Baby, It Ain't Over Til It's...Oh Wait, It *Is* Over

Il Assessino Strikes: Clearly, I'm a complete nit, because I just wasn't pegging Danilo DiLuca as the Maglia Rosa in Milan, but if Simoni and Cunego still didn't have the legs to take DiLuca on Tre Cime after an afternoon of merrily making him wear himself out pacesetting the chase with no teammates in sight, and DiLuca still had the power to take off unchallenged after that, Simoni in particular is flat-out hosed and the Giro is over right now. I was actually thinking DiLuca was going to crack yesterday--since when did DiLuca become such a Euskaltelish mountain goat?--but if he doesn't blow tomorrow on Zoncolan, and Simoni doesn't also leave Cunego in the dust while we're at it--unlikely, the way Lampre's been performing--I think they can pretty much just skip the entire last week, except the question remains who baby Schleck is going to ignominiously knock off the podium. Crap, I still want Simoni to take it! I'm particularly interested, though, to see how sudden-Cancellara DiLuca does in the flat stage 20 time trial--anyone else getting especially twitchy Heras- and Basso-vibes after this season's sudden improvement in the field? Oh, Gibo, at least take a final stage win...

Volta a Op Puerto: well, Sammy Sanchez seems to be back on form over at the Volta a Catalunya, but then, so are Oscar "I'm not Sevillano" Sevilla and Francisco Mancebo, while Denis "You Still Don't Deserve Heras' Vuelta" Menchov shockingly took a stage win. And Jorg Jaksche, suspended by Tinkoff and knocked out of the Giro? Why, he's off winning Circuit de Lorraine in Tinkoff team kit, which leaves me utterly befuddled as to why St. Oleg still has it in for the similarly-stoked Tyler Hamilton, unless he somehow missed that Tyler was actually out for 2 years over a positive test before Tinkoff hired him, which seems to be the only real difference between him and Jaksche. Meantime, Milram continues their moral conundrum over Erik Zabel's mea culpa, failing to come to terms on firing or not firing him after a 7-hour argument the other day, presumably because they really, really want him to lead out Petacchi in the Tour, I mean, because they're having a serious ethical debate over whether his voluntary confession on EPO cancels the horror of his long-ago week of sin in the 90s. And speaking of the Tour, Christian Prudhomme is having a mighty struggle over whether to kick CSC out of the Tour--yeah, right!--because (1) Riis sets a very, very naughty example for the cleanmeisters over at, say, T-Mobile, and (2) L'Equipe is loudly proclaiming that there's no way Bjarne didn't know Basso was working with Fuentes, and who wants those muckrakers on your @#$ in Paris? Then again, he could always boot them because Carlos Sastre openly backed Riis on his website, and if you're never going to hold management actually responsible for doping there's a rider you can comfortably take out your vendetta on...