But You'll Look Sweet/Upon the Seat/Of a Bicycle Bui--What the !#@$ Do You *Mean* I Can't Use It?!

If You Build It, They Will Come (And !@#$% You): y'know, I'm generally not a tech fiend, or a particular apologist for monster conglomerate bike companies, but I gotta say that was a low-rent move by guys who can hardly wallow any lower as Specialized apparently spends hundreds of thousands of dollars developing a bitchin' new time trial bike unofficially okayed by UCI for teams like Astana and we love Jens Vogt's Saxo Bank, only to have it dissed by the authorities when Contador was already settling his rump into the saddle at the Volta a Algarve time trial. Moral of the story: unless Pat "Dick" McQuaid etches his signature on an iron-clad guarantee in your favor in blood, don't expect to come out unscathed. Heck, just ask Iban Mayo. Or Landis. Or Ullrich. Or....

The Alberto Contador Annoyance Reduction Project: okay, I give the boy massive credit for (1) constantly pissing off Lance Armstrong and (2) finally accepting--publicly at least--his Kazakh-goon-at-gunpoint contract misery with grace. And to be fair, every megastar must have his trademark--Cav his chest thump, Boonen his aw-shucks rump-flash for the cameras, Valverde the IV port permanently embedded in his !@#--so one can't begrudge him that. But is anyone else thinking that if that twerp persists in making that !@#damn "pistolero" gunshot motion every five seconds I'm gonna imaginarily grab the butt of his imaginary gun and imaginarily pistol-whip him upside the head with it 'til he actually screams for mercy? Find something else, already, you smirking punk!

Everybody Must Get Stoned: well, now that HGH is apparently (vaguely) detectable--so I guess all those little Italian climber-weasels are gonna stay wee--athletes the world over have a new bestest friend: yep, coming on down the pike, it's gene doping, baby! For my money, this is great. While we're at it, why don't we give the first round of that get caught a reduced ban if they'll agree to grow, say, a human ear on their backs for use in transplants like those freak scientists did to that mouse a ways back? Or goodness knows that hypocrite cheat Riccardo Ricco'd be more useful if we could genetically engineer 'im to produce a cure for the common cold...

Trouble in Paradise: meantime, over at Liquigas, which is having quite the whomping start to the season, sweetly reformed attempted-doper Ivan Basso is humbly noting that both the Giro and the Tour are well-suited to his characteristics and carefully laid-out, wholly pure training regimen, which means that, so far as I can tell, if fellow "Make Me a Supermodel" finalist/squadmate Franco Pellizotti really thinks he's gonna be allowed a crack at either one of 'em, the angel wings are coming off and Basso's gonna beat his Teen Beat bud into sniveling submission with his golden halo. Lookin' forward to May and July--who cares about Cadel or Alberto or Lance, the real drama's gonna be on the team bus!

Here Comes the Sun: finally, as the Italian press wigs out that Damiano Cunego has a boo-boo to the utter disregard of poor Laurens Ten Dam's far less serious crushed pelvis, it's the Volta a Andalucia, baby, as we love Oscar Freire makes it two at the Ruta del Sol: Sprint's around 5:30 in. Allez Oscar, and watch your !@# everybody else all season!