Feeeeeed the Riiiiiiiii-ders/

Let Them Know It's Christmastime Again: Yep, as everyone now knows, T-Mobile has finally called it quits, and the timing, I gotta say, seems completely !@$ed up. Bjarne Riis' admission that he doped his way to Tour de France victory? Not so bothersome. Jan Ullrich's spectacular flameout amidst vicious abuse by the German press? A shrug of the shoulders. Admitted dopers Rolf Aldag and Erik Zabel? Mere gnats. Patrik Sinkewitz' 2007 doping poz? Well, we're perhaps a bit irked boys, but we'll get through it together. New manager Bob Stapleton's commitment to clean sport and total decimation of the dirty winning team? Now *that's* the last straw you !@#$%^s, we're *out* of this farce!

Meantime the riders, caught in various states of surprise, appear to remain optimistic, no doubt in part because Bob Stapleton's got more money than God, and not only does big George Hincapie thankfully remain gainfully employed (at least this year) while his team's out searching for new sponsors--and more importantly, trying to find something rather more high-end for the boys to ride than a Wal-Mart Huffy midnight-madness sale special shakily put together by sullen underpaid bike-ignorant teenagers--the team's already reincarnated itself as Team High Road (that'll look great in the headlines when the first rider tests poz for testosterone!) and is already designing new jerseys. Fine, T-Mobile's a filthy tainted cheating pack of lying doping skankmasters, and the paranoiac Stapleton's a sport-loving winged saint reincarnating the squad into jailbait unassailable purity. But let's be honest--between our fallen Golden Boy's careening beauty on the bike, Erik Zabel's endless reign of terror in the sprints, and Vinokorouv and Kloden's nasty backstabbing mid-Tour power plays, am I really the only one who'll miss the glorious wreck that was T-Mobile?

Pimp Iban's Ride(-ing Career): What the @!#$, Spanish Sports Ministry? You've spent the better part of two years letting Alejandro Valverde hide behind your skirts like a cowering naughty toddler, no matter how many times he's linked by cowardly Basso-esque dog-slander to half the blood bag's in Fuentes' humungous stash. Concurrently, I've spent the better part of two years defending your smirking nationalistic protectionism on procedural grounds, as I do firmly believe it's up to UCI to prove a boy's a heretic before actually lighting up the bonfire, else a rider has no protection at all before the irrational selective aim of Pat "Dick" McQuaid's random vendetta-driven Uzi--which lack of objectivity rather tends to shake public confidence in the fairness of the process. And the thanks I get for my faith, despite the high likelihood that Valverde--who still hasn't won you your Grand Tour you continue to hype, incidentally--is in fact the doping troll he's accused of being? Right, out of nowhere you decide to completely pimp poor we love Iban Mayo--whose negative multiple B samples by the UCI's own rules ought to have *exonerated* him--to UCI's endless desperate poz-hunting and the same inordinately incompetent lab monkeys whose work couldn't be duplicated by objective labs in the first place. What the !@#$ has UCI got on you, you spineless Iban-jacking wussbags?!