Lance Armstrong returns to the Tour De France, as our Parisian sports correspondent reports…

PARIS—He’s baaaaaaaaaack.

Four years after he last wore the Maillot Jaune on the Champs Elysees – 2005 was his seventh consecutive Tour de France victory – Lance Armstrong, or as I like to call him, The Wristbanded One, is back on French soil. And tomorrow, July 4th, the 37-year-old American sporting icon will celebrate his country’s Independence Day by hopping on a bicycle and setting out with 179 other riders representing 20 teams on a 21-stage, 23-day cycling journey across a country whose general public has never really warmed to the audacious Texan.

The French press has been whipping itself into a decent lather over Monsieur Armstrong’s participation in the 96th edition of Le Tour for the past, oh, forever or so. Technically, though, Lance is not in France yet, and neither are any of his competitors. This year’s Tour kicks off in Monaco with a 15-kilometre time trial, and will pass through five other countries – France, Spain, Andorra, Switzerland and Italy – before a champion is crowned on July 26 at Paris’s Place de la Concorde. (more…)

Ken Loach’s new film swaps trade unions and the Spanish civil war for… Eric Cantona?

PARIS—“I have a lot of good moments, but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan.”

That famous quote, no doubt delivered in his heavily accented English, perfectly encapsulates the career of Eric Cantona, one of the greatest footballers to ever take to the pitch. His resume, which spans the late 80s and early 90s, first in France and then in England, includes a lot of incredible goals and passes; a talent for bizarre philosophy and notable quotations; and a maniacal propensity for violence and idiocy, both on and off the pitch.

Yes, he really did drop kick that hooligan, while in the employ of Manchester United, leaping into the stands karate-style after he’d been sent off for kicking a Crystal Palace opponent who’d tugged on his jersey. (more…)

PARIS—Handsome footballers, huh? Well, two can play at this game.

When France’s sporting daily, l’Équipe, recently published an online slideshow of the 25 sexiest football players, my first reaction was, “Yes! Awesome! Perfect!” Because what better excuse to outline a project that’s been long-simmering in the Trotter household than to post a rebuttal to all the … now what did they call them again?

Ils sont beaux, ils sont pro, ils sont musclés sous leur maillot…Notre sélection des footballeurs les plus sexy en activité

Oh, yeah. Those handsome devils. (In case your French is a little rusty, I am contractually obliged to inform you that the first part even rhymes. Ugh.) (more…)

PARIS—The Italian slalom whiz Alberto Tomba, who won five Olympic medals between 1988 and 1994, had a particular pre-race tradition: downing a shot of espresso right before skiing out of the starting gates.

Even disregarding the recent scholarship that argues that caffeine is one of the last totally legal performance-enhancing drugs (WADA chief Dick Pound is giving an angry press conference outside of a Tim Horton’s in Ottawa as we speak), Tomba’s behaviour continues to baffle such laymen as myself who would surely rather down a shot of Pepto Bismol in such a high-stakes setting. I guess that’s what distinguishes the great athletes from the pretenders – the ability to overcome the pressure of the moment and rise to the occasion. I know that, if I were in the starting gates behind Tomba, I’d be twitchy and jittery enough without coffee.

Which is all a roundabout way of introducing my most recent heroic sporting achievement: navigating the ten-lane traffic circle at Paris’s Place de l’Etoile. (more…)

PARIS—If this was America, Congress would be up in arms. No way you could get away with calling a nation-wide “day of action” on the third Thursday of March and giving millions of workers the day off. Too fishy. Obviously there’s a hidden motive there, beyond the earnest value of worker solidarity. Heck, enough people are skipping out of work today, regardless.

A union movement? Really, that’s your story? You must be joking.

But scheduling a strike in France on the first day of the NCAA basketball tournament - March Madness, or les Folies de Mars, the pet name I’ve just invented and am suddenly sort of sweet on – isn’t fishy at all, because the entire country isn’t huddled around a television watching Western Kentucky upset the University of Illinois. Nobody gives a merde. (more…)

PARIS—The concept of the sports bar is not one that has yet captured the hearts and minds of Parisians. I proclaim this fact to you with an air of historical frustration, but also with a newfound sense of hope courtesy of the website AlloMatch.com. (more…)

PARIS—I’ve been waiting all year for this. No, I don’t mean the Super Bowl, the 43rd edition of the big game this Sunday being contested by the NFC’s Arizona Cardinals and the AFC’s (and Mlle Trotter’s) Pittsburgh Steelers. The local broadcast on France 2 is at 12:20am Monday morning, Paris time. I’m expecting the commentary to be … intéressant.

Nor do I mean the opportunity to make silly wagers on various and sundry wacky outcomes of said game via the Las Vegas Hilton’s inspired proposition wager list. I mean, I am excited about the wagering possibilities. Don’t get me wrong.

But here’s what I’ve been waiting for ALL YEAR, yearning for, aching for: the chance to recycle Sportstrotter column ideas… (more…)

PARIS—And so what if I hate winners?

Does that make me a bad sports fan? A good fan? A bad person? A good person? Who knows. Mostly I think it just makes me a monumentally confused person.

I’ll admit it. All things being equal, all loyalties and betting interests aside, I’m cheering for the underdog.

I have two unconditional sports loyalties: the Canucks and the Blue Jays. You can add any Canadian team or individual competing internationally to that list. And that’s about it. In matters sporting, I’m an Aristotelian communitarian first, a Millsian utilitarian second. Because when the big dog wins, a couple of people are happy. When the little dog wins, it gives millions of little dogs around the world hope. (more…)

PARIS—Bonne année, mes amis!

No, that’s not a typo in the title of this post (unless I ended up spelling playoff “pleighophe” – whoops, good thing I just checked it!). I’m retiring from this whole predictions business, at least for the rest of the NFL postseason.

I did, if you’ll recall (hint hint), pick seven of the 12 playoff teams way back in September. If things had gone differently on the season’s final day, I could have hit ten. Impressive, no? Of course, I don’t think the 13-3 8-8 New Orleans Saints are going to be winning the Super Bowl this year, so there’s that on my record now. Great. (more…)

PARIS—One year ago, when The Walrus accidentally gave me permission to write about the wide world of sports on their website, I announced a set of goals for the upcoming season.

Now, every good sports writer knows that revisiting one’s archived opinions and predictions is the recipe for a healthy serving of humble pie, with a generous scoop of regret-flavoured ice cream. It’s trouble, is what reflection is (who was it that picked the 63-99 Padres to win the Series? Oh, right). (more…)

PARIS—Let’s get one thing straight here: there’s nothing wrong with kissing your sister. In fact, I’ve frequently found your sister to be a pretty quality smoocher, on the whole.

Likewise, I have no ideological problem with ties in sports. Sometimes the old “kissing your sister,” as they call it, is a perfectly satisfactory result for two teams, when neither can produce a particularly convincing argument for victory.

Of course, not all ties are created equal. France’s national football team finished off a dismal 2008 campaign with a 0-0 tie on Wednesday night, in a friendly against Uruguay. The match was so dull and devoid of good chances that I turned it off after 70 minutes. (more…)

At the Dublin Marathon, I stuck to my plan of drafting off the Kenyans for the first 24 miles

DUBLIN—I’m sorry, Trotteriacs. I feel like I’ve failed you. I gave it all that I could, but in the end, I didn’t win the 29th running of the Dublin Marathon. Good thing I didn’t make any money-back guarantees.

In the end, it was Ukrainian runner Andriy Naumov who was first across the line in Merrion Square, managing to hold off my valiant challenge by a barely perceptible gap of one hour, 43 minutes and one second. I appealed the result immediately, petitioning the race jury to review the photo finish, but it turns out the exposure time of the finish-line cameras is significantly less than one hour. Amazing what they can do with technology these days… (more…)