Vin-tage Stupidity

B-Dazzler: yep, Gazzetta's reporting that Alexander Vinokorouv's B sample has, unsurprisingly, tested poz for homologous blood doping, leading the reasonable to roll their eyes and ask yet again, damn, Vino, what were you even *thinking*? Let's face it--throughout your career, you've cavorted like a carefree nymphet with the best doping providers the sport has to offer, and two years after Hamilton had to mortifyingly argue he'd inhaled his own twin *this* is the best method you and your handlers could come up with? Perhaps poor Kloden is right to suggest, in his depressed-yet-paranoiac musings this morning, that anyone could be tampered with at any time...then again, perhaps you're just an arrogant !@#$ smirking through your entire 2006 "Saint of Liberty Seguros" routine and soullessly jacking over, among others, not only Kloden but also 2x Giro god Paolo Savoldelli and untold numbers of mechanics, masseuses, soigneurs, musette-packers and assorted other lowly serfs who worked their !@#es off to serve your voracious need for validation at any cost. I'm not actually sure which is ticking me off more at this point--the actual doping, which seems so rampant as to be almost impossible to rue, or the selfish moronothon ego-stuffing which leads the high to act so densely and so destructively towards others. And is anyone else doubly irked that it's highly likely that, as Vino and Moreni's associates fry like eggs, more than one other rider in that sizeable Tour peloton is riding, shall we say, less than clean? That, and Rasmussen never actually tested poz for anything before his jersey was handed over to baby savant Contador. But on the plus side, Petacchi's off the hook for abusing his generous Therapeutic Use Exemption at the moment, at least until the Italian Olympic Committee of all entities appeals it, so we know the system's working for some folks, right?

(Time) Trial of the Century (spoiler, if you didn't wake up in time this morning): Wow, what a nailbiter, and such beautiful work by we love Sastre (yes Sastre--I'm speaking relatively here)to put 4th in the bag! And, I can't help but wonder, as I bask in the embarrassing glow of finally approaching extreme dopus Al Trautwig in stage-prediction accuracy, if Levi Leipheimer hadn't had to bust himself helping Contador (though certainly deserving) in the mountains after Johan Bruyneel publicly and horridly wrote him off to every reporter on earth as a craptastic nonissue of a slug-on-wheels, would he have gained enough of those mere 30-odd seconds back in the hills just past to be standing in yellow on the podium tomorrow in Paris? Let's be honest, Cadel sucked wheel through the Alps and Pyrenees too, and he's still one up on Levi in second. Perhaps it's just because Contador's barely old enough to have his driver's license and Levi is an old coot headed down the mountain to imminent retirement in cyclist years, but am I the only one feeling protective here?

I'm Just Sayin': finally, admit it people--given the events of the last year or so, I wasn't the only one thinking what I was just barely in the very dank recesses of my heartbroken cynical brain thinking as Contador crossed the line in such smashing time today, even if I felt really, really, really bad about it, sortamaybe notreallykinda. Anyone else willing to cop to such mean and dastardly thoughts?

Allez Thor--and Saunier Duval mechanics, I suggest fleeing from the hotel and David Millar's righteous wrath--and just to be safe, perhaps Europe entirely--in the dead of night tonight!