Aw, Rats! If Jens Voigt Sez So, It Must Be True

Radio Silence: look, let's face it: race radios blow. Frankly, I'm sick as hell of being able to predict to the boring-!@# "metre" exactly where the sprint squads are gonna reel in the breakaway, precisely how many minutes to the second the peloton's gonna give the winner of a rolling stage based on the time of biggest GC threat in the lead group, or at which exact barrier Cav's gonna send up his lead-out goons with billy-clubs to beat the crap out of his competitors in the run-up to the line. In fact, if it weren't for thrillingly irrational wingnut Vinokourov and the occasionally suspiciously-resurgent late-career stage-winning 96-year-old Spanish domestique, with the damn radios we'd all be able to plot any given day's events with soul-numbing accuracy right down to where Millar starts whining how hard it is to win clean. The problem? Yes, indisputable god Jens Voigt sez they're a good thing, and therefore, it must be true. Ergo, despite the fact that the winners of every damn race for the entire future of humanity'll be more or less foreordained, it is, it must be, I have to accept they are indeed, the best damn thing on the face of the earth next to pancetta. Oh, Jens, forgive me my sinful doubts--your poor ignorant subject here is *trying*!

Aiiigggghhhhhh!: and, just when I thought we'd get a good day off from the 24/7 Lance news onslaught that has been the interminable last damn decade, those pesky anti-doping vultures are at it again, demanding Lance's old urine samples for re-analysis and, hopefully, completely pointless further prosecution now that he's no longer, you know, actually riding. Man, just when you thought it was safe to read the news again, this happens. Can't we at least call off the dogs 'til the annual endless whoremongering begins at the Tour, and we're *forced* to listen to the 3-week hurling sound of nonstop Lance coverage whether we like it or not?

Yer Paranoid Conspiracy Theory o' the Week: over in Contador news, as Bjarne Riis professes joy in Alberto's decent-but-not-disconcertingly-superlative early-season form, not least because it's enough to keep the narcs off Bjarne's back for 10 minutes so he can figure out how the hell to intercept UCI's appeal in the mail so it arrives at CAS too late to keep the boy out of the Tour de France, the Spanish Cycling Fedis rushing to explain why el Pistolero is only riding locally so far this year, assuring the general public it has nothing, nothing to do with Contador's fear he'll be accidentally ingest, say, CERA from some third-world backwater like Belgium's certainly drug-addled public water supplies. Alberto, I feel your pain--and if you *do* stray outside your own borders, watch out for those pissed-off squealing teenybopper Andy Schleck fans--they'll beat you down with their terrifying Hello Kitty backpacks in an instant!

Oscar the Ouch: finally, as Damiano "See What Happens When You Jack Over Simoni? That's Like 10 Years of Bad Karma!" Cunego breaks his looooong winless streak with a handsome win at the Giro di Sardegna, none other than gentle iron man/freak-injury king Oscar Freire takes his first of the season over a pretty fine field at the Ruta del Sol. Woo-hoo Oscar! And, since there's yet no video to be found, and because I do so love my loyal reader(s) who are Cavendish fans, I gratuitously bring you the Manx Missile's still-fresh win at the Tour of Oman last week instead:
Okay, here's Oscar now, run-up to the line and the crash start around 7:30, enjoy, and go Oscar!: