Ice In your Drink, Sir?

Fiddling history with a French freezer

Harry Pearson
Saturday August 27, 2005

Guardian

In Shane Carruth's new film Primer a pair of scientists develop a machine
that allows them to travel back eight hours in time. As far as I can work
out the message of the movie is that tampering with the past will lead to
such a huge variety of changes to the present that the only consequence that
can be predicted with certainty is that anyone trying to figure them out is
going to end up with a very, very bad headache.
Primer is not alone in presenting such a view. Over the decades there have
been dozens of time-travel films in which the absent-minded swatting of a
greenfly by a retro-tourist to the year 1493 leads inexorably to a modern
age in which the world is ruled by sinister dictator with an English accent
and a wardrobe filled with black polo-necks who can only be stopped by a
rugged American with immaculate dentistry blowing lots of stuff up.

Yet despite all the compelling evidence movie-makers have amassed, the
people in charge of sport seem determined not to leave the past well alone.

This week, for instance, we have seen cycling's ruling body apparently
alleging that Lance Armstrong has failed a Tour de France drug test six
years after he took it. The test was administered at the Chatenay-Malabry
laboratory in Paris where they apparently have deep freezers choc-full of
bike-racers' urine. What containers they use to store it in has never been
mentioned but based on experience my guess is that if you visit your local
Lakeland store you will find a shelf marked "Frozen Cyclist's ****
Solutions" (and in all probability there will be a decorative plastic
spatula for getting it out in one piece, too). Whatever, Châtenay-Malabry is
clearly a place to say no when they ask if you want ice in your drink.

The International Cycling Union (UCI) rules say that whatever the outcome of
the alleged test may have been Armstrong cannot be stripped of his win in
the 1999 race. A nice attempt to sidestep the knock-on effect of fiddling
with history but when it comes to the time-space continuum as everyone from
Captain James T Kirk to Gwyneth Paltrow has discovered things just aren't
that simple.

Whatever the UCI may say it seems unlikely that those who finished behind
the Texan will keep quiet on the issue, not least because of the millions of
euros in earnings they will have lost as a result. And if Armstrong had not
won in 1999 would he have gone on to become the dominant patron of the
peloton

In all probability the litigation to sort it all out will be a lot more
convoluted and competitive than recent Tours have been. Perhaps the quickest
and cheapest way will simply be to re-stage the races with lawyers. The
sight of Thomas Mesereau and F Lee Bailey slugging it out on the slopes of
L'Alpe d'Huez would surely draw quite a crowd.

Meanwhile on this side of the Channel the Football Association has also been
revising.................

http://sport.guardian.co.uk/print/0,...108598,00.html