It's The Countdown to the Tour de France, Baby!

Face/Off: so Lance and Contador's Tour de France prep is well under way, with Lance turning in a genuinely handsome performance at the Tour de Luxembourg and Alberto, having reconned the Pyrenees with posse in tow, now ready to take on the Dauphine for, he swears, just some training time as he positively assesses Lance's prospects for July. Me, I'm stuck on a more fundamental question: short of some evil lackey of Contador's stealth-slashing all the RadioSkank bike tires every morning--and even assuming the poor twig makes it out of the opening cobblestones sections alive--how the hell is he gonna stand up to Lance's mentally-crushed robot army with *his* squad? Ya can't suck off of Saxo Bank *every* day in the mountains, honey!

The Emperor Has No Clothes!: surprisingly, in a distinctly unfamiliar experience for Lance, he was actually accosted by a non-adoring member of the public at a press event, with the local ruffian calling out that Lance was a "cheat" and a "liar", and Armstrong challenging the ultimately-cowardly miscreant to "come here and say it to my face." Lance: 1. Ruffian: zip. Oh, why even *try*, haters--the man's just unbeatable!

Alejandro Valverde Needs Your Support: in other Tour happenings--or more precisely, not-happenings--Alejandro Valverde would like to extend to you his heartfelt thanks for your support--which message you can leave for him here, and no, let's not abuse the poor boy psychologically, you wisenheimers, at least not on his own website, particularly when UCI has recently released its revised world rankings. Ouch! On the other hand, congrats to Cadel, and look where our big lovable Tom Boonen is sitting--Tommeke, how far you've come! Y'know, I was gonna post some rakish photo of Tom himself, but having just come across some distinctly disconcerting clips of our boy in what appears to be an au-naturel photo-shoot shower scene, I admit, even I've actually got standards, so here's a nice pic of the car he wrecked in his far-away bad-boy days:

Motorin'/What's Your Price for Flight?: and, the controversy over motorized bike dopingcontinues to rage, with UCI swearing to take down anyone except Lance Armstrong who engages in the practice and Marco Pinotti, at least, knowing--but refusing to say--exactly who to blame when he blows the victory. Aw, come on, pony up, Marco--what's a little slander between friends?

Que CERA, CERA, Suckers!: finally, in vaguely-related-to-cycling-news, the Olympics have just announced that they're going back to check to 2006 Torino samples for CERA, which means, presumably, that they're also gonna go back and check the 2008 Summer Olympics samples for anything the then-new testing protocols may have missed the first time around. So for my money, while of course we all know we love Samuel "Holy Crap He's the Olympic Gold Medalist!" Sanchez is innocent, the rest of you two-wheeled weasels oughta get ready fast with the Official Doping Excuses of Disgusting Cheating Skankwads, namely, (1) I didn't do it; (2) the lab !@#$ed up; and (3) Lance Armstrong peed in my sample. Lookin' forward to the press conferences, dirtbags!