It's a Cruel (Cruel!)/ Cruel Summer

Tricky Dicks: unsurprisingly, Dick "Dick" Pound, Pat "Dick" McQuaid, Christian "Dick" Prudhomme and even Patrice "Dick" Clerc have decided to join forces to free the sport of doping by turning on each other voraciously like lunchless members of the Donner Party, with WADA calling an antidoping summit, UCI complaining that Pound has no respect for the obvious success of their antidoping crusade (like letting an unknown yet likely huge number of the Op Puerto riders ride the Tour, for example), and, most outrageously, Christian--who spent the entirety of last year burning Floyd Landis at the stake in interviews with every imaginable media outlet, taking his Tour away before his arbitration was up, and playing provocative video of mirrors shattering as Floyd's evil cheating visage loomed in the background like Stalin's, as his own country's lab chimps repeatedly proved themselves incapable of reliably analyzing the contents of a glass of tap water--whining that everyone is innocent until proven guilty and he is shocked, shocked! and horrified that riders aren't being given the benefit of the doubt (unless they're French.) Interestingly, the only rider unilaterally declared *not* under suspicion at this point by the Dicks appears to be Manolo Saiz' own protege/Liberty Seguros refugee new maillot jaune Alberto Contador, which seems, if a positive sign of due process in action, rather odd, as if I recall a horde of the team youngsters actually testified in front of the Spanish inquest that Saiz had rather a habit of slapping mystery-substance-bearing skin patches on the obedient boys like the temporary tattoos one finds in a box of Cracker Jacks. I'm sure they were just vitamins though, as they must have run out of the Fred Flintstone ones. Am I the only one repulsed by this disgusting charade?

Oh Right, There's a Race On!: I must admit, I normally pay no attention to breakaway stages unless Paolo Bettini's in 'em and thereby sure to crush the rest of the field, but what a relief to watch a pack of riders just annoyingly dither around the last 500 meters without being hauled off in handcuffs for once--like a Sno-Cone on a 100 degree day. Congratulations to Benna-Jet for finally validating the season's sprinterly egofest, and we love Jens!

A Note to the Dear Newbies, Again: see how nice this sport can really be? Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain, and just enjoy the GC being decided at the pure rider-against-the-clock Saturday time trial, and of course we love Thor Hushovd taking the stage on the Champs-Elysees again. And the screaming happy carefree fans. And the pretty lion stuffed animal you get from the French bank sponsor for the stage win. And...