Guts! Glory! Cobbles! Numbnuts on Motos Hitting Cyclists!: the Classics Take Off

Like a Rock: look, it's very nice watching the fast-men and -women stretch their legs in the desert--in the "stupefying boring all day every day 'til the last two kilometers" sense--but let's face it, cycling season *really* begins when the tires hit the cobbles, and we're already off to a stellar--and unfortunately intermittently disastrous--start, as Greg Van Avermonster pips World Champ Peter "Who Cares? I'm Adorable!" Sagan at Omloop as the other teams that should've been going for it just bitched and moaned at each other behind, and, even better, Belgian (natch) Jasper Stuyven shows the kind of thrill-a-minute chutzpah that's been completely lost in the recent joyless, highly-clinical, by the numbers, dirt-dull rash (and it *is* a rash) of Chris Froomes frankly indelicately making out with their power-meters, by making an insane solo go-for-it a full 30k from the line to surprise damn near everybody except apparently himself in this past weekend's Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne. Woot woot woot--can we get some *more* of you boys to take your eyes off the computers and remember why you must've started riding in the first place from now on?

Sunday, Bloody Sunday: meantime, it's also been a !@#damn crashfest out there already, with Christina Watches' Arnold Fiek taking a terrifying 4-story plunge over a guardrail at the GP Lugano into the freezing Lake Lugano, miraculously escaping--and swimming to safety--with only a few bruises and unfortunately a hairline fracture that'll take a several weeks to heal up, and, of course, yet *another* oblivious stupid support vehicle--this time, a medical support moto fer chrissakes--plowing into a rider, this time the luckless Stig Broeckx, whose BRIGHT RED KIT AGAINST A BLACK TARMAC ROAD SURFACE apparently rendered him completely invisible to A TOTAL SPACE-CADET RECKLESSLY INATTENTIVE MOTORIZED DANGEROUS ASSHAT. Team Lotto-Soudal, of course, has protested vigorously on behalf of poor multi-fractured Stig--whose Classics season is perforce completely tanked--demanding "concrete measures" be taken for rider safety, when, for my money, what "concrete" these riders really need nowadays is a !@#damn four-sided mobile CONCRETE BUNKER around each and every one of 'em just so some moron doesn't run directly over them like they understandably weren't EXPECTING A RIDER TO BE IN A GIANT EASILY VISIBLE PELOTON IN A RACE DAY YOU TOTALLY KNEW ABOUT INCLUDING THE RACE ROUTE BECAUSE YOU WERE !@#ING HIRED TO GO ALONG RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF IT WITH THE REASONABLE EXPECTATION YOU OUGHTN'T TO DECIMATE ANYBODY. Jaysus--anyway, speedy recovery guys!

Round and Round: finally, even trackside has seen a pile of thrilling action, with American Evelyn Stevens just smoking the women's world hour record by over a kilometer even as she was weaving like hell with the strain towards the end, and Brad Wiggins--well, whining about some stupid !#$ I can't bear to hear another word of, *again." Go Evelyn--come to think of it, maybe stop for a minute, you've freakin' earned it!

It's St. David Millar's Top-Secret Anti-Doping-Mentor Class Syllabus!

He was busted for doping. He cried like hell. And now, he's mentoring baby cyclists on their path to clean competition. Yes, cycling fans, we've got it here--a copy of unctuous anti-doping crusader St. David Millar's new class syllabus!

ANTI-DOPING 101

I. Doping Is Really, Really Bad And You Shouldn't Ever Do It
a. It's Bad Because It Makes You Wi--Aw, !@#$!
b. Identifying Friendly Journos and Press Outlets To Leak This Lesson To So You Can Show You Really, Really Wouldn't Dope

II. Intro to (Anti) Doping
a. Cutting-Edge Substances and Techniques You Should Never, Ever Use
b. Evading the Narcs: Tips 'n' Tricks
b. Finding the Right Doctor For You (When Your Regular Team Doc Just Isn't Enough)
c. Geography Lesson: Foreign Medical Clinics Innocuously Located Near Your Team Camp's Training Site
d. "Training Plans" Your Phony Doc Can Give UCI To Prove He Was Just Giving You "Training Advice"

IV. What To Do When You've Been Popped
a. Denial or Omerta'?: A Philosophical Discussion
b. Tearful Confessions: In Police Custody, and Out of It
i. I Feel So Bad (That I've Been Busted)
ii. Thank God You've Caught Me At Last (Instead of That Other !@#$er Who Totally Deserves It Worse)
iii. I Only Did It Once (Because You Confiscated the Rest of My Stash)
c. Method Acting: Crying to Convince
d. Choosing Your Target: Making Sure You Wail in Remorse Anytime You're Near a Camera (and How to Find Them)
e. Who to Call When Your DS and Team Doc Throw You Under the Bus Like a Dirty Snot-Rag

V. Image Rehabilitation
a. Moral Righteousness: Piling On Everyone Else Who Did Exactly What You Did (Without Looking Like a Total !@#hole)
b. Remembering to Suck When Your Ban Is Over Now That You're Supposedly Clean
c. I'm Going to Be an Anti-Doping Ambassador (Because !@#$ If I'm Gonna Be the Only Sap Forced to Play Fair)
d. Selling Your Sob Story: Memoir Tips 'n' Pricing
e. Show Me the Money: Getting a Lucrative Job Despite Your Filthy, Doping Past
f. Show Me More Money: Advanced Lesson in Starting Your Own Clothing Line/Conti Team/Training Biz/Coffee House


Extra Credit Projects and Reading:
I. Bitching About Mechanical Doping: How to Distract UCI From the Real Problem
II. Case Study: Roberto Heras: Challenging the Validity of Your B Sample And Winning Tons of Dough
III. Case Study: Alexander Vinokourov: Benefits of Threatening to Take Everyone Else Down With You
IV. To Be, Or Not to Be (A Repugnant Spineless Scumbag Wuss): Pointing The Finger At Your Grandma, And Other Family Conundrums

Sissy Li'l Slap-fights! Team Hijinks! Oh, Right, and a Few Folks Ride Their Bikes, Too #cycling

Cav Gets Huffy (the Mood, Not the Bike): well, I guess Cav's decided to call bull!@#$ on accusations he's "gone soft", because this week, as Marcel Kittel stormed to two stage victories and the overall at the Tour of Dubai after a miserable 2015, and Cav started to look all last-March Peter Sagan with all the "almosts", the Manx Missile finally lost patience and (gently, for sure) head-butted a fellow sprinter unsportingly getting in his face in the final dash to the line. And, over at the Herald SunTour, some rather unpleasant words were exchanged between Sky's Peter Kennaugh--just losing the overall GC on the final day to deeply irritating teammate Chris "Pterodactyl" Froome--and whiny domestique Pat Shaw from Avanti over Sky and Kennaugh in particular allegedly riding like total wankers on the final day, among them maudlin pet names like "selfish"--whoa, I'm way too much of a delicate lady to repeat *that*! Hey, if you can't beat the guy on the bike, you can at least use up all those words you learned in the schoolyard in third grade--*that'll* teach the snotty bastard!

Quick-Slap: Over at the Tour of Qatar, the organizers have decided not to invite back INeverRememberWhoTheNewFirstSponsorIs-QuickStep for 2016, not because the other teams have been bitching for years that their own guys can't take out QuickStep in any of the sprints and it makes them look bad, but because the squad's preening prima donnas not only insist on delaying the podium ceremonies by demanding to change out of their cycling shoes and sit for a minute after wrenching their guts out in the life-threatening heat, but they were also (inexcusably, to be fair) rude to the woman sent to tell them nicely to get the lead out (the element out of their !@#, not the sprint term), *and* they were seemingly causing all kinds of unseemly ruckus in the hotel, presumably by lighting stink-bombs in the stairwells doing cannonballs off the hotel pool diving board and splashing the well-bred guests and pulling the fire alarms to elude the 3 am doping controls. Oh, lighten up organizers and let 'em back--and let's get this party *started*!

Seeing Red (Though Maybe Not for Long): meanwhile, some punk little assclown over at Katusha has now put we love dear Purito Rodriguez' early season in doubt, as this nobody kid Vorganov gets popped for some weird drug that's apparently banned in most of Europe anyway but is (or has been til quite recently), it seems, available from our fine friends at Amazon, potentially opening Katusha up to a 45-day ban for the whole squad as it's their second offense in recent months. Holy crap, PEDs *and* Free Two-Day-Shipping with an Amazon Prime membership? Doping scumbags, sign me up! Honey, did we *not* just cover "If you're gonna dope, at least don't dope and suck" in our *last* post? And Vino, you and the rest of Astana management get back to admiring your gold-plated bicycle, and get that !@#$ing smirk off your face!

Motorin'...What's Your Price for Flight?: finally, when you start calling out dear ex-Euskaltel Ion Izaguirre for motor doping for having his wheel seemingly continue rotating for some time after a crash, all I can say is, go to hell for slandering a former Carrot, after nearly 10 years of blogging I'm damn well running out of defenses for riders I like, and even if he is which he isn't, what, you want him ending up in the !@#damn emergency room with some fridge-spoiled Riccardo Ricco' death-drug-cocktail, if anyone *has* to be enough of a thieving weasel to cheat I'd frankly rather them raiding the local hardware store for some wires and a cheap-!@# soldering gun where the worst damage they could do to themselves is a minor electrical shock versus damn near croaking from liver failure so yap yap it's lazy and against the Official Martyr Sufferfest Code let's stop acting like a pile of pills and a syringe is some kind of relative freakin' moral high ground if they're gonna be a disgusting disgrace to the entire sport anyway because at least if it's repugnant it's not gonna actually get them killed. Didn't *anyone* watch that Time for Timer thing between Saturday morning cartoons on how the human body is a just a big machine anyway? Man, now I've taken a universally-reviled position *and* dated myself back to the Pleistocene Era....anyhoo, here's our boy showing off one of his special new wheels, so enjoy!

It's Yer Brand-Spankin'-New Top Ten Tips for Dopers!

Sure, we here at racejunkie have generously offered our beloved riders free advice on this before, but each crop o' alleged losers seems to screw it up in exciting new ways all over again every year! So here, Yer Handy-Dandy Top Ten Tips for Dopers (and Wannabees):

1. If you're gonna dope, at least don't dope and *suck*. Have you *no* pride?

2. Valverde, man. Bow and learn, you incompetent nits!

3. Valverde, man. Wouldn't this motor thing just be *easier*?

4. Don't unleash a blood feud on someone who rats you out. Armstrong'd be a lot better off--or at least look like way less of an !@#hole--if he hadn't.

5. Motor in your bike frame: pathetic. *Real* cyclists use drugs. Two wires bad, four syringes good!

6. Y'ever see those inbred toothless morons on reality cop shows who get busted with a pile o' meth in their pants and go, "duuuuuuuh, it belongs to my friend"? Yeah, that's how it looks when *you* do it, too.

7. Shut up, Froome. Almost everybody already thinks you're doping anyway. Your righteous indignation ain't helping.

8. Omerta: bad in principle, great in practice. Ask (we still love) Roberto Heras--he'll give you 724,000 euros worth o' reasons why!

9. For the uninitiated, your pedals are supposed to stop moving at some point once you're off the bike. Flip the switch, !@#$head!

10. Yes, we *know* your team/DS/sponsor/mechanic is a lying sack of crap. But they're still gonna throw you under the bus, and win. Enjoy the next 50 years as an embarrassing footnote in the history books, sucker!

Really, you clowns--we're trying to *help* you here. At some point, we're gonna have to start charging for it!