It's a Sunshine Day!

Come On, Get Happy: well, the list of disgraced dope-snorters snagging sweet new Continental gigs continues to grow, as Jorg Jaksche, ex-denizen of a truly stellar collection of reputed opium dens (Telekom, ONCE, Liberty-Seguros, Tinkoff) and lately bemoaning the end of his career, has landed happily at ex-Unibet team Collstrop (along with Jose Rujano (correction, he's at Caisse d'Epargne now), himself busted briefly for doping back in the day and since best known for scaring the crap out of the Italians at the Giro). Hell, you couldn't get into a freakin' ProTour race when you actually had a license as Unibet; given a few of the current teams tooling along without sanction, adding guys like these has to significantly up your chances for wildcard invites to the big shows! Tell me again why !@#$%%$ we love Joseba Beloki and even notably guilty Roberto Heras had to retire when every !@#$^*% whiner with a comparatively suckmaster palmares is landing a !@#$&! new job with every !@#%!$#@ amoral squad in the peloton?

When It's Time to Change: meantime, CONI prosecutor Ettore Torri affirms that he's interested in talking to Contador and Valverde, apparently because he's now irked that the same Ivan Basso he went nuts trying to bust now can't ride while other gentlemen associated with the exact same seedy underworld characters are allowed to keep riding. Interestingly, Torri shows some sympathy for the cyclists, at least until he bars them from Italian soil and thereby kicks their @$$es out of the Tour de France this year, viewing them as "victims of the system" whom it is sad to disqualify, when it is really the doctors and other scumbags who so wrongly convince them that they must take banned substances to even hope to compete. Oh my word Ettore--you're not actually thinking of holding anyone on the teams responsible for the syringes they push?!--the horror, to go after such obvious innocents!

I Think I Love You: and, it's a lovebeat over at Astana and Caisse d'Epargne, as Kloden arrives in New Mexico with the rest of his Kazakh squad so he can hear how completely Johan Bruyneel's gonna jack him over this year in a whole new language, and Pereiro and Valverde wax poetic on the virtues of shared team leadership at the Tour, in which Valverde, who has barely managed to finish the thing once, will naturally be king, but in which Pereiro has not only repeatedly worn the maillot jaune but also actually, unlike Valverde, almost won (that would be my comparison, not Pereiro's, because he has class). Um, not to beat a dead horse here, but does !@#$%ing *anybody* left on this planet care about the Vuelta?

Keep On: finally, on a distinctly more somber note, Marco Pantani's fatal coke provider was sentenced to 4 years in jail and a 300,000 euro fine, which mamma Pantani, still desperately seeking further investigation into the true circumstances of her son's death, has graciously decided to use to found a youth cycling academy in his honor. Tell me again why every !@#$%^! weasel who copped to taking entire Grand Tours doping during that same era was able to get off with a shrugging halfhearted wah-wah to the press and a lucrative management lordship when guys like poor Marco Pantani were made to pay an ultimately horrific price for the exact same !@$$%^$?