With the news today that Lance Armstrong is surrendering his seven Tour de France cycling titles, I want to return to my rant from last week that nobody seems to notice anything when famous celebrities look a little odd. Here, for example, is a picture of the veteran tennis-playing Williams Sisters from the cover of the upcoming New York Times Sunday Magazine. Venus, on the left, looks like an enormously tall and extremely athletic woman in the peak of physical shape. As I recall, when Venus emerged as a pro in the 1990s, she set a record for velocity of service speed for a woman. So, Venus is really, really strong. If you want to see what a woman who can hit a tennis ball extremely hard looks like, look at Venus.
In contrast, her younger sister Serena, who won the Olympic gold medal earlier this month, looks like she's weighing in to fight Jake LaMotta in Comiskey Park for the welterweight championship.
Granted, these are sisters, not identical twins like Jose and Ozzie Canseco, back when the former was a slugging MVP and the latter was a skinny minor leaguer. Still, I'm fascinated that the two would agree to be photographed side by side. Obviously, the contrast doesn't seem to strike anybody else as interesting.