At least, that's what an item in today's Rush & Molloy would have us believe:

Lance Armstrong and Tory Burch seem to be going strong. The champion bicyclist and socialite designer were quite cozy at a birthday party in L.A. over the weekend, says our spy. Word is Armstrong liked what he read about Tory in a recent Vanity Fair profile of her and ex Chris Burch. Armstrong, who won the Tour de France seven times, supposedly told a pal: "She came off as intelligent and successful," and arranged to meet her.

She does come across pretty well in that profile, doesn't she? Let's take a closer look . . .

Well, it isn't all fluff and softballs. The article does take Burch — who built her eponymous clothing business with financier Chris Burch, from whom she is now divorced — to task for being too much of an overachiever ("'If you don't know her, you want to hate her,' says Marjorie Gubelmann Raein, a social fixture and co-founder of Vie Luxe home products. 'She wakes up and takes a shower, goes out with wet hair, and looks gorgeous — bitch! She works hard, she takes her kids skateboarding at six in the morning . . .'"). And the piece also tackles the tricky subject of born-Jewish Burch's studiedly Waspy image. ("'I wasn't raised Jewish!' she says, her shyness forgotten.") But the most notable omission — and one that's extra-shocking in a magazine with other pages given over to the inadequacy of American sex scandals — is the complete lack of mentions of Burch's scandalous post-Chris, pre-Lance lovelife. Her outing with Ron Perelman? "Merely social." And remember when David Patrick Columbia called her out for boning some other married socialite's husband? You won't find any details about that here.

Yes, all in all, it's easy to see what sparked Lance's interest. Unless, of course, he's a total gay homo, in which case we just give up trying to parse this shit.

Surveillance [R&M, last item]

Earlier: David Patrick Columbia Mumbles Something About Lemonade and Soup