While I was happy that Lance Armstrong won his 7th Tour de France Sunday, the most satisfying result in the world of sports came last night at the World Swimming Championships in Montreal. There, American Brendan Hansen avenged his Olympic loss to Japan's Kosuke Kitajima in the 100 meter breastroke final.

Why is this a big deal? Well last summer in Athens, Hansen came into the Olympics as the newly minted world record holder in each of the breastroke events. He lost the 100 meter final to Kitajima who proceeded to yell, scream and otherwise carry on obnoxiously in the lane next to him. Said Hansen at the time:

"Let this get stuck in my head. Let me remember him screaming after that race, and remember what that felt like," Hansen said. "It’s important to let something like that fire you up and not bring you down for the next race."

But Kitajima's obnoxiousness wasn't even the worst part. The worst part was that he blatantly cheated by making illegal dolphin kicks in the race. The officials didn't call him on it, so the US team couldn't protest the result. But last night, illegal kicks or not, Hansen spanked Kitajima.

Unfortunately, that still doesn't make up for what happened in the Olympics. There's video evidence of Kitajima's cheating, but the US media never grabbed a hold of the story they way they did the Paul Hamm story. Many in the American media urged Hamm to give him gold medal away. But I didn't hear any of these people saying something similar to Kitajima.

My theory is that the US media thinks of their own country as something of an Olympics bully. It'd be a little unseemly for the country with the most medals to demand even more. Their sense of justice only extends to smaller countries and/or cute athletes (see Sale and Pelletier). Unfortunately, that leaves athletes like Hansen out in the cold.

Luckily, last night he was able to get his own measure of revenge. Actually, I shouldn't say "luckily". He did it all on his own.