His Name Was Ricco'/He Wore A Diamond

He Was Escorted to His Chair/He Saw His IV Hangin' There: yep, after even the narcs only asked for a 20-month ban, CONI has whacked our little twerp Riccardo with a full 2 years, valuing the doping violation at a mere 18 months but adding on another 6 for Ricco's use of Danilo DiLuca's childhood (and unusually recent) doc Carlos "Oil for Drugs" Santuccione--and this *after* the boy sang and gave the feds his dealer. Ricco', needless to say, is pissed that he 'fessed up for nothing, leading his lawyers to scream their heads off about an imminent appeal to CAS (good luck with that!) to reverse this cruel injustice, tho' even Ricco', perhaps tired of being told he should be glad he's not in prison by the same morally outraged tifosi who're swooning over Ivan "I Smoked, But I Didn't Inhale" Basso's return this month because he's just so very, very pretty, concedes that it's "fair" he does *some* time. This 2 year ban, of course, is particularly ironic, given WADA's new flexy rules saying if you play the ratfink, you'll get mercy, and if you don't, or if you god forbid get one of the highly statistically likely false positives and have the gall to object to it, you'll be roasted like a weiner at a Boy Scout campfire. Yeah, lookin' at how Riccardo got rewarded--and how for depriving his compatriots of a useful dope source he'll be even more loathed in the peloton than he already was, which is frankly tough to beat--I can see that's one hell of a payoff! Maybe you can keep yourself occupied suing Santuccione for !@#$ing up your microdosing, Ricco', 'til your ban is up? Anyhow, see you at the Vuelta in 2010!



The Gift That Keeps on Giving: meantime, the ever-generous French antidoping authorities have offered Lance Armstrong a lovely gift: let the same incompetent lab chimps that !@#$ed over Floyd Landis and couldn't find a lab short of Mars to come up with a poz on Iban Mayo's umpteenth sample retest your urine samples from the 1999 Tour de France, prove L'Equipe wrong once and for all, and we'll welcome you back to the Tour with open arms. Heck, we'll even allow you to test it at a different lab run by higher-order primates if you want! This way, as Pierre Bordry so kindly promises, you can smack down your naysayers once and for all and prove you've never cheated during your brilliant career. Even better, Lance, the statute of limitations has long since passed, so even if you do come out looking like the cheating lying drugsucking skankbag we all know and dearly hope you are because we're still mortified a French rider hasn't won the Tour since about 1915, you can't actually get punished for it anyway--so what's a little potential public humiliation and a total destruction of your legacy, you scaredy-cat? Sadly, Lance has put a kibosh on the idea, tanking Bordry's humble hopes of open redemption but still fortunately guaranteeing he remains in the constant spotlight his astonishing ego demands while everyone makes a gratifying fuss over him in the headlines.Damn Lance, you shoulda gone with Viagra instead of that EPO !@#$--after all, as one commenter here has helpfully noted, it does really help mountain climbers, and coincidentally could also help you keep up with all those rock stars actresses and socialites you keep snackin' on!

He Walked In Through the Out Door/Out Door: speaking of the spandex spawn o' satan, I see Johan Bruyneel is opining that not only will Contador and Armstrong get along famously at the 2009 Tour (at least if you consider "getting along" to mean not personally impaling each other with broadswords), but that Lance--always known for his generosity to his teammates and subservience to their ambitions--will of course be delighted to work for Alberto should our neophyte prove the strongest rider next year. *Where* can you get the happy pills that Bruyneel is on again? Anyway, lest stardust assurances of blissful team-bus communes don't convince the boy to shave his head don saffron robes and start handing out daisies to strangers in airports, Johan cheerfully reminded the press corps that Contador's got a two-year contract with no out clause, and no matter what the hell anyone wants to pay him, he'll goddamn yank his scrawny little kneecaps off at the socket if he even *thinks* about screwing Johan over. *Now* we're talking motivation, Mr. Sunshine!

Wire, Wire, Pants on Fire: and, a short hop away by train, Frank Schleck faced his own inquisitors today, earnestly denying doping but apparently still not coming up with a coherent reason for why he wired Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes a modest, if still sweet, 7000 euros in 2006. Don't worry CSC, as the alleged "Friend of Birillo," I'm sure he was just fronting a little cash to help stoke up Ivan Basso's dog for those exhausting frisbee sessions in the local park...please Frank, convince me the cops are wrong on this and leave me *one* freakin' rider I don't have to roll my eyes at!

Enter Sandman: finally, Op Puerto was finally put to sleep last night without a single conviction, thanks to exuberantly lax pre-2006 Spanish doping laws that allowed riders to, well, I won't say Valverde themselves as the boy can still probably pay for a pretty good attorney and all, but at least Heras themselves into speeding bullets so long as it didn't actually kill or noticeably maim 'em at the time. Sure, someone can still try to reopen the thing, but is anyone else thinking that somehow the notoriously transparent Spanish cycling authorities are gonna manage to crush anyone who tries to bring it back up? Lookin' forward to the carnage to come!