Mike Celizic

When Lance Armstrong first said he was toying with the idea of coming out of a retirement that was shorter than a fruit fly’s life span, my first thought was that he was as annoying and as bad as every other athlete who stages multiple retirements.

But then I saw that the reason he was thinking about a comeback was to get back at the French for smearing his reputation. He suggested it was personal. And it wouldn't be as much about winning as it would be about revenge.

The best way to inflict as much misery on France as it has inflicted on him is to climb back in the saddle, surrender a pint of blood a day to the drug testers if that’s what they want, and win an eighth straight Tour de France.

I wish he would. Everyone in Europe who celebrated when he retired, everyone who said he was a drug cheat, everyone who was grateful that finally a European could win the continent’s biggest bike race deserved no less.

But it isn't to be. Armstrong ending any return talk Thursday, saying he's 'not coming back.'

Before Armstrong's announcement, the Europeans could have let him retire with dignity. They should have done that. They should have bent over backwards to avoid ticking him off enough to come back and kick their butts one more time.

But the ink was barely dry on the newspaper stories reporting his retirement before the French sports newspaper, L’Equipe, broke a story that said six years earlier, Armstrong had cheated during the Tour.

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The article was based on tests of frozen “B” urine samples taken on the Tour in 1999, and was clearly intended to smear Armstrong. If it had been intended to be a fair look at what cyclists were using six years ago, it would have looked at re-tests of every sample from every rider in the race.

The article alleged that Armstrong’s urine showed traces of EPO, a drug that boosts the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood. The drug was illegal but undetectable when the samples were collected. Advances in testing technology have made the drug detectable.

Slide show   The 2005 Tour See images from Lance Armstrong's seventh straight Tour de France victory.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Armstrong or anyone in the Tour or any other sport took something six years ago that couldn’t be detected.

What I want to know is, what do the samples from the other riders in the 1999 race show?

I’m willing to bet that a significant percentage of samples from back then will show traces of EPO, and I’d be surprised if the drug didn’t show up in samples taken from nearly all the leaders of the race.

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