And Hell, I Let Hincapie Ferry the Drugs, Anyway: well, *that* settles it: Lance Armstrong has moved on from screwing the entire sport of cycling of an intimidating double-barreled assault o' power-mongering and martyrdom for over a decade, and he, for one, thinks that's more than enough for everyone. I'm sure the clean (and dirty) riders who tried to break omerta you !@#$ed feel much much better knowing you sleep so well at night! So let's leave aside the drama of the spurned-lover disillusioned fans, the relentlessly in-denial tinfoil-hat fans, and the desperate ass-covering of his reflected-glory-basking enablers to ask this: really, Mr. Armstrong? You don't think it's somehow a *good* thing that we do what we need to to learn from our wrongdoing, to analyze how cycling descended into such a money-soaked rigged-game pit, in order to figure out how to minimize--because we get that 'eliminate' is impossible--the impact of competitive athletes' basest and most selfish human instincts on this beautiful sport? You don't think there's something to be said for figuring out what, individually or systemically, helped precipitate or worsen the terrible downward spirals that took down fragile guys like Pantani and a host of others? I mean, maybe--probably--you *were* the best cyclist in history. You certainly revolutionized, for better or worse, the way riders train, focus, and specialize, to the exclusion of the style of the legendary all-rounders that came before you. But we'll never know it for sure. Why? Because people dope because it *works*, natch, and the more money and personnel and medical support you spend on it, the better and less-detectable doping you get. And if you're the team and best of all the guy at the top of that pyramid, then you're *not* playing on a level playing field and your doping *did* throw the results. And don't bull!@##=$ that it didn't matter to you--you built a damn bazillion-dollar cult around it, and an ostentatious Hollywood one at that. And sure, everyone assumes dopers'll lie to defend themselves. But to lie *and* to actively hunt down and destroy other people who tell the truth--unlike, say, Iban or Jan or Roberto, who at least didn't take it out on anybody else--is really !@#$ty. So it's nice you have a clear conscience, Lance. Just don't pretend it's good for the sport and everyone else. Please, haven't we all had enough total crap already with this farce?
We're Still Racing, Baby!: nope, we ain't done yet kids--there's still today's Giro d'Emilia, tomorrow's Paris-Tours, and oh right, the upcoming Tour of Beijing. So enjoy Nibali's last race in neon Liquigas--and he better make Vinokourov think he's worth it, since Francesco Moser just called him an overpaid mediocrity--good luck Sunday to the sprinters, and baby Schleck, have a good ride in Beijing--hell, you could use it!
Adios, Oscar!: last but not least, with Oscar Freire apparently turning down management offers to really call it a cycling career, I'd be sorely remiss in not paying tribute to a rider who not only triumphed over !@@-chomping saddlesores, weird sinus problems, constant neck and back pain, and freakin' buckshot from some crazed Tour de France spectator, but captured three World Championships, three Milano-Sanremos, a bucket of Grand Tour stages, and damn near everything else on the road to boot. Thanks for a great career Oscar--now, won't you reconsider joining dear Euskaltel?
House of Pain: yes, it's almost time for the World Championships, dear reader(s), and with the Spaniards sending an obscenely talented squad that may simply crush itself under its own firepower, the Belgians sending Tom Boonen, and the Brits of course sending Mark Cavendish, my dilemma is, for the men's race (since Georgia Bronzini is taking the women's--is too!), do I root for multi-world champ/imminently retiring Oscar Freire, who seems to be at this moment miraculously free from whatever !@#-dissolving saddlesore, freak vertebral injury, fan-wielded buckshot wound, or spontaneous wrist combustion he's usually battling, or for dear redeemed Tommeke, back on top and ready to kick an already-nostalgic Cav's butt on the finish of the Cauberg if Gilbert didn't out-prep him doing the Vuelta? As a little reminder, I bring you Roubaix: Yap, Gilbert, yap--ya got two stages at the Vuelta, allez allez Tom!
Aw, *Suck*!: in other Worlds news, this year we're seeing for the first time the intro of the team time trial, which is sponsor-team, not national-team, based, which means I'm gonna sit there and mope while we love Euskaltel-Euskadi gets screwed, *again*. Geez, give these guys a chance, willya--at least make it one big straight uphill or something!
Fast Car: meantime, Filippo Pozzato and his fans are outraged over his vicious 3-month ban for paying (alleged!) Lance dope doc Dr. Michele Ferrari $50,000 over 6 years for "training advice," which also keeps him off the national squad for life (leaving Paolo Bettini with a pack of 23 year olds and the spotless Vincenzo Nibali for the Worlds, incidentally), and I gotta say, I really do sympathize with poor Pippo and this ridiculous suggestion of any possible wrongdoing on his part. After all, what else were all those Operacion Puerto boys doing visiting Dr. Eufemiano "Gyno to the Male Stars" Fuentes back in the day, if not to merely receive his "training advice" on, uh, how to perfect their valuable ladyparts Kegel exercises? Anyway, it seems Pippo is handling the stress of exile pretty well, and if he's not, who cares? He'll be back, um, training in no time!:
Lookin' Good, Alberto!: finally, good news for Alberto Contador: as thanks for taking the Vuelta a Espana right as Tyler Hamilton was throwing his ol' team boss to the sharks, Bjarne's rewarded Contador with contract extensions for two of his favorite domestiques. Keep it comin', Bjarne--surely you can convince Saxo and Tinkoff to toss you a little more dough to round out the roster *now*?
Too Bad There Won't Be Anyone To Ride It: yes, the magical Milano-Sanremo is upon us, baby, and with guys like Thor and Gilbert gettin' dropped like Andy Schleck on a half-assed descent, it looks like it's up to Tommeke, Freire, or Cavendish to take the win, and, according to my meticulous analysis of their physiological data, since Cav always wins everything anyway *and* has been annoyingly genteel of late, and Tommeke's gonna beat the crap out of everyone on the cobbles, I'm hoping that if it's not our charming Belgian redemption song it's retiring 3-time champ Oscar Freire to make it a four-peat and tie the great Erik Zabel on the top of the podium. Yap, yap, Spartacus, yap--until Cancellara repudiates RadioSkank and begs forgiveness for riding with the dark side, he can !@#damn well stuff it!
Oh Gyno, My Gyno: meantime, in heroes o' cycling news, famed Dr. Eufemiano "Gyno to the Male Peloton" Fuentes is defending his lame Spanish charges of "endangering public health" with his by-the-gallon blood transfusions during the Op Puerto debacle in 2006 by contending that a hotel room is a perfectly sanitary, acceptable alternative to a hospital for the discreet publicity-shy drug-weasel, and, for *my* money, if anyone doubts it, they can always go back and confirm the sterility of all those syringes Astana (allegedly!) tossed in their Tour de France hotel garbage back in the day. Besides, what else are all those little nips in the hotel-room minibar for if not to clean up medical equipment, I ask you? I still hate your guts for throwing Roberto Heras under the bus, Eufemiano--but as a housekeeping expert, you're a peach!
Holy Crap, Cipollini is Serious!: y'know, I, like Paolo Bettini, thought the Lion King's dreams of return were just the nostalgic ramblings of a timeless legend alone with his memories of glory and podium babes, but when Cipo drops trou for the cameras again, you *know* this !@#$'s for real. Forget the admirable scenes of the man training with his crew--just dig that soundtrack, honey!
A Compliment for Pat "Dick" McQuaid: finally, I'd just like to express my shock and genuine admiration for our darling grumpy UCI gadfly, who managed to gack up on UCI's very website the news that his second-favorite Spanish dope-fiend, Alejandro Valverde, is back at the top of the UCI rankings just moments, it seems, after his return from his ban. Look, he posted this photo of Alejandro himself: Glad to see you can forgive and forget, Pat!
Off-Season My !@#!: well, the Tour de France route's been formally announced after a concerted campaign to hunt down and kneecap the bastard who caused the epic route-leaking screw up earlier, and baby Schleck, you can forget those few short months of R&R after dragging approximately 8 million miles outta yer legs this season: you've got basically the winter to correct your main weakness before Cadel, Alberto, and even Ivan beat the crap out of you at the Tour, or, in Desperate Pollyanna P.R. Bull!@#$-speak, "I am really looking forward to working with Johan Bruyneel, the guys at Trek, and the aero-geeks at MIT in the wind tunnel to refine and perfect my time-trialing position this winter." Good luck with that, Andy, truly--you are gonna freakin' need it! Still, you'll have yer chance to shine and conquer at the punchy new climbs and the few summit finishes, so long as there aren't any of those irksome "descents" along the way. Hey, if Alberto actually gets banned, I'm sure *he* could help you with that--he sure won't have anything else to do the next 12 months!
Wow, Maybe Katusha Doesn't Suck So Much After All: sure, they tossed Pippo Pozzato into the trash like a radioactive germ-stuffed hanky in flu season, but Team Katusha apparently ain't *all* bad--unlike lame-!@# Rabobank and Movistar, they're reportedly on the verge of hiring the great Oscar Freire for his last (aaaaiiiiggggghhhh!) season in the peloton. Even better, they bagged the legendary Erik Zabel (no, he didn't "dope," he said he rinsed with "Scope," you haters!) to coach the fast men. All right, Katusha, here's yer chance--now give we love Oscar the support he deserves, and don't !@#$ this up you trolls!
Search and Destroy: finally, peloton god Jens Voigt tweets that he's got a fine new hobby, geocaching, which seems to me the perfect opportunity: some directeur sportif--please, *anyone*--needs to suss out Jens' next search target, and leave a new contract and a huge bundle of unmarked euros as the prize. Oh, I know, dear Jens is sweetly loyal to the Schlecks--but come on, surely Bjarne Riis at least is flippin' out enough over his betting the farm so rashly on Alberto Contador next year to bankroll a sufficient sum to make a breach o' contract with RadioSkank worthwhile!
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!
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!:
Wah, Wah, Wah: yeah, this'll teach you to piss off fast-aging baby savant Alberto Contador: as he's done every time he's sworn absolute silence on his ongoing doping investigation until it's done then immediately pimped himself to another sympathetic press outlet, he's gone and threatened to quit the sport again if he's busted, in case the Spanish cycling fed wasn't sure which way they were supposed to vote, and more, he's also ripped into Team Astana--which he himself bailed out of for next year, though this appears not to have crossed his radar'o'relevance--for not "supporting" him enough at the Tour and in the wake of his doping scandal. Um, not to rewrite history, here, Alberto, but weren't your teammates--like, oh, Lance "!@#$ You You Little Peon Punk!" Armstrong--just the *slightest* bit *less* supportive the year before?! Sure, Vinokourov'd attack his own grandma on a walk to the mailbox--but really, you wanna take on someone who's even *more* likely to run your !@# off a mountainside in July 2011?
Share and Share Alike: meanwhile, another scandal has rocked the Italian cycling world, not the shocking efficiency with which even that odious little weasel Ricco' is snowjobbing the cycling fed into thinking he's actually reformed, but that Italian mountain biker Elena Gaddoni has been busted for high testosterone. Y'know, it seems to me this can have a happy ending: since Danilo DiLuca's been busted for doping up like a chick on masking agents 'til he had the testosterone levels of a Smurf, she and Danilo can do business and simply switch syringes so they each stay believably within their respective genders. Throw off the narcs, you don't waste the drugs you paid for, everyone wins!
And The Oscar Goes To: the Giro d'Italia! Yes indeedy, we love Oscar Freire--having recovered from nether-region-threatening saddlesores, freak back tweaks, and various Tour de France pellet-gun wounds--and decided to bag retirement for another year, is gonna skip the You Suck Amgen EPO Tour of California to ride, before he says goodbye, the perfect Giro. Sure, there aren't actually any "sprint" stages in this year's edition--but hey, what says an Oscar-friendly "slight uphill to the finish" like an hors-category deathmarch to the top of the Dolomites? Woo-hoo Oscar!
It's the Racejunkie Give Thor Hushovd A Raise Campaign!: okay, like I care about the problems of people already earning a cool 1 mil a year, but I gotta say, if Thor Hushovd sez he might've liked a raise if only he hadn't signed with new squad Garmin before his World Champ jersey kicked in and they hadn't already busted their budget, then by golly, someone oughta give our big lug a raise. So buy yer bitchin' Garmin stuff here , I'll post a link to their no-doubt spiffy new team kit as soon as it's out, and Garmin, use the extra dough to pony up a little present in Thor's argyle stocking this year--I mean, let's totally gratuitously look at this guy's win again!
The Man With the Golden Arm: man, can Alejandro "Bloodbag" Valverde's life *get* any more charmed? Not only is he allowed to ride everywhere unrestricted except (and for the hilarity factor on this one, see above) Italy, and not only did he genuinely win the stage today at the Vuelta a Pais Vasco, but he even "won" the opener there yesterday when we love Oscar Freire was !@#$ed and relegated in the sprint. First, judge for yerself. Second, Oscar could bodily whack Valverde off his bike with a giant medieval battering ram and I'd still pick Freire, so the actual merits are moot. Gee, if *I* install a permanent IV port in *my* !@# and hire top-flight legal and publicity goon squads, will someone pay *me* a gazillion euros a year to be a doping cheating dirtwad?
Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing: meantime, over at Columbia-HTC, the boys are getting along just great, as Andre Greipel discreetly suggests that he'd've been a better pick than an off-his-form Mark Cavendish for Milano-Sanremo, and an excruciatingly polite Cav rather begs to differ, opining he's happy to ride on the same squad with such a talentless assclown as Greipel and that there's no way in hell Cav's gonna let that loser ride on his Tour de France squad. C'mon, Andre, take the high road, apologize, kiss, and make up--that is if Cav doesn't chew your face off with those giant teeth of his first!
Tweet o' the Week: yes, this one's a two-fer, as amiable George Hincapie takes on Podium Cafe wisenheimers who tell him he blew Flanders by using completely the wrong wheels for the cobbles, and righter-of-wrongs Robbie "Head-Butt" McEwen comes to his chivalrous defense. Damn, George is like 8 feet tall and Robbie could beat the crap out of even all of Cadel's enormous entourage with both arms tied behind his back--good thing no-one reads *this* drivel!
Too Much Is Never Enough: finally, I see Lance has decided to bow out of the Ardennes classics, but lest any of you Armstrong fans are freaked you won't be getting a play-by-play update on how many times he picks his toes today, never fear: as our bike experts at the AP were quick to post, oh my god he's riding the Circuit de la Sarthe this week! Too bad we'll never find out the name of the rider who actually *wins* the thing, at least from the American press anyway....
Glad to see you can forgive and forget, Pat!
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