Duck, Duck, Doper!

What the @#*$?: Can someone please explain to me how, with over 100 names having been harbored by the Spaniards in total in the Op Puerto affair, and a solid 58 or so perfectly clear to them early last spring, pretty much the only guys publicly identified and written off the Giro start list half a week before it begins--forget even the Tour and Vuelta--are the same handful of late-career downward-spiral dope fiends who were already barred or still serving other suspensions *last* year? What the hell kind of sense does that make, and how the hell is that really gonna clean up the sport? If the smirking hypocrites over at the teams, UCI, and the Tours are randomly gonna pick and choose who gets to ride in some stupid children's game in order to keep a halfway quality peloton in play, isn't it really more fair to just let every Op Puerto (and Quick Step, and T-Mobile, and...) dirtbag in so at least the playing field is technically fairly level for the majority?

Now, now, I'm not advocating doping or even amnesty for dopers, so put down the pitchforks and torches, people. But I am saying that if Pat "Dick" McQuaid, Dick "Dick"Pound, Patrick Lefevere and Johan Bruyneel and all the other oily self-interested doublethinkers are really sincere about not letting dope-implicated riders hit the corsa rosa, then they should be unequivocally willing to keep all 100-odd boys out right from the get-go and let the races take whatever hits they must--up to and including a start list slashed by 2/3 and a handful of gasping domestiques pushing their bikes up the Dolomites by hand--in order to preserve the integrity of the sport. Right? Um...Pat? Johan? Anyone there?

What the !@#$?, Part Due: Correct me if I was completely hallucinating at the Giro podium last year, but I seem to recall that the boys standing there looking all excited and dripping sweat all over the poor podium babes were, in order, Ivan Basso, Jose Enrique Gutierrez, and Gilberto Simoni. So here we are pinning the numbers on this year's racers, and it's not Basso wearing the prized and honorable No. 1--we all know he was totally clean in the Giro but unsuccessfully trying to dope at the Tour, so he can't do it--nor Gutierrez, who rode for Phonak, I mean was implicated in Op Puerto, so he can't do it--so by rights, with no public implication of Gilberto Simoni in anything more scandalous than calling Basso a wuss, fraud, and drug addict, it oughta be Simoni, no? Well, no, because apparently some people have a bee up their @#$ about giving Simoni the credit he deserves and the crown he will likely be given someday anyway, so it's going to current World Champ, rightly adored Jack-of-All-Terrain, and decidedly not third place in GC last year we love Paolo Bettini. Can any of you cowards who profess to be so mightily in favor of rewarding the pure either give up the goods on what you have on Simoni, or give him the damn No. 1 tag for heck's sake?!

Oh, Tyler: Even Tinkoff has it's limits, it seems, whumping you under "suspension" as if the same ancient allegations about your wife faxing Fuentes were miraculously just discovered by
them yesterday. Tyler, it breaks my heart--but it can't take away your palmares, and it's time to give it up. Please, please call it a career before I have to read about you fighting for a spot on some ignominious Team Tricycle or something! On the other hand, Ivan Basso's already got an offer from McDonalds....