Poor Landis Roasting on an Open Fire...

...Pat "Dick" Nipping at His Nose: yes, Landis' formal appeal is in, replete with a well-said--if fruitless--plea for fair play (both on wheels, and judicial) in this grotesque farce of a sport, and the arbitrators are chosen: by Landis, one of the team which, in a shocking display of procedural respect, tossed charges against Inigo Landaluze when even the panel itself thought he was a guilty cheating pig; by USADA, predictably, a rabid anti-athlete slobbering pit bull; and, by CAS, an internationally known commercial arbitrator whose palmares, if I googled right, includes allowing the 2000 US Olympic men's relay team keep its medal despite a member of the wider team having tested poz for doping. Well, you've got at least one guy willing to concede the relationship between committing procedural atrocities and totally !@#$ing people over, Floyd--perhaps, particularly if they pay attention to the lab results' apparent substantive flaws as well, you've got something akin to a snowflake's chance in hell on this one!

Then again, even if the moral victory is ultimately Landis'--as I hope it is--what the hell good is it going to do anyway? At best, CAS is saying, he can't hope for a verdict before May--way too late for him to find a team with both the pocket change left to hire him, and enough spine to be willingly ripped to shreds for their perfidy by the press, teams, riders, humiliated sports authorities and, most of all, the outraged cynical joyless fans whose favor the sponsors are, after all, in the game to court in the first place--forget freakin' losing the entire spring Classics season and Giro to use for actual training, even if the righteous hypocrites at ASO'd let him or anyone remotely affiliated with his dirty carcass into the Tour. As for also-!@#$%$ Oscar Pereiro--what, those clowns are going to throw the boy (who after all at least had the sportsmanship not to call for Landis' immolation until the last possible moment) another huge party where this time they force him to hand Landis back the '06 maillot jaune at gunpoint? Yes, yes justice takes time--but where time is distinctly of the essence, must it take so long that Floyd is gonna have to be dug up as some millennia-old mummified archeological artifact before a verdict is reached? Speaking of roasting, I see UCI has graciously held off their bull!@#! analysis on Iban Mayo's Z sample til the boy or his representative can personally be on hand to watch the lab's disgusting self-congratulatory predetermined results flush the tattered remnants of his rebounding career down the toilet. You suck UCI!

I Want Your Sex (To Get Me Out of My Doping Poz): and, (aptly enough, pregnancy-test sponsor) Predictor's suspended Bjorn Leukemans, busted for high testosterone in a surprise pre-Worlds control but defending it on the not-unreasonable grounds that the exact same lab granted him a medical certificate for the exact same "naturally high" testosterone/epitestosterone ratio six years ago, has now taken a new weapon out of his arsenal: he was engaged in the act of love with a companion exactly when the antidoping sniffer dogs banged on his door for a urine test, so natch a few things were ratcheted up hormonally. Despite this compelling, if over-informative, argument, the lab doc has objected that while the boy may indeed be a raging studbucket o' manliness, even those feats of athleticism can't explain the *synthetic* testosterone his geared-up bod apparently produced. Totally aside from the merits of this interesting debate, anyone else prefer that the riders stick with the trusty discreet ol' 'vanishing inhaled twin' defense from now on?

Aw, Rats!: finally, in truly bummin' news, miraculously-recovered young phenom Saul Raisin has announced that his nascent career in cycling is over, as the team doctors at Credit Agricole--which is still honoring his ongoing contract--forbid him from riding in the peloton ever again despite impressive neuro-psych-test results, as the danger to the boy's life is still too great if he should, as riders are so likely to do, take another hit on his head in a crash. Don't give up on this sport entirely Saul--if not ride, surely you could at least inspire either stars of tomorrow, or fellow pro cyclists of today via a ProTour starter-management gig, to do so?