Well, they should be. And they are.

Lance Armstrong’s profile in the Tour de France was long one of antagonism between the Texan and pretty much anyone who was French and cared.

Tour officials openly questioned whether he could have accomplished what he did legally. French authorities repeatedly brought him under scrutiny, and more than one investigation promised to find Armstrong guilty of some impropriety, though none has to this point.

Armstrong being Armstrong, he fought back and fought back hard, doing everything short of personally trying to unliberate Paris.

Then he left — and the Tour just sort of died.

The assumption had been forever that Armstrong’s run of seven straight victories made the race itself boring, the same storyline playing out, over and over again. His retirement, surely, would usher in an age of more open competition between the Floyd Landises and Levi Leipheimers and Jan Ullrich’s (oops) of the world.

But then came Operation Puerto, and riders started dropping like flies.

Ullrich was gone, so was Basso. The proceeding years were fraught with scandal and doping accusations and blood bags and two-year bans.

The winner of the ‘06 Tour (Landis) lost his title after testing positive for elevated levels of testosterone, and the winner of the ‘07 Tour (Alberto Contador) only took top spot in that race after Michael Rasmussen, who had quite suddenly turned himself from a pumpkin to a diamond-studded carriage, dropped out amid accusations of doping.

Alexandre Vinokourov, the baby-faced, lovable Kazakh leader of Libery Seguros and Team Astana, was banned for two years after an incident during the 2007 Tour.

The race itself essentially became Survivor on bikes — whomever is the best among us who doesn’t dope, or at least doesn’t get caught, gets to take home top honors.

In American sports, this would cause massive fan outrage, media would call for all sorts of sweeping changes and Al Sharpton would probably go on record in some way or another.

But because a) it’s not the Tour de America and b) European sports are driven by the same sort of hype machines as their stateside counterparts, the Tour de France became something worse than tainted: It became effectively irrelevant.

In rides Armstrong on his Trek-made white horse to save the day. Suddenly, we forgot about Ricco and Vino and doping and the fact that Christian Vande Velde actually finished in the top five of a Tour de France, because there was genuine intrigue again.

Lance against the field, against Contador, against whatever. But for the first time since 2005, we cared about the race itself. It wasn’t overshadowed, it wasn’t ignored and no one was carried off in a police car. Not yet anyway.

The point is, like it or not Frenchmen, Lance made your race matter again, and this time for more right reasons than wrong ones. What’s more, next year’s TdF already has us watering at the mouth, and it’s not even the end of July 2009.

Even Prudhomme feels me: “Armstrong provided us with a rivalry and that’s the strongest thing in sport — Nadal v Federer in tennis, or Hinault v LeMond in cycling. The real rivalry was actually between Contador and Andy Schleck but the Contador/Armstrong row attracted most of the media attention.”

So maybe his comeback wasn’t so dumb after all.

That is correct, we bring you reading pleasure for lunch. Top amongst the news, the Tour, clean through Paris, has finally been dealt its first doping casualty.

Mikel Astarloza, the Spaniard who  and won the race’s 16th stage, was provisionally suspended after his “A” sample tested positive. Should his “B” sample also test positive, the Euskaltel man will be suspended for two years.

What is perhaps most sad about Astarloza’s positive test is that it shocks no one. It was really more surprising, I think we can all agree, that the Tour itself went off without at least one or two dopers getting popped. Sadly, while Astarloza is the first, it’s hard to believe he’ll be the last.

A bit of news equally as unsurprising: Alberto Contador officially turns down Astana’s offer to extend his contract. What’s more, he’s looking for a way out of the final year of his current deal, which would effectively finish tearing up what was likely one of the most talented Tour teams ever assembled.

I know, I’m absolutely shocked, too.

Purple Bar Tape has been traveling hither, thither and yon these last weeks, and was thus sadly deficient in the duty of bringing you the (un)witty commentary to which you’ve become so accustomed.

But it’s 1:30 in the a.m., and what can we say, we’re back.

Before we begin, this is awesome. And now, back to our regularly-scheduled programming.

It seems someone around here promised you some old-fashioned Tour wrap-up blabber-chatter.

But where to begin? Surely, we can’t wrap all of this up in one or two or even three posts.

And so, it is for that reason that, well, we’re going to be working through five installments — short installments, but installments nonetheless (and thus, a record for single word usage was set) — on the 2009 Tour and its eventual successor next year.

Tonight, we begin not with Lance (*gasp*), but instead with someone way faster. That’s right, the Manx Missile, the British Bomber, Mr. Spitfire himself, Mark “on my mobile” Cavendish.

Hushovd took the green jersey, and serious props to the Norwegian for pretty much bumming a leadout off Columbia like, all the time, but I think we can all agree that Cavendish was both far and away the field’s best sprinter.

There’s not much description for it, really. I mean, back in the day (three years ago), sprint finishes in the big UCI stage races were a veritable Baskin Robbins of sprinting variety.

Boonen was huge and powerful. Hushovd had the guile. Robbie McEwen liked to headbutt people, and damned if it didn’t work.

But Cavendish doesn’t really have a style — he just rides away. He’s simply hands down the fastest person in the world on a bicycle right now, no one can touch him. He is the Usain Bolt of cycling, and like the rangy Jamaican, every sprint finish is just his play toy.

Sometimes he breaks it, because he’s young and petulant and raw. But most of the time, he’s just so ridiculously, blindingly, mind-bogglingly fast, that it wouldn’t matter.

But the thing about Cavendish is that, to those of us in the English-speaking world anyway, he’s a symbol.

Seriously. I know it sounds kind of dumb or cheesy to the average American, whose preferred sports are relatively homogenous (with the slight exception, perhaps, of baseball).

But other than Lance Armstrong and some of his former Postal/Discovery boys, this generation of bicycling America doesn’t really identify culturally with most of the riders in the field. It’s nothing prejudiced or personal, just different people in different places, that sort of thing.

Now, though, with Cavendish and Bradley Wiggins exploding cycling’s popularity in Britain and Armstrong coming back looking less like a robot and more like America’s favorite everyman, there’s something to really get behind.

There are even two American-sponsored teams in the Tour — Garmin and Columbia — and both were prominent players in various facets of this year’s Tour. And they will be joined by Team Radio Shack (RadioShack? Radioshack? I dunno) next year.

Even Christian Prudhomme, long an Armstrong antagonist, gave the Texan credit for bringing some thrill back into this year’s race (foreshadowing ahead: possible future post idea?), and in turn also complimented the entire contingent of predicate-loving riders.

“After lagging behind in cycling compared to their success in other sports, the English speakers are starting to make a real name for themselves in cycling,” Prudhomme said. Heady stuff from that mouth.

Take from this what you will. Perhaps it doesn’t register to you, or it doesn’t matter. Honestly, until I read Prudhomme’s comments yesterday, it never really registered with me.

But I think there is at least some truth to it, and if nothing else, I’ve never been so excited for the next Tour de France as I am for the 2010 edition. Bring it on.