Lance Armstrong: Punk-!@# Schoolyard Bully

What a Goon: remember that charmless dimwit high-school alpha jock who always took out his raging adolescent insecurities on whatever harmless nerdlings who had the bad luck to pass His Highness on the way to their lockers to the grunting approval of his Neanderthal inbred beer buddies? Well, as if siccing your legal team on former teammates, Tweet-slapping 'em like a whiny beeyotch, and screeching every two minutes about your own nobility and unimpeachable perfection weren't enough, now Lance feels compelled to corner his enemies outside men's rooms and get 'em kicked out of Aspen restaurants that apparently are his own personal rock-star preserve. Classy! His defense: he was really just asking after Tyler's well being. Yeah, the same way he was helping Floyd Landis on Brasstown Bald that time by offering that friendly encouraging gesture! And people say sportsmanship is dead...

Excuses, Excuses: and, the controversy over whether Alberto Contador should ride in July has intensified, with no less than Dauphine champ Wiggo on the bandwagon, the French crying like babies as usual, and Bjarne, of course, utterly certain that the clen in Alberto's system was the result of a culinary accident. Contador, meantime, is focused on his form, and I can't decide if his coyness over how exhausted he still is from the Giro is merely a Lanceian attempt at faking a bonk a month early to send Schleck into a tizzy of fruitless overexertion when Andy foolishly attempts to capitalize on it, or a sincere admission that even he may not be able to pull off a rare Grand Tour two-fer. Y'know, not to give the boy *too* much credit for poindexterosity, but an indifferent if solid first week of the Tour de France *would* have the added benefit of making Contador look suitability vulnerable and possibly even human, which surely couldn't hurt him with a bevy of narcs just begging for an excuse to legitimize themselves by taking someone of Contador's stature down. Boy, are you *tired* those 1st seven days, Alberto--you hear?

News From the Freak Injury Department: pellet-gun assaults, twisted spinal columns, rump-chomping saddlesores--yep, poor we love Oscar Freire's had it all, and now, it's more surgery on his nasal polyps, with the team flat mum so far on his chances for the remainder of the season. And, am I just imagining things, or, between this worldwide spike in farmhouse clenbuterol doping and Euskaltel's innocent Mikel Landa getting flattened by some renegade charging cloven-hooved monstrosity, are cattle becoming the single biggest threat to the peloton since Vinokourov? Anyway, here's the damage: Get well soon Mikel!