Monday, May 11, 2009

Up, Up With People!

Well, the Climbers Anyway: yes, tifosi, having finally figured out how to get this beautiful race on TV, and while I'm still mourning the sucktastic luck of Christian Van de Velde, I can say with pleasure that we already hit the mountains tomorrow, and looking at the stage profile, and considering my own mild personal preferences, I gotta say, I hope Simoni kicks Basso's "attempted-doper" !@#. And if he doesn't? Well, perhaps Ivan'll just be saving himself for the Alps and GC, expecting Gilberto & co. to prematurely exhaust their ancient bods in the Dolomites, but on the flip side, if St. Ivan of Varese does take the stage, I can at least look forward to the distinct possibility that the lately-saccharine Simoni'll finally lose his cool and go, as was his whiny wont, for the verbal jugular. But for my money, what would be even more entertaining long-term: if Basso shows any weakness at any time in the race, because dollars to Dolomites, Franco Pellizotti, who as one may recall went completely shrieking bat!@#$ when Liquigas hired the Comely One, will absolutely hard-core bushwhack him. Anyway, forza, forza Gibo; race commentators, please do not yap the words "Lance Armstrong" more than 800 times a minute any longer lest I officially pull a Linda-Blair-in-the-Exorcist and go all kinds of head-spinning projectile--well, I won't go into further detail, but anyway, it sure wouldn't be ladylike; and no offense, but stick with the Classics Cunego!

I Feel Piti/Oh So Piti: meantime, the ink was barely dry on the Italian narcs' 2 year ban of poor Alejandro "Piti" Valverde before (1) Valverde started yellin'; (2) the tifosi started celebrating; (3) Caisse d'Epargne started suin' and (4)Tour de France organizer Christian Prudhomme finally got his excuse to kick that dirty, dirty boy out of his race once and for all. Me, I'm starting to think that between the Italians having been dragged kicking and screaming into serious antidoping efforts only because they were pissed Valverde got off while Basso got nailed, the Spaniards hell-bent on protecting their national hero at any cost, and the French happy to see any foreigner go down to distract the masses from their own inability to win their Tour for the last decade, none of these clowns are in a position to complain about anybody. Anyhoo, good luck at CAS, Alejandro--as Floyd Landis or damn near anyone else could tell you, you're gonna need it!


Finally, a Giro d'Italia Coverage Haiku:
Aching emptiness
Yapping ignoramuses
Come back, Phil & Paul!

4 comments:

Rosemary said...

RJ, are you watching on Universal Sports? I tuned in this morning and was happy to hear commentary. Thanks again for mentioning it, I never would have ventured so high up on the channels and found it, even by accident.

Between watching the Giro and catching the paralympics wheelchair rugby matches...I might not be too productive for the next 3 weeks.

Mary said...

OMG, YES! I am SO VERY tired of hearing the announcers talk nonstop about Lance! Heck, I even like the guy and was happy to see him back; it's great to see all the extra publicity for cycling, it looks like he's really coming through on his pledge to work for cancer research, and I'm hopeful that he will be able to step in and save his team financially.

But, DAMN - enough already! Maybe every third time they want to say "Armstrong" they could just pause and substitute in someone else's name? There are one or two other guys out on the road, after all; somebody else must, even occasionally or by accident, be almost as interesting as Lance!

Great stage today Levi and Jens!!

Anonymous said...

There sure are some strange personality dynamics at this giro! RJ, do you have any info on how the egos are meshing? Hot favorites Ivan and Levi were once Disco teammates with the smiling assassin slotting in above double l, so there must be some animosity there. Also, what about Ivan and former indentured servant Carlos? We want dirt!!

Anonymous said...

No blog on the Freiburg Report? Not that any news of institutional doping at T-Mob would be shocking.