World O' Hurt

The (Cycling) Gloves Are Off: with the Worlds right around the corner, and the organizers saying straight out that neither rumored Fuentes client Alejandro "Valv" Valverde nor admitted 90s doper Erik Zabel are welcome, the mellow Valverde finally sounds irked, saying he's tired of proclaiming his innocence and he intends to be there competing the Worlds whether the proofless organizers give him the go-ahead or not. Hey, without any apparent interest from UCI whatsoever in actually reading the Fuentes file before everyone possibly implicated by it retires to irrelevance and DS cash-cow paychecks, why not take the high road? Meantime, Zabel I think is getting by on his mere aging icon status (coupled by the fact that I don't think anyone doubts he wasn't the only T-Mobile boy indulging back then, or possibly even now), which means that, even though I'm actually rooting for we love Paolo Bettini and Oscar Freire, it ought to be a lively run-down to the finish line. Vai Paolo!

Tour de Who Cares, It's Almost Time for the Vuelta!: Well, we do love the Tour of Germany, and the Germans predictably continue to smoke it, with precocious jailbait Ciolek from T-Mobile (which could use some good news) taking two sprints in a row and we love Jens continuing his grip on the leaders jersey with the worst of the mountains behind him. Hmmmm....the Italians snag most of their Giro, the Germans hammer at Deutschland, the Spaniards crush everyone else at the Vuelta...anyone else wondering what the hell's wrong with the French at *their* hometown race, a mortifyingly occasional stage win or two excepted?

Baseball is for Dopers: so as cycling implodes under the weight of every sobbing confession and shocking, shocking positive test, I see baseball head honcho Bud Selig just let admitted steroid-snarfer Jason Giambi off the hook for copping to a career's worth of doping, on the grounds that he admitted it, and he does very nice charity work too. No offense, but what a pack of wussies! Ivan Basso just got *2 years* for copping to trying and *failing* to dope (whether or not you think it should've been for not actually having the guts to say he succeeded at it), for heck's sake! And look at Jan Ullrich--he's been riding around doing charity work for the tots, and he wasn't even *busted*! Where's his ticker tape parade? Damn, Shameless St. Millar Defender--too bad your boy's not a baseball player--he probably would've gotten his humungous visage carved in stone for all eternity on Mount Rushmore right next to Abraham Lincoln!