In the end, the truth beat Lance to the line

Many readers will guess that picking Lance Armstrong as Sportsman of the Year must be a juvenile wind-up. Sports Monster of the Century more like.

Still, if the power of sport is in the stories it tells, then you have to salute a man who became the sports story of the year without competing in a single race.

Umberto Eco wrote that “the fascination of Casablanca” — “aesthetically speaking... a very mediocre film” was that it threw together dozens of stock storylines in a way that collectively transcended kitsch. Casablanca takes several archetypal themes, any one of which would be enough to propel an ordinary movie — Unhappy Love, the Promised Land, the Love Triangle, Civilisation against Barbarism — and fuses them into something that takes on a mysterious, resonant power.