The slanted spin in newspaper headlines about Lance Armstrong are darn near worth a social engineering research paper. I am always fascinated to read the headlines from around the world when there is any kind of Lance news. Here’s a sample of pretty straight-forward headlines: LA withdraws from Paris-Nice, LA Pulls Out of French race, LA Quits Paris-Nice, Armstrong to Modify Training Program. OK - fair enough - fair dinkum.

But then we come to the headlines of The Guardian in the UK: Virus Puts Texan’s Tour in Jeopardy. Hmm - would that be considered just a bit of an overstatement, to put it mildly? Or just routine sensationalism...

The article goes on to quote Johan Bruyneel as saying that it’s no big problem, and that Lance will be off from his bike for more than a couple of days due to the fever and sore throat. And both Johan and Lance say that the distractions and demands on Lance this year in the US were pretty heavy, so his training regimen had a slow start. And, yeah, he will be a bit behind in his training. But his seventh Tour in jeopardy? I think not...

And, by the way, the Guardian somehow left out the fact that Lance, in spite of being ill - having a sore throat and feverish - finished Stage 3 of Paris-Nice with the same time as the stage winner, Vincente Reynes.