It's Yer Unwritten Rules o' the Peloton, Revisited!

All right, as the recent smackdown between Kittel & Grivko so amply demonstrated, it's !@#damn etiquette chaos in the peloton right now, so before we all devolve into thievery, cannibalism, and chamois-snapping, I say it's about freakin' time to lay down some serious rules. Disagree, especially if yer a pro who's not just talking out of his/her !@# like I am? Have at, Miss Manners!

1. The Golden Rule: Do Not Be a Punk-Ass. If yer own mom'd spit on you and disown you for shaming the family, back off whatever weasel scumbag move yer about to pull. This goes for you too, Valverde!

2. Golden Rule, Part Deux: Do Not Be a Wuss. This, as dear reader(s) have pointed out, is bike racing. If Rui Costa'd rip yer stem off and start beating the crap out of you with it for some simpering passive-aggression, back off!

3. The Leader's Jersey, Part Un: Respect the Jersey. The leader sets the rules, dictates the pace at non-critical junctures, calls nature breaks, and doles out mercy or hellfire. But only within limits, because...

4. The Leader's Jersey, Part Deux: this goes both ways (hear me, Marcel)? Don't call a nature break halfway up Alpe d'Huez just because yer legs are crap and you know some !@#$wit with a motor--uh, Valver--uh, somebody stronger is gonna destroy your GC hopes like Godzilla on Tokyo, don't take undue advantage of someone else's misfortune, and don't, in general, be a !@#$. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, get it?

5. Sucker-Punching (A Fan): sure, you might not like that publicity-slutting asshat running next to you screaming their heads off in a neon banana-hammock, combination baseball hat/Texas longhorns, or a (wholly unjustified) syringe costume and accusatory sign, but if s/he ain't interfering with your line, endangering your wheel with a flag, or imminently tossing a large dog or small child in yer path, save the energy, honey, and let it go. On the other hand, if someone throws urine at you--and you're sure it's not just an ill-aimed, if well-intentioned, attempt to toss you a beer--I say, justice dealt!

6. Sucker-Punching (A Fellow Rider): Don't use it to screw someone over in a sprint. If some reckless selfish dipwad is jacking *your* line in the last 100 meters, though, fair game. And if you're Bernard !@#$ing Hinault, you can punch anyone at any time for any reason. Why, *you* want to tell him he can't?

7. Attacking (Flat Due to Natural Road Debris): look, happens to everyone. If you're just some schmo, no-one's attacking you anyway. If you're ten seconds apart on GC, particularly if it happens on a crucial climb, keep your pace, but no need to be a wanker about it. Caveat: no brownnosing peloton-powerhouse former teammates by staying with 'em for half an hour while the team you're supposed to be riding for gets hosed. And no running up the hill like a jack!@#!

8. Attacking (Flat Due to Pile of Tacks Deliberately Strewn by Some Malevolent Nutwhack): Not only should you not attack if you're the only sod lucky enough to get through it unscathed--which only rewards the scumbag, imho--but this possibly one of those instance where the Sucker-Punch (Fan) protocol applies. You endanger the riders, you takes your chances!

9. Bottles (Giving): Got an extra bottle riding next to someone who's obviously in croaking distress with no team car in sight? Nice to pass it along. Just don't accidentally hand over one with whatever sketchy drug-positive internet "nutritional supplement" you're scamming!

10. Bottles (Throwing): Over the head and/or to the side. Not skittering under somebody's wheel to take 'em down! This goes doubly for musettes: toss it into somebody's wheel and you've probably cost 'em the stage, the podium, or, even worse, some major collarbone surgery when they jackknife into the tarmac. And they'll remember you, pal!

11. Nature Breaks: Don't attack on a real one. It's weak, and the entire peloton will justifiably hate you. About three more water bottles in, you'll likely find that out for yourself! For calls necessarily heeded while on the fly, with perhaps the balancing assistance of a discreet teammate, for god's sake stay to the back and off to the side, so you don't let it rip on the poor bastard behind you!

12. Extreme Weather Protocol: Know you game-changingly suck in the wind/cold/snow/rain/dessicating heat, and your GC rivals don't? Well, it's really nice that UCI's decided no-one should actually have major limbs drop off from frostbite, but don't take advantage of your lack of hardman skills and whine at the organizers til they cancel the stage just so you can gain a leg up. Why? Because you're a *cyclist*, dammit, and Marianne Vos eats blizzards for breakfast and spits 'em back out as snow-cones for the kiddos while you're still cowering in your hotel room in your down bathrobe, you wuss!

13. And Finally, Yer Miscellaneous Post-Race Commandment: If you say you're gonna retire, *retire* fer chrissakes! This applies without exception to Brad Wiggins, but not to, say, Purito, whose glaring absence from the peloton has already left an atom-crushing black whole from which no light or matter can escape. And this includes any stupid !@#$ like reality-show long-jumping/bull-fighting/extreme curling or whatever the !@#$% you're doing lately, Wiggo!

Mud 'N' Guts! The Badger Retires (Again)! Tinkoff Training Secrets Revealed! #cycling

Race to the..What the !@#$ Is This?: yes, Paris-Nice is off, and while it may be the race *to* the sun, it sure as hell ain't the race *in* the sun, as mud, rain, snow, and freezing treacherous glop besets the peloton for a messy--and mercifully finished--Stage 1. Not liking the cold: big Belgian bad-!@# Tom Boonen, waxing philosophical and still, despite an injury-delayed return to top form, gunning for Roubaix. Just take good care of him the next few weeks, Quick Step--Lefevere, if this boy so much as gets the sniffles and it affects his race when it counts, it's *your* damn fault!

Babe in the Woods (Well, Off the Podium, Anyway): and, legendary cyclist and Tour de France podium babe extraordinaire Bernard Hinault--whose frequently violent defense of the sanctity of the podium ceremony gives a whole new meaning to the word "puncheur"--is stepping down from his duties of congratulating the day's champion and keeping the celebrations clear of social activists, publicity-ho rabblerousers, and general miscreants, typically, in recent years, by landing on 'em like a ton o' bricks. Here, he takes down a spindly tax protester just last year: We'll miss you Bernard--but I bet your victims won't!

Getting to Know You, Getting to Know All Abou--RIDE, YOU GUTLESS WEENIES, RIDE!: meantime, after Oleg "Dynasty" Tinkov got into an extended twit-fight with Jonathan "Hipster" Vaughters over whether gaudy Trumpesque gilded champagne-swilling extravagance is superior to smugly downscale faux-rusticity--thereby engaging in precisely the sort of substantive discussions about cycling the lack of which is purportedly driving Tinkov out of the sport at the end of the season anyway--Oleg immediately got right back to the business of, y'know, rallying his troops to start winning *bike races* by, as shown in this clip, encouraging his Team Tinkoff boys from behind as they trained this afternoon. Damn, Oleg, you're no braggart after all--you really *are* a better athlete than they are!

You Spin Me Right Round, Baby: finally, while I frankly can't typically tell the difference between an omnium a cadmium or a millenium, I do gather that (1) Mark Cavendish did something to help his teammate and himself yesterday that was wholly within his rights to do and (2) Elia Viviani, who apparently didn't like how this affected *him*, threw a colossal snit over it. Jaysus, you sprinters are annoying enough constantly crying about each other after every !@#damn *road* race--can we at least agree to let the track rest in obscurity as a pure, quiet space in this broader clash of unbearable egos?

When *I* Was A Youngster, We Rode Up Alpe d'Huez on Wooden Wheels, and We *Liked* It!

Damn Whippersnappers!: yep, the generational war is on: legendary cycling god Bernard "You !@#$ With My Podium, I Land On You Like Bricks!" Hinault has weighed in on the sport's doping scandals, saying that while cycling *is* being way picked on, he still wouldn't even hock a lougie on that sport-destroying systemic-scarfin' dirtbag Lance Armstrong to help put a raging fire out on his head. Hell, I can respect that! The problem: guys like former drug-stoked pro Jorg "Did Not! Did Not! Okay, Maybe I Did" Jaksche are calling bull!@#$, saying not only has doping been around since the early days when cyclists famously smoked to "open their lungs," but Hinault--uh, his generation--itself consumed enough speed to turn a bunch of nacho-stuffed football-watchin' couch-spud nut-scratchers into Flash Gordon supersonic superstars, so who is *he* to complain, the disgusting hypocrite? Well !@#dammit, if these coddled futuristic EPO-eating blood-gorging vampire weaklings hadn't had access to such advanced obvious supercharged rocketfuel !@#$ no-one'd ever've gotten busted in the first place! Oh, Bernard, you were all *so* ripped off with the primitive drugs around in your day....

Don't Worry Your Pretty Little Heads: meantime, newish UCI prez Brian "I Heart Women's Cycling" Cookson has explained his opposition to a minimum wage for women's (though of course not men's) cycling: forget all that crap with the thousands of fans lining the roadside for women's races in recent years, if you make the sponsors pay the riders enough for the women to not have to fence stolen goods outta the back of a truck for a living, they'll all lose incredible piles of money and bail outta the sport, and *then* whose fault would it be? I tells ya, give those petty high-maintenance pampered princesses an inch and they'll start demanding bathroom breaks once a day! And water to drink! And, like, equipment from the 21st century and stuff! !@#$, they'll be whining for those incredibly expensive energy drinks, the *men's* teams might be down one for their towel guys! And who'll offer me fries with that if the cyclists don't have to get a second job at McDonald's to survive? The horror, the horror...

Puritoooooooooooooo!: finally, watch out Valverde--at least--we love Purito Rodriguez is coming for your podium spots, as, while you're knockin' yerself out herding Nairo Quintana up the high passes playing superdomestique, he's decided to ride both the Tour de France and the Vuelta. Odds of you having at least one race-destroying catastrophic meltdown day in either Grand Tour--well, pretty freakin' high, let's be honest. Odds of Purito kicking your !@# up and down the mountains at a steady pace with intermittent streaks of intimidating speed--pretty darn sweet. Allez allez Purito--the Vuelta at least is yours--is so either people, bite me you haters!