Mike Celizic

If Lance Armstrong wants to ride in the Tour de France again at the age of 37, I’ve got no problem with it. But for the love of derailleur gears, does he have to make such a mess of it?

I understand why he wants to get back in the saddle. He’s a racer. After winning seven straight Tour de France titles, he thought he’d gotten over it. He thought he was sick of the scrutiny and allegations and all the grief that came with being the American champion of a French institution. And after a couple years of retirement, he found out he was wrong.

He’s not the first great athlete who thought he was going to be happy with all his retirement activities only to find out that there was an enormous hole in his life that no amount of fishing, hunting, motivational speeches, charitable activities and golf could fill. There was no thrill that could replace winning a mountain stage and wearing the yellow jersey. There was no activity that could utterly consume him, that he could build his entire year — his entire life — around.

So he decided to go back, because that’s who he is and what he does.

Fine. Go back. Ride the race. Finish first or finish last, I don’t care. Just try to do it with a little dignity, OK?

Armstrong is the new Exhibit A for everything that drives us nuts about old heroes who can’t deal with retirement. From the get-go, when he first said he was coming back, it’s been one manufactured crisis after another.

First we had to go through the mandatory cat-fight with the Tour de France. We all knew that was coming. Armstrong was always a problem for Tour officials because he was an American who kept winning their race.

He never tested positive for anything, but that didn’t stop people from accusing him of doing drugs. When he said he wanted to come back, officials said they didn’t want him. Something about Armstrong being bad for the race because of the suspicions about him.

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It was incredibly disingenuous. It seems like every good rider in the Tour has been busted for drugs over the past 10 years. Yet the race directors decided that the guy they’d point their fingers at was the American who never tested positive.

Armstrong knows these guys better than anyone. He knew what they’d say. But instead of simply saying, “Here I am. Test me,” he had to be as childish as they are.

I don’t know if two weeks have gone by without reading another story about the comeback. First he’s coming back to try to win. Then he doesn’t care if he wins or now, he just wants to publicize his fight against cancer. Then it was maybe he won’t race at all.

And now we learn that he’s afraid that if he races, he’ll be assaulted by the fans.

I understand if he has some anxiety in that regard. He hasn’t been the most popular guy in France for quite a while, not since L’Equipe, the sports magazine, claimed to have found EPO in old urine samples from his early years in the race.

But he was never assaulted during all his years winning the race, including the years at the end when the allegations were flying and he was less popular with the French officials than rose wine in a box.

He never brought up his fears in the old days. Why bring them up now? What’s changed?

We’re left with no answer other than Armstrong loves being the center of attention. Either that, or he’s paranoid. Or maybe it’s both.

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In any event, he’s clearly so consumed with his own self-importance, he thinks all of this nonsense simply has to be conveyed to a world that couldn’t care less.

Apparently, there’s no narcissist like an old narcissist. When he was young and on top of his pedals, he didn’t have to seek out publicity. He attracted notepads and microphones like sugar spills attract ants. But now that he’s just another old-timer trying to recapture his youth, it’s harder to drum up the attention that he used to complain about when it was so easy to get. So he manufactures conflict and drama. And he stays in the headlines.

And stays. And stays. And stays.

Once, he was Lance Armstrong, the greatest athlete who ever lived. Now, he’s a caricature of Lance Armstrong, a figure in a cartoon that we are forced to watch without knowing whether to laugh or cry.

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