.

Even if Lance emerges from the drug scandals unscathed (or at least unindicted), he doesn’t strike us as a middle-of–the-pack guy.

We’re going to enjoy watching The King and that hunkered out-of-the-saddle style of his and his black socks and steely eyes on this Tour, figuring it may well be our last chance to do so in the world’s primo cycling event.

Bruyneel acted nonplussed after the Giro snub, saying the team hadn’t planned on riding anyway. The Vuelta rejection came out of the blue, though: “I am not only surprised, I am speechless,” Bruyneel was quoted as saying. No one who follows the effervescent and voluble TRS manager on Twitter finds “speechless” a credible adjective, but the point was well taken.

You have to wonder if there isn’t something else going on here. With Bruyneel and Lance implicated by Floyd Landis as a doping cabal, and with both under investigation in the U.S. and abroad, is a message being sent? Might the message be, put bluntly, to prove that you’re bringing a clean game to the event?

Bruyneel said he was told TRS was not asked to Spain because “other teams offered better options on a sporting level.” Bruyneel said he interpreted this to mean TRS was not considered competitive enough. That’s not how we read it. If the director had meant competitive, he would have said so. We interpret “sporting” as “fair,” “above reproach,” “ethical.”

In any case, Bruyneel’s defiant response may not have been the best advisable, given the current cloud over TRS. He and whatever PR handlers he answers to might want to look to the BP fiasco in the Gulf of Mexico for pointers. You’re not going to win any sympathy whining and sputtering under pressure. Nor are you going to endear yourself to event organizers with pointless threats that skirt the real issue.

We may have to live with speculation for awhile. But if there is anything to be read between the lines, it’s that Bruyneel and Lance — whether fairly or not — are considered untrustworthy by at least some influential segments of the cycling establishment.

The latest: “Lance says he will not be Team RadioShack’s main rider,” from the widely watched, respected, and linked Guardian. Now the Guardian, to be fair, is not the bike press and perhaps can be forgiven. But really, Lance not “the main rider” of ANY team Lance is on? Puhleez.

It should be noted off the top that nowhere does Lance actually say what the headline says. What Lance did say is that it would be “irresponsible” to build TRS (techie aside: Remember those initials? As in the TRS-80, or Trash 80 as we unaffectionately nicknamed it?) around him. OK, fair enough: Parse the statement out and it’s more or less true. You want other potential winners on the team, which was not the case back when Lance was riding for Discovery Channel and U.S. Postal.

But parse it any way you want: It doesn’t mean he won’t be the “main rider.” I suppose you could split hairs about what “main rider” means, so let’s put it in simplest terms. Main rider means the focal point of the team, the team leader, the chief strategist, the guy everyone looks to for direction. No disrespect to Levi or Andreas or whomever, those guys are not going to be TRS’s “main rider” as long as Lance is in town.

What you have to keep in mind here is that Lance, at this point in the 2010 season (yeah it’s early, as in 2009), wants to get everyone on his side and on the same page. He also wants to deflect attention away from himself for the sake of team building. Kudos on those fronts.

We went through this same poor-mouthing a year ago, when there was no way Lance was going for a Tour victory, and there was no way Alberto Contador was not going to be Astana’s “main rider.” The next thing we knew there was the famous breakaway in Stage 3 and all hell broke loose.

We don’t blame Lance for gullible news reports. It’s up to the press to reality-check his truth massaging. But we’re not going to spend too much time between now and July 2010 trying to figure out who, if not Lance, will be Team Radio Shack’s main rider.

As the VeloNews version noted, after taking the same bait as the Guardian, team director Johann Bruyneel admitted, “Lance is definitely the leader of the team.”

Bicycle.net: Lance says he’ll race for two more years.

Why Lance is always Da Leadah!!

The bad blood between Lance and Alberto Contador means the two already have established an intense rivalry for the 2010 season. But being realistic, Lance has little chance of beating The Pistol on his own. There’s a question whether anyone can beat Contador … anyone except Andy Schleck.

But for a couple of bad breaks and one missed opportunity, Andy and Alberto would have been separated by seconds rather than minutes as the Tour headed to its final decisive week. With a slimmer margin separating the two on Ventoux, there’s a question whether Andy would have held back in hopes of reeling his brother Frank toward the front. And if he hadn’t held back, maybe A.C. would not have been able to hang on as he did.

You never know.

Andy lost crucial time in two early misfortunes. He missed the late “Lance” break on stage 3, losing 41 seconds. And the Team Time Trial on Stage 4 hurt him as well, costing another 40 seconds. At the end of Stage 4 he was down by more than a minute and a half, a discouraging hole from which to dig out of.

Andy also could not hang with Alberto during the latter’s predictable breakaway on Verbier in Stage 15. Nor could Andy and Frank, working together, shake Contador during their stirring attacks on Columbiere in Stage 17.

Still, Andy was the one guy who looked like he could crack Contador in the 2009 Tour. Lance undoubtedly noticed.

Whether it would be in the Schlecks’ interest to hook up with Lance is an issue fraught with backstory intrigue. There are lots of pros, lots of cons. On the pro side, if Andy could get assurances that once he asserted himself, Lance would really work for him, it might be Andy’s best hope. Lance has shown himself time and again to be not just a powerhouse of a rider (still, at nearly 38), but a master strategist.

Some of the mistakes Andy made — I would call his hanging back for Frank a mistake, even if he had no chance at raising his overall placement — and his apparent lack of form early in the race, when he could not hang on Contador’s wheel, would not be repeated under Lance. No one knows how to prepare for a Tour better than the King.

Lance could also coach Andy in time-trialing, a past weakness but one Andy is overcoming.

The big “con” here is that Andy would have to stand in Lance’s shadow much of the Tour. That’s just the way things are. Andy has more ego and pride than he appears to have, as exemplified by his closing TV interview with Versus. He admitted he was disappointed to finish 2nd. A hundred and sixty other riders would have killed to be where he was. But it was a clear testament to Andy’s ambitiousness.

There are inevitable contractual issues for Andy and brother Frank (assuming the two would stay on the same team), and political considerations as well. But a Lance-Andy alliance for 2010 (Team Radio Schlack!) would set up the most potent rivalry against Contador, and wow, the media and cycling worlds would just go crazy.