Hitting the 'Gas

Feeling the Burn: I hope I'm not the only dense enough to be surprised to see Liquigas of all teams smoke the opening team time trial at the Giro, but I was even more surprised to see the heart-on-his-sleeve Danilo DiLuca, who appeared completely enraged when non-team-leader Gasparotto took the maglia rosa from him by coming in first at the line, later sweetly lie for the cameras that he didn't want to punch his face in and was just so very happy that dear Enrico got to wear it instead of him. That, however, was neatly resolved at the end of stage one, as the race organizers weaselled some inexplicable scam to get DiLuca into the maglia rosa and right in action with the podium babes, and I was forced to endure the highly irritating spectacle of seeing Robbie "the Ego" McEwen take the sprint ahead of Paolo Bettini (forget Petacchi, and the press sure as hell has nastily written him off), while we love Thor Hushovd was spit out the back of the last climb like some unwanted tobacco-juiced loogie. Pull it together Thor!

Bring Out Your Dead: as if the outcome of this week's Floyd Landis hearing hadn't already been decided for all intents and purposes by the leaking skanks at WADA, Tour de France organizers ASO decided nonetheless to get a jump on all the tiresome paperwork his 'possible' guilt might entail with director Christian "Dick" Prudhomme peremptorily ordering all records of the poor boy to be eliminated from the 2006 history books, including, natch, his win. Note to Christian: nice try, but a French rider *still* didn't win it. Keep trying, though!