Yeeeeeeeeee-haaaaaaaaaaaah!

Sue The Bastards!: Yes, the results are finally in, and we love reviled cheating bucket o' Tour de France dope Iban Mayo's B sample has come back negative for EPO. The uncommon delay by the cycling honchos releasing the results? Shopping desperately the world over for a not-to-be-found B-sample poz apparently, as the same lab monkeys who destroyed Floyd Landis' career on even crappier testing turned out to have completely blown the remainder of the season for, let's face it, a guy who's delicate enough when he's *not* being accused of doping. Y'know, as a lawyer, I loathe the thought that my already-despised profession could be used in a baseless lawsuit to crush anybody brave and reckless enough to blow the whistle on the cycling world's plentiful dirtbags. But in this instance, I say take 'em down Iban--we've got 'base'! Let's review, shall we? Three years after cracking under the pressure of the endless Next Lance Armstrong hype, our hero finally rebounds with some smashing results in the late 2006 season and finds a happy new home with golden Saunier Duval, leading to uncharacteristically cheerful press comments by our boy for nigh on an entire year and steadily improving form to boot. And his reward for faithfully blasting apart the peloton in the 2007 Tour for his fellows? An A-sample poz, immediate suspension, massive public humiliation dealt out by his repulsed team management, an ignominious endless dragged-on miserable retreat to home, hearth and barely halfheartedly his good ol' bike (damn near about the only things that haven't abandoned him), and two big tickets the hell out of the Vuelta and Worlds. Make 'em pay, I say! Apropos of absolutely nothing, Iban, I speak pretty decent broken Italian, admittedly abysmal but truly well-intentioned Spanish, and, more to the point, can count really high in euros. And while we're at it--free Floyd! Can anyone now doubt that these eejits at the offending lab aren't capable of correctly analyzing the chemical makeup of a bag of Pixy Stix, much less the potentially career-tanking contents of an athlete's blood bag? At least, let's find a lab that can come up with a halfway plausible guilty when it's really warranted!

And In Related News: I see Pat "Dick" McQuaid, blowing the horn for UCI at the giant antidoping summit which totally sensibly lacks any representation from the actual cyclists, thundered today that cycling risks becoming a "travesty" and a "fraud." Um, not to notice the way UCI let about a good fourscore riders linked to Op Puerto ride the Tour this year because they couldn't be bothered to read the file, notifies riders of problematic test results via world press conference, won't trouble the teams about piddling errors like riders blowing off doping tests til they're 9/10ths of the way to taking a major stage race, and hands out Therapeutic Use Exemptions to any rider savvy enough to bother to ask for one (and let's not even get into the myriad foibles of team management, doctors, and the riders themselves), Pat, but "risks"?