This year's Tour de France was much less a bicycle race than it was Lance Armstrong's victory lap — a 2,200-mile victory lap around France, with short jaunts into Germany and Spain.
The outcome wasn't in doubt for one moment, not even when his Discovery team collapsed and left Armstrong's well-toned butt hanging in the wind on a stage it hadn't scouted out in advance.
Even early on, when Armstrong wasn't in the overall race lead, none of the other riders actually wore the yellow jersey — they were just renting it.
He climbs better than the mountain specialists, he outperforms sprinters at the end of time trials, and he outlasts the endurance riders.
Armstrong's seven consecutive victories in the world's greatest bike race is spectacular enough, but the way he did it — by first climbing off what should have been his deathbed — only burnishes his legend.
I can appreciate Armstrong's feat of whipping cancer in a way that only someone who has watched a loved one die from the disease can. Both my father and brother succumbed to cancer, almost exactly 30 years apart.
Whenever anyone beats cancer, whether it's a second-grader or an Olympic cyclist, which Armstrong was before being diagnosed, it's a cause for all of us to celebrate, especially those of us who have seen it go the other way.
Even before crossing the line, Armstrong belongs not to cycling today, but to the ages.
"In five, 10, 15, 20 years, we'll see what the legacy is," said Armstrong, according to the Associated Press. "But I think we did come along and revolutionize the cycling part, the training part, the equipment part. We're fanatics."
In another, less cynical time, that explanation might have been sufficient. But this is an age where Barry Bonds gains 30 pounds — all muscle — at the age of 37.
The thought that a man could dominate the best competition in the world without chemical assistance, over a seven-year stretch starting less than two years after almost dying, is beyond comprehension.
With the cheaters consistently at least one step ahead of those trained to catch them, Armstrong can never completely be free of suspicion.
But cycling has the most demanding testing program in all of sports, that Armstrong has probably been tested more times for performance-enhancing substances in the last seven years than any other athlete on the planet.
And he has never failed, either in the laboratory or in the cycling peloton.
In bicycle parlance, Armstrong is the patron of the peloton. Were it a wolf pack, he would be the alpha male.
As the patron, Armstrong enforces etiquette of the peleton and is final authority over matters great — which riders get to make uncontested breakaways — and small — when the peloton stops for bathroom breaks.
And can't you just hear Jan Ullrich saying, "Can we stop now? I reeeeealy have to pee!"
Actually, it might be fitting to find that the world's finest cyclists really are acting like children in the back seat of a minivan, because, Pedro Martinez notwithstanding, Armstrong is the daddy of everyone else on two wheels.
Or, since we are talking about the Tour de France, pere.
Of course, just as with the alpha wolf, Armstrong couldn't be the patron unless he had the ability to punish those who break the rules. In last year's Tour, he led an attack to reel in another rider, denying him a stage victory for no other reason than revenge for a real or perceived breach.
The patron can be a benevolent dictator, as well. In another stage last year, then-Postal Service teammate Floyd Landis, now with the Phonak team, asked permission to make a break with all the deference that Beaumains exhibited when asking favors of King Arthur.
"Ride it like you stole it, Floyd," said Armstrong.
Not only does Armstrong get the yellow jersey, his word also goes a long way in determining which other riders earn honors.
Most alpha males, whether in the wolf pack or in the peleton, end their reign at the fangs and claws of a younger, stronger pretender to the throne.
That's not the case this time.
Armstrong isn't passing the torch — he's leaving it lying around for someone else to pick up. The next patron might be another American, like Levi Leipheimer or Landis, it might be heir apparent Ivan Basso of Italy, or once and possibly future champion Ullrich of Germany, respectively this year's second- and third-place finishers.
And while this year's Tour wasn't a race, next year's might not be either. If cycling fans are lucky, it's going to be a coronation.
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