Thursday, April 24, 2008

How Do You Talk To An Angel?

You Offer Him a Million Euros, If You're Liquigas: yes indeed, months before his suspension for attempted-but-surely-never-completed doping is even up, St. Ivan of Varese has signed a two-year deal with a fawning Liquigas that's almost--almost--as handsome as Basso himself. Anyone else thinking Danilo Di Luca, mired in a Continental squad after mere accusations of a little liquid OD at the '07 Giro, is in a screaming bull!@#$ rage-fest with his poor hapless agent at the moment over such hopelessly hypocritical--and for Il Killer, I'm sure, costly--perfidy? (Not to mention Jan Ullrich, who if he dropped his little party-drug adventures from a few years back sure might wanna consider taking 'em again now for a little escape.) Gilberto Simoni, however, who memorably accused Basso of trying to buy a stage win off him at the 2006 Giro and then cooly impugned both his purity and his manhood, but has been almost terrifyingly nice to everyone this season, has yet to weigh in the subject apparently, though if this don't make his head actually explode into nanobits all over the mountains of northern Italy, I really don't know what will. Anything you'd like to share with us, Gibo?

Y'know, I was gonna say, it's nice Valverde will have some company out in the peloton next year, but then, I'd probably just get sued for a totally innocent comment on his and Ivan's natural compatibility. Forget I mentioned it!

911 Is a Joke: and, in a book and interview sure to warm the cockles of Dick "Dick" Pound's sold-to-Satan immortal soul, Bernard Sainz, purveyor of some of the finest doping products known to the peloton in the scandalous '90s, has proclaimed the current fight against doping as a "put-on," tho' in light of last season's vigorous attention to fair play by the likes of Astana, Rabobank, T-Mobile and Cofidis and a host of individual cleanmeister riders, it's clear that any problems in that area are genuinely a thing of the past. Why, why can't we all justly recognize the current peloton as the paragon of purity it's so clearly become? Damn cynics, spoiling everything for the rest of us...

Mur Than a Feelin': finally, what a smashing 2nd place for ever-underrated world champion Marta Bastianelli as she surges to near-victory in Fleche-Wallone over an amazingly high-caliber field, outkicked only by the unbeatable jailbait Marianne Vos and boding more than well for the rest of the season. Yap, yap, Neben, Armstrong, whoever--forza Marta! And, what an agonizing last-second sweep-up for a valiant Fabian Wegmann in the men's race, and what a pleasing shock to see Cadel Evans actually break free of the butt-end of someone else's bike for once and make such a worthy attack for the line. Basso's still gonna kick your !@# in the 2009 Tour though, Cadel!

1 comment:

blue squirrel said...

did you mention that liquigas is a PRO TOUR team, oops, who needs a stinking ethics code anyway, when your national talent is up for grabs. this is going to be fun watch, too bad i can't afford popcorn any more due to the fact that it was turned into 3 drops of biofuel that lasted about as long as my sprint in a flex-fuel SUV.