Simply Irresistible

Might As Well Face It/They're Addicted to Drugs: yep, another boy whacked out of the Giro by tragic medical problems turns out to have been felled by some unusual blood values instead, and as Milram first suspends then outright sacks Igor Astarloa before today's stage even gets far off the blocks, our sensible hero has already consulted with legal counsel and is threatening to sue. I'm telling you Thor, Milram's going south with their current crew, now's the time to upgrade your lead-out train from Credit Agricole since Julian Dean's hit the bricks and the team'll pay anything to earn some redemption!

Talk Dirty to Me: meantime, over at the Giro, Riccardo Ricco' continues to show the same discretion and reserve as a fistfighting transvestite prostitute on the Jerry Springer show with the press corps, leading even equable Boy Scout wunderkind Contador to scornfully point out that it's the experience that counts, and that it's therefore we love Gilberto Simoni, not his tantruming braggart rugrat of an ex-protege, he fears the next two days in the mountains. Damn straight, Prince Alberto! The tifosi over at Gazzetta dello Sport, however, remain suspicious amidst their gallant compliments and general resignation to another Spaniard taking their race, calling bull!@#$ on our beach boy's claim to have spent the week prior to the Giro relaxing on the white sands of the spiaggia, unless, of course, said beach is neatly paved, has an 18% gradient, and our maglia rosa was reposing on a sweet titanium road bike with a water bottle instead of a nice thirsty towel with a pina colada instead. As to the remaining Italian GC threats, they remain cool to speculation that they'll form an alliance to take out Contador tomorrow, with Di Luca humbly hoping to show well for himself, Simoni calmly predicting it'll simply be leg-against-leg, and Levi Leipheimer correctly supposing they'd rather eat their own young than work together and at this point they're merely fighting for podium scraps. Either way, forza Gilberto--until that arrogant nit you mentored learns to verbally smack around the rest of the peloton with half your deadly grace, I can't bring myself to root for him!

Arf, arf, arf!: and, congrats (spoiler!) to our favorite slobbering attack dog Jens, who, cheering himself up after a rare outburst of temper in which he slammed a few compatriots for weasellingly drafting off the team cars at the time trial, faked out the break today by mourning his fatigue to a couple of his mates, thus leaving them uninterested in responding to his sudden attack til it was too late to usefully react, impressing even wily tactician Paolo Bettini and leaving him to truly mourn the last chance he had of taking a stage at this year's Giro. Vai Paolo, there's still the Olympics and the Worlds, and time to cause damage between!

Tick, Tock: finally, I hesitate to curse both we love Iban Mayo and poor hosed Floyd Landis, but doesn't anyone else think, CAS aspirational dates-o'-doom aside, it would be awfully nice if even one of them found out whether he was ever gonna ride a bike again in competition before the rest of their generation is cheering on the Grand Tours from the rocking chairs in their "active elder" communities? Free Iban dammit--after all, it's not like there's no-one else to go after!