It's Yer Vuelta-n-Other-Stuff Newsbites, Poetic-Like!

The time has come, the narcs all said,
To talk of many things;
Like why Alberto's lost his punch,
And from whence Purito's wings.
Valverde always creeps us out,
While Froome is justly slow;
But since they'll all test squeaky-clean,
I guess we'll never know.

Tyler's got a new book out,
In which he speaks his piece,
Of how Lance tried to buy him off,
And lessons learned from Riis.
USADA's got its witch-hunt on
With Lance's rocker chick,
Whose singing now could really help
Those doping charges stick.

So lesson learned for newbie pros
Turned off by all this crap:
If you're gonna do the drugs,
For God's sake, shut yer yap!

Tick-Tock, It's Five Days and Counting: The Vuelta a Espana Shapes Up!

Andale!: yep, forget that wussy little Tour de France and its pansy-!@# two mountain stages and its 8 gajillion nose-pickingly-dull flat-as-paper time trial kilometers--it's time for the fabulous Vuelta, suckers, and the real climbers'll be coming out to play! Out for blood: Alberto Contador, whose musette Bjarne Riis has stuffed with a surprisingly formidable squad of Alberto's most loyal minions; defending champ Juanjo Cobo, ready to prove he's not some middlin'-field one trick pony with the erratic Valverde at his disposal; the fabulous Euskaltel's Igor Anton (shut up! will too!); and, of course, Wiggins-beeyotch Chris Froome, free from the leaden weight of Brad's hipster sideburns in the heights to pursue a top spot of his own. Me, I'm hoping for Anton but rooting for Contador--if only to see Pat "Dick" McQuaid have to shake his hand!

If You Thought It Was Unsafe to Go to the Bathroom Before: then Tyler Hamilton oughta be even more afraid of encountering school-yard bully Lance Armstrong outside the ol' urinal now, because our snitch-happy tattle-tale is getting ready to release his autobiography, tentatively titled "Take That, You Pompous Lying Sack of Crap!" Not to be paranoid, Tyler, but you might wanna beef up that personal security--*someone's* comin' to toilet-paper your house in the dead of night now, that's for sure!

Don't Let Him Do It, Tommeke!: okay, Tom, we know that, like many more wary and experienced sprinters, yer backin' off the bone-breaking chaos at the line in favor of going mano-a-mano with the cobblestones you pound so fearlessly into submission, but let me say this--Quick Step treated you like !@#$ during your humbling comeback years, and if you let 'em successfully snare Mark Cavendish for next season, I guarantee you you're !@#$ed again. Do you *want* your impeccable Classics career blown by that ungrateful jerkwad Patrick "Better Riding Through Insults" Lefevere throwing all he's got at Cav's feet at your expense? No! Come on, Boonen, you still got *some* weight to throw around--hell, pawning a few broken pieces off yer ol' Lamborghini oughta raise at least a few euros to bribe some other DS to take 'im!


Finally, a Programming Note: next up: yer Official Vuelta a Espana Preview, and, it's the 2012 Vuelta a Espana Racejunkie Win Free Stuff Contest!

Yer Random News Roundup o' the Week--Rider Smackdown Edition!

Tyler Extends the Olive Branch: y'know, I was gonna post a whole bunch of sweet sentimental ponderings today on dreamy Cav's impending fatherhood and Rodriguez's adoration of Team Katusha, but !@#$ that--for my money, the best tweet o' the week is traitorous Lance Armstrong defector/men's-room beatdown rival Tyler Hamilton, generously letting Lance know that if he wants any restaurant recommendations while he's in town, silly inconsequential betrayal to the feds and impending legacy destruction or no, Ty's still his man. Note to Lance (who shockingly, however, hasn't apparently yet responded)--if you end up in some cockroach-ridden Southie back-alley with Tyler and a posse of black-clad goons at 2 a.m. "looking for the entrance", he ain't takin' you to Legal Seafoods for chowder. See, I can be nice!

BMC See the Bloody Remnants o' Yer Carcass Next Season, Thor!: and, unstoppable Velo d'Or Philippe Gilbert is already amping up the love at Team BMC, ruminating on his chances for dominance in Paris-Roubaix for 2012 and, one assumes, really reassuring Thor Hushovd that besides being demoted to Cadel's water-boy at the Tour de France, he can also look forward to being Gilbert's b!@#$ at the Classics next year. !@#dammit, has ever a recent World Champion been so nut-kicked in such swift succession by squads that oughta be backing him up? Yap, yap, Thor's a whiner, yap--much as I love Cadel and Philippe, he should be freakin' howling at the moon like a werewolf and going all Wolverine on their !@#es, and they should thank him extravagantly for doing it!

The Racejunkie Review o' Books: yes, all that fancy lit-crit is for weenies, because my spankin' new Ivan Basso autobio has just arrived on these very shores, and, faster'n you can say "Birillo," I hope to be posting the more salacious details of his career--which, I fear, may be sorely lacking in this edition--for both yer entertainment. Oh well, what it may lack in potentially-litigious peloton gossip, it'll certainly make up for in really pretty pictures. Woo-hoo!

Jens, the Next Generation: finally, I see total god Jens Voigt has tweeted that one of his Jenslets just competed in--and, inevitably, won--his first-ever bike race. me, I'm thinking that with approximately 563 offspring to his credit, Jens derivatives'll pack to the peloton enough within the next ten years that there'll be no-one left *but* a Jens and Jensette in the ProTour ranks, all joyfully bounding ahead of each other on the road whether their DSes want them to or not like labs after a just-tossed tennis ball. Bow, peons--and with that many of 'em coming up, we're gonna have to get used to doing it *often*!

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!