Rock Slide: News from the Front Lines

Honest!: so I’ve perhaps had my, well, issues with Rock Racing, but nonetheless it truly does appear that the recent rumors circulating in the cycling press with regard to the state o’(in)stability over at Michael Ball’s pet project have, if anything, vastly underestimated the problem. To wit:

Ever wonder what you’d do if your boss called, told you the company you just joined was hemorrhaging dough, professed he was trying to scrounge up the cash from his own pocket, and generously offered to honor your contract at a crap percentage of what it says you’ll get paid? Right, well, he bailed, and luckily snared a last-minute gig somewhere else before the solvent squads finalized their rosters. Great, that’s one boy saved!

Remember that scene in “The Grinch Who Stole Christmas” when Cindy Lou Who busted “Santa” stuffing her Christmas tree up the chimney and our archvillain promised he was just borrowing it for a little tinkering before bringing it back? It’s like that, but with Santa asking for the contracts back for a slight modification in the wake of the team’s recent reclassification, the riders trustingly sending ‘em on, and at the end of this show, Santa never actually feels bad about it and returns ‘em, and he won’t respond to slews of desperate terrified time-sensitive e-mails, either. Um, leaving aside the strong likelihood that some of the boys’ wily managers have actually heard of those newfangled “copy machines,” Michael, couldn’t you have at least had the spine to break the agreements to their faces and retained *some* of your dwindling dignity?

Last but not least, a few key items have apparently gone missing as well: the team’s got no mechanics, no bikes, and, thanks to UCI telling Rudy Pevenage to blow when it came to his app for a director’s license, no DS. Nothin’ a little trip to the sports equipment aisle at the local Wal-Mart can’t cure!

I gotta say, I know there is limited sympathy around these parts for those who have either actually or allegedly done the dirty deed (doping, that is) but have failed to work up a full-scale wah-wah for the swooning media hordes—and let’s face it, that’s a pretty impressive slice of the pie here—but I really feel sorry for all the riders, whose chances of obtaining a contract at this point with anything stronger than your local gang of sixth-grade bike hooligans terrorizing the good folks buying a Slurpee at 7-Eleven are now somewhere handsomely south of zero, and whose training, seasons, and careers have been tanked through no fault of their own. On the plus side, you the consumer ought to really, really be able to get a good fire-sale deal on those overpriced-if-sartorially-bitchin’ $200 flaming-skull acid-green jerseys. See, good things *do* come to those who wait!