Fleche for Fantasy

Ardennes of Thieves: yep, it's time for Fleche-Wallone, and with world champ Marta Bastianelli ready to steal victory in the women's race and Paris-Nice king Rebellin, Damiano Cunego, and gunning-for-first Frank Schleck on hand for the men's, it's going to be a completely wasted day at work bouncing around in my chair waiting to come home and glom onto the coverage. Allez big Schleck! Meantime, with the time trial behind 'em, the climbers come out to play at the Giro del Trentino, with Bettini swearing to make it to Liege this weekend at any cost and Simoni, one presumes, ready to swat all comers in the Dolomites. Vai Gibo!

(Some) More Mr. Nice Guy: okay, Vs., I've justly excoriated you for grossly wasting the gift that is Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen (and the amiable Bob Roll, while we're at it) by not bothering to air any actual race coverage til long after the course itself is but a cobweb-dusted memory. And I understand how very compelling watching some guy sitting in a boat catching bass and swatting (and tying I gather) flies or torturing some ticked-off giant hunk of sirloin with some terrifying rodeo clown can be. But now, right as the jammin' Tour de Georgia presents a smashing local opportunity to get folks interested in cycling beyond whatever Lance Armstrong was doing two years ago, I get cycling.tv--to whom I've paid a giant wad of cash, not that that's your fault for airing one lousy hour of Vuelta coverage last year--telling me they can't broadcast the TdG because *someone's* waiting to broadcast the race sometime, one hopes, before the !@#$%$# thing is run again in 2009. Look, if I clip some spurs onto Bobby Julich's bike shoes, buy him a ten-gallon hat and painfully tighten a rope around his bike's derailleur, will you freakin' show some cycling already?

Day of Reckoning: finally, according to our beloved all-knowing Euskaltel addict over at ibanmayoblog, it's official: May 21 is the day CAS announces Iban's fate, and it's my miserable nausea-inducing guess that the cycling bodies are getting damn tired of looking like incompetent witchhunting !@#$%^%$ and someone's just gonna have to fry. Any bets on who that's gonna be? Either way, the boy himself is already psychologically crushed, and if, say, a few weeks' worth of press coverage extolling his fabulousness is enough to throw him into a years-long freefall after his triumph on Alpe d'Huez in the Tour, I can only imagine the Vandenbrouckian disaster that awaits when our fragile flower actually gets hosed by the authorities. Oh right, and Petacchi's gettin' all worried and Bjorn "Love Defense" Leukemans is formally out for 2 years, like that matters. Free Iban, you repulsive Z-sample-whoring desperate crybaby vendetta-driven rule-reviling wanks!