Back Away From the Maillot Jaune, Buddy!

Landis Appeals: as you've all no doubt heard by now, Oscar Pereiro's party next week has been crashed already, as Floyd Landis, despite his presumably egregious lack of cash-on-hand thanks to his to-date-unsuccessful attempts to fend off the slobbering selective antidoping hounds, has taken a stand on principle and is hauling the disgusting incompetent lab chimps over at LNDD, and the entire filthy $#@!ed-up fiasco while we're at it, to the head honchos over at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, who, unlike some organizations we can think of, seem to have an almost suspicious fixation on such outrageous trivialities as due process, certainty, fair play, and justice. The horror! Since these are the same guys who last year as I recall cleared another rider they basically deemed actually guilty over comparatively minor testing irregularities, it seems Landis may actually have a chance with this one, and I gotta say, if the boy is as innocent as he says, and even if he isn't frankly, after the repugnant way everyone and his mother (names, anyone?) pimped this guy's miseries for their own egomaniacal advancement I'll be delighted to see his naysayers go down in flames. Allez Floyd!

Breathe In, Breathe Out: and, mere days before compatriot Danilo Di Luca faces the music for his own troubles, Alessandro Petacchi gets the welcome news that he's being hauled up before CAS himself, as WADA and the really aggravated Italian prosecutors have apparently had it with the national cycling fed's letting Petacchi off the hook for snarfing enough Salbutamol during the Giro to propel a raging herd of buffalo up the Dolomites. Um, not to take any responsibility off Petacchi for snorting it, but do you really expect the boy to keep track of how many hits he's taken 2 kilometers before the line when it's the rabid antidoping narcs over at UCI who handed him the inhaler in the first place? After all, by my count, approximately 80% of the rest of the peloton has also managed to prove to UCI's satisfaction that, despite their near-universal ability to ride 150K a day for weeks at a time fast enough to leave a Formula 1 racer whimpering in their wakes, these delicate creatures too labor under horrendous medical conditions that totally coincidentally require treatment with drugs that are completely accidentally performance-enhancing. Where's the compassion, people?

Team Implosion Contract Watch: no, not Levi yet, thank goodness, but I see Baden Cooke's escaped from the Unibet debacle with at least a new gig with Barloworld, which tho' still a continental squad is nonetheless able to support, among others, baby revelation-of-the-Tour Maurizio Soler, and probably the best next bet outside the ProTour aside from Slipstream. Um, any of you guys at Barloworld notice that the very nice Joseba Beloki's still available?