It's Raining Men!

No Hallelujahs: yep, the (literally) bloody mess that is the Giro d'Italia has grimly continued, with half the boys hitting the deck like drunken sailors in days of relentless pouring rain, the riders utterly unable to recuperate from their wounds by shower, massage, or even timely dinners due to endless late-night transfers and, just as the weather gods smile on the peloton at last, we love Levi Leipheimer and jailbait climbing god Maurizio Soler lose time they sorely need when a police moto wipes out right in front of 'em. Can these guys' luck *get* any worse? Oh man, now I've cursed 'em...

Talkin' Smack: and, it's already a war o'the words in our beloved race, as toddler wunderkind Mark Cavendish opines he kicked old bag Daniele Bennati's !@# the other day because "I'm younger," Ricco' aims to become even more of a petulant blame-gaming prima donna than we adore Gilberto Simoni by lashing out at everyone in sight for his troubles, Jurgen Van den Broucke is derided for taking advantage of a planned rider slowdown to skip out on a breakaway for not having or caring about his wife and family; just-denuded maglia rosa Pellizotti suggesting world champ Paolo Bettini is an inscrutable peloton-hating sell-out for refusing to join the riders' protest over yesterday's long stage and !@#$-slapping Basso as the one who's gonna have to prove he can handle team leadership at Liquigas next year, and even ever-equable gentlemen like Stuey O'Grady cheerfully attributing his race-ending clavicle-snap to guys "mak[ing] stupid mistakes and rid[ing] like idiots" and Contador and Leipheimer struggling not to antagonize RCS for letting 'em in the race while simultaneously calling bull!@#$ on the post-stage Transfers o'Death. And just to show you how right baby Cavendish is about decrepit ancient slug Bennati, I humbly bring to you the sprint replay:



Hamilton's Believe It or Not: holy crap, it's plausible folks--Tyler "I Ate My Twin" Hamilton's homologous blood doping defense could be true after all, as a 9-year old girl who went to hospital with abdominal pains is found to be carrying her embryonic twin inside her stomach. Tyler, if this was you, I owe--and hereby offer--you a sincere, abject apology for doubting such a reasonable excuse. But if you did it anyway, I *still* want my fifteen bucks back for the Tyler Hamilton Foundation hat I defaced with fabric paint protesting your innocence, buddy!

Leuk of the Belgish: meantime, it's a happy day for Bjorn "Love Defense""No Wait It Was My Dumb!@# Team Doc!" Leukemans, as his ban is overturned effective immediately and his case remanded by the Belgian Council of State on the grounds that there was "no fault" by the "accused person." Bjorn, natch, jumped to announce he's been training diligently and could use a new squad, leading one, of course, to think of such havens for nondopers-but-still-outcasts as Rock Racing. Bjorn, get ready to ride in a flamin' skull kit--Michael Ball's bottomless ego is likely going nuts with a good two days out of the newspapers already!

Thor, Thor, Thor of the Jungle: finally, a much-belated "woo-hoo!" to ever-underrated Giro-dissed sprint king Thor Hushovd for taking his first win of the season at Dunkirk, just in time for Credit Agricole to tank financially and desperately seek a bailout, putting the future of its perhaps extraneous (to soulless number-crunching euro-hoarding greed-buckets) bike squad in some doubt. Y'know, not to displace we love ageless slogger Erik Zabel, but with Alessandro Petacchi "on vacation," I hear Milram could use a new guy....