Tour de Contador: so I see Tour director Christian Prudhomme has finally put some substance to the rumors floating that perpetual suspects Alberto Contador and Alejandro "Piti" Valverde won't be allowed to play at the Tour de France this year, clarifying though that it's their entire teams he's considering barring, not just the individual renegades in question. The rationale? Yep, it's the Italians' decision to reopen the Op Puerto investigation, prompted of course by the fact that out of the 100 or so Spaniards named in the file and linked to Fearless Defender of Riders' Health Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes, it was only two Italians plus some no-name German guy who ever took a hit for it. Can anyone explain to me again why (1) these boys, whose purported hijinks were thoroughly publicized right off the bat in 2006, are being barred *now* after one of 'em's already got a maillot jaune in his closet; (2) say, UCI isn't pressing to bar *everyone* implicated in the OP file it refuses to read from the race, if indeed mere implication is the disqualification standard; and (3)Levi, Kloden, & poor Oscar Pereiro have to get !@#$ed over at the Tour *again* for some wank teammate's possible (not even proven) doping violation? Yeah, keep up the good fight, you indiscriminate slash-and-burn disingenuous enabler weasels!
Good Morning, Starshine!: meantime, the Italian riders' association's got its chamois in an extreme twist over last night's visit by the vampires to the Lampre boys, completely supporting the necessity and fairness of doping controls in general but enraged in particular that, after calling the teams at 11:30pm to tell 'em they were coming, the narcs didn't even bother to show up at the sleepy cyclists' hotel rooms to take blood and urine samples til 3:30am, and how the hell any rider is supposed to prepare for an actual race under such circumstances is completely beyond them. Leaving aside the fact that that sort of notice densely gives quite a window for a rider with something to hide to try to mitigate the problem, right on ACCPI!
Here Comes the Bride: and, as High Road celebrates its surprising victory in the Tour Down Under (McEwen sez incidentally, since someone asked, that he's not aiming for peak form til later this season, and woo-hoo returning recuperated crash victim O'Grady for snagging 10th overall!), they're apparently ditching their spankin' new evil-villain black team kits for more appropriate white-knight outfits. My, how subtle--shall we just pin a scarlet "D" on all the other teams' uniforms while we're at it? Over at Slipstream, meanwhile, the squad's already proven its worth for a Tour wild card even without we love Dave Zabriskie to propel 'em in the team time trial, taking a respectable 2nd to Quick Step and sending a clear warning that Millar, classics monster big Maggy Backstedt, and ex-Hushovd-leadout Julian Dean are, despite their absence from the more prestigious (more flush, anyway) ProTour scene, not to be trifled with this season. Thinking of riders coming back from injury, Olympic gold medalist track goddess Anna Meares, splintered quite badly in Los Angeles last week just as cycling held a huge conference on jacking up women's presence in the sport, is now up or at least about, so best wishes to her for a speedy and hopefully pre-Beijing recovery. Allez allez!
Fry Him, I Say!: finally, those of you deeply irked by pesky due process concerns are sure to go completely postal over Tuttobici's fawning little interview with repugnant lone-ranger amoral scumbag Jan Ullrich, in which our fallen hero is lauded as a wonderful father to his charming tykes (the gall!), compliments Ivan Basso for sucking it up and confessing his sins (yep, I was *dyin'*), diplomatically declines to comment on the specific outrage of Op Puerto's nailing Scarponi and Basso alone over the clearly filthier and more numerous Spaniards but does suggest that selective prosecution is not justice (that bastard!), and opines that, having been "demonized" by the German press and authorities with no way of proving his innocence (I know, I know), he's just as glad to get out of the peloton for good anyway (off with his head!), which happily works out fine because, as a busy full-time dad, he's hardly got the time or energy to stay on form in any case (no joking around, you cheating pig!). Putting aside the prevailing view on Jan's likely purity, can we at least give the boy some points for amiability (never!)? Anyhoo, if anyone wants the link or a translation (no guarantees as to quality, accuracy, or coherence), let me know!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
IF'n Can't Believe How Cool They Are!
Team You Go, Boys!: Tired of hearing about the latest UCI/Grand Tour organizer ego smackdown, the Lamborghini travails of the peloton's rich and famous, the latest dope-snorting embarrassment, or the nascent ProTour standings of the cash-cow squads? Or perhaps just lonely for your long-lost rose-colored glasses, cruelly stomped into shards by the years of disgusting revelations in this beautiful sport? Then here's a pleasant break for once: Sunday night I had the privilege of attending Independent Fabrications' team presentation, and a more enthusiastic, friendly, and bitchin' group of young riders (including at least one former member of the USA cycling team) and general IF bike gods (Jon Bruno among them) you just won't meet. More, one could admire close-up (and get a first-hand design-and-construction play-by-play of) their smashing new SSR 953, a sexy corrosion-resistant stainless steel racing machine. (No, they're not paying me, you cynics, but I will consider swag bribes if anyone's offering...) And, by their dandy slide show, IF's team-building camp--on Thompson Island, a forbidding trek across the frigid, filthy, cod-infested waters of Boston Harbor--looked only slightly less dangerous than Bjarne Riis' famed CSC deathmarches, with the twin bonuses of looking actually fun, and without the CSC camp's notorious if accidental soigneur body count. Even better, the team's a nonprofit, so your contribution may be tax-deductible (consult your tax adviser, don't sue my @#$), so look for these lords o' the future at a road race near you--and pony up already, cycling fans!
Saturday, January 26, 2008
I Want to Take You Higher
That's the Sound of the (Wo)Men/Working on the Chain Gaaa-aaaaang: due to the irksome necessity of a day job, I've been unable to do much more of late than sneak an illicit glance or two at cycling.tv when I'm supposed to be working, but it's been a lively week and I'm both grateful for your kind words and rarin' to get back to whining about anything in this smashing sport that catches my jaded yet still romantic eye. Which brings us to:
Tour of...Um, Germany?: Yep, team High Road is starting off its martyrly season of morally superior drug-free play with a truckload of wins by hard-charging youngster Andre Greipel, taking the overall lead as well as the slightly dispirited Aussies lose one of their own to a distinctly nasty head-butt by a disgruntled Italian over at Milram that took our fallen Rabobank hero firmly to the tarmac and then the hospital with a broken collarbone and made even Robbie "Road Rage" McEwen, himself inclined to whack innocent riders out of his way like a crazed croquet mallet, suddenly look sweet'n'cuddly as a Mon-chi-chi. C'mon Robbie, are you really gonna let that spoilsport embarrass both you and your country and show you up like you're some kind of wimp--where's your national pride already?
How Many Riders Can Johan Bruyneel !@#$* in a Season?: so far, it's looking at least 3, as he's already declared his intention to viciously hose both Leipheimer and Kloden, and golden-boy ex-Liberty Seguros Tour-snatcher Alberto Contador remains under investigation by the vengeful Italian prosecutors over the extremely unlikely possibility that the "AC" in a thoroughly-outlined doping program in the Op Puerto files might refer to him, right as both the Amgen EPO Tour of California and the Tour de France vow not to let any rider or perhaps even team participate if there's an open investigation with their name on it. Great, that leaves us with a pack of sixth-graders on crumbling crappy Huffys to hit the ProTour this season! Y'know, I've got nothing against zealous anti-doping enforcement; hell, I'd even appreciate it if the poor soigneurs didn't have to pump themselves full of amphetamines just to keep up with their turbo-charged masters. But jeez louise Manolo, you couldn't even have given your protege a puppy for a plausible pseudonym to hide behind like Basso and V--oh, no one!
He Drugs Me, He Drugs Me Not: so, I see the Belgian authorities, having sensibly chosen to ignore the claims of a current Quick Step rider that the team's rife with systemic management-driven dope-snarfing, got right on the case again by--yes, going over to Tom Boonen's poor mom's house just as he's packing up for the Tour of Qatar and demanding to know whether her son was dealing coke at a party to a top Belgian cyclo-cross god, who says reports he gave up Boonen to the cops were entirely crap, as, though he did foolishly imbibe one evening, he and the swoon-worthy babe-magnet have only had a few pints--of beer, that's all--together. That's the sort of crack investigation that'll clean up the sport, gentlemen! Perhaps we ought to bust into Iban Mayo's grandmother's house with a battering ram and a pack of gun-toting body-armored thugs next time...that'll send the right message to those renegade cheating enabler rider relatives....
Barloworld, Here I Come: and, in actual riding (though not race) news, Ivan Basso continues both his charity work and his ban-end training by doing yet another fundraising ride for the bambini as his race buddies vie for form in Qatar, raising the question of, if Barloworld really is courting Basso as passionately and so far as successfully as they suggest, is baby King of the Mountains Maurizio Soler really going to be inclined to domestique Ivan up the Alps next year when, if he can improve his time-trialling a bit, this revelation of a climber could have a shot at the Tour podium himself a year or two hence. Add to that the rumors that they're interested in DiLuca as well when his LPR gig runs out, and we could have quite the T-Mobile Vino-Klodi-Ullrich bushwhacking rivalry here--but much as I do admire the two Italians, on this one, venga wee upstart Soler!
Suit o' the Week: finally, as both Alessandro Petacchi (March 12) and Floyd Landis (when hell freezes over) await their dates with destiny over at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and Leukemans vows to fight his cruelly unjust two-year testosterone ban on the theory he shouldn't have to pay for either his team doc's relentless stupidity or his own manly wiles (whichever excuse you prefer), UCI finally finds an even greater rival in the governing-body sleaze-tactics race to the bottom as an anonymous US pro rider has to borrow Landis' legal team to sue USADA for trying to test the B of an already-negative A urine sample. USADA, however, remains defiant, noting that any number of things could raise the suspicions of the all-knowing narcs, including trafficking or administering drugs to others, and intentional test evasion, none of which of course are remotely related to the cleanliness or even existence of one's own negative A-sample. !@#$, you clowns, why not just openly shoot a tranquilizer dart into the !@# of whatever rider you're displeased with at the start line if you can't even be bothered to make up a reason to target somebody? Free Anonymous (and please, please, please, don't let it be Levi...)!
Mortifyingly Necessary Update: as the far-smarter-than-I Anonymous has kindly pointed out, the culprit's apparently not Levi thank goodness but Rock Racing alterna-badass Kayle Leogrande, whom Michael Ball, owner of perhaps the most impressive stable of doping thoroughbreds since Astana, immediately leapt to defend on the utterly dense grounds that those pansies at USADA are just afraid of Leogrande's tats. To be fair, it's a better excuse for going after a rider on unsubstantiated doping charges than most of those coming out of, say, UCI these days...
Tour of...Um, Germany?: Yep, team High Road is starting off its martyrly season of morally superior drug-free play with a truckload of wins by hard-charging youngster Andre Greipel, taking the overall lead as well as the slightly dispirited Aussies lose one of their own to a distinctly nasty head-butt by a disgruntled Italian over at Milram that took our fallen Rabobank hero firmly to the tarmac and then the hospital with a broken collarbone and made even Robbie "Road Rage" McEwen, himself inclined to whack innocent riders out of his way like a crazed croquet mallet, suddenly look sweet'n'cuddly as a Mon-chi-chi. C'mon Robbie, are you really gonna let that spoilsport embarrass both you and your country and show you up like you're some kind of wimp--where's your national pride already?
How Many Riders Can Johan Bruyneel !@#$* in a Season?: so far, it's looking at least 3, as he's already declared his intention to viciously hose both Leipheimer and Kloden, and golden-boy ex-Liberty Seguros Tour-snatcher Alberto Contador remains under investigation by the vengeful Italian prosecutors over the extremely unlikely possibility that the "AC" in a thoroughly-outlined doping program in the Op Puerto files might refer to him, right as both the Amgen EPO Tour of California and the Tour de France vow not to let any rider or perhaps even team participate if there's an open investigation with their name on it. Great, that leaves us with a pack of sixth-graders on crumbling crappy Huffys to hit the ProTour this season! Y'know, I've got nothing against zealous anti-doping enforcement; hell, I'd even appreciate it if the poor soigneurs didn't have to pump themselves full of amphetamines just to keep up with their turbo-charged masters. But jeez louise Manolo, you couldn't even have given your protege a puppy for a plausible pseudonym to hide behind like Basso and V--oh, no one!
He Drugs Me, He Drugs Me Not: so, I see the Belgian authorities, having sensibly chosen to ignore the claims of a current Quick Step rider that the team's rife with systemic management-driven dope-snarfing, got right on the case again by--yes, going over to Tom Boonen's poor mom's house just as he's packing up for the Tour of Qatar and demanding to know whether her son was dealing coke at a party to a top Belgian cyclo-cross god, who says reports he gave up Boonen to the cops were entirely crap, as, though he did foolishly imbibe one evening, he and the swoon-worthy babe-magnet have only had a few pints--of beer, that's all--together. That's the sort of crack investigation that'll clean up the sport, gentlemen! Perhaps we ought to bust into Iban Mayo's grandmother's house with a battering ram and a pack of gun-toting body-armored thugs next time...that'll send the right message to those renegade cheating enabler rider relatives....
Barloworld, Here I Come: and, in actual riding (though not race) news, Ivan Basso continues both his charity work and his ban-end training by doing yet another fundraising ride for the bambini as his race buddies vie for form in Qatar, raising the question of, if Barloworld really is courting Basso as passionately and so far as successfully as they suggest, is baby King of the Mountains Maurizio Soler really going to be inclined to domestique Ivan up the Alps next year when, if he can improve his time-trialling a bit, this revelation of a climber could have a shot at the Tour podium himself a year or two hence. Add to that the rumors that they're interested in DiLuca as well when his LPR gig runs out, and we could have quite the T-Mobile Vino-Klodi-Ullrich bushwhacking rivalry here--but much as I do admire the two Italians, on this one, venga wee upstart Soler!
Suit o' the Week: finally, as both Alessandro Petacchi (March 12) and Floyd Landis (when hell freezes over) await their dates with destiny over at the Court of Arbitration for Sport, and Leukemans vows to fight his cruelly unjust two-year testosterone ban on the theory he shouldn't have to pay for either his team doc's relentless stupidity or his own manly wiles (whichever excuse you prefer), UCI finally finds an even greater rival in the governing-body sleaze-tactics race to the bottom as an anonymous US pro rider has to borrow Landis' legal team to sue USADA for trying to test the B of an already-negative A urine sample. USADA, however, remains defiant, noting that any number of things could raise the suspicions of the all-knowing narcs, including trafficking or administering drugs to others, and intentional test evasion, none of which of course are remotely related to the cleanliness or even existence of one's own negative A-sample. !@#$, you clowns, why not just openly shoot a tranquilizer dart into the !@# of whatever rider you're displeased with at the start line if you can't even be bothered to make up a reason to target somebody? Free Anonymous (and please, please, please, don't let it be Levi...)!
Mortifyingly Necessary Update: as the far-smarter-than-I Anonymous has kindly pointed out, the culprit's apparently not Levi thank goodness but Rock Racing alterna-badass Kayle Leogrande, whom Michael Ball, owner of perhaps the most impressive stable of doping thoroughbreds since Astana, immediately leapt to defend on the utterly dense grounds that those pansies at USADA are just afraid of Leogrande's tats. To be fair, it's a better excuse for going after a rider on unsubstantiated doping charges than most of those coming out of, say, UCI these days...
Monday, January 21, 2008
Climb Like a Butterfly, Sting Like a Bee
Well, More Like a Raging Nest o' Scorpions: either Floyd Landis' lawyer finally let the boy off the leash (to blunt the impact of CAS' inevitable springtime @!@#-over, perhaps?), or more likely Floyd's gone rabid and chewed his way through it, which I find delightful as a cycling fan, but if he were my client, you'd have to jolt me back from the dead after my massive heart attack with enough juice to power Los Angeles. The cause of such joy and horror? Yep, it's Landis' post-Steve-Johnson-email-smackdown interview with Velonews, which I believe the wiser-than-I folks over trustbutverify may have mentioned ages ago, but which only came to my doofus attention today. Among his tender spots? Well, he sure didn't appreciate USA Cycling and Steve Johnson collecting his dues for years only to completely hose him later by declining to back him in any way--unlike their sister federation over in Spain, he notes, which actually had the stones to decline to prosecute Iban Mayo after his tests were botched--and while we're at it, in addition to Johnson looking like a complete ass (not least a moron) for saying he didn't even pay attention to some trivial '06 post-Tour Landis fiasco he's just now heard of, he outright "lied" by claiming that USA Cycling had no power to help him whatsoever. And while he "respects" Steve (as much as one can respect a spineless cowardly agent o' nefarious backstabbing treachery, I suppose), and his natural interest in preserving his position in the "crock of shit" Olympics, he's paid to look out for freakin' cyclists, at which he has not, Landis opines, lately proven successful. Lest anyone think it's just USA Cycling he's irked at, Floyd's not much impressed with the antidoping trumpeting of "Team High Horse" or Slipstream, either, because to say you don't care about winning and are happy just to finish a race without doping is just a loser's way of "crying like a bitch" by implying that everyone who beats your @#$ only did so by cheating. Would anyone else besides me love to get him and David Millar in a room together? As to Landis' gig with Rock Racing, he would've liked one, but while we're on-topic, lay off Ball because, though perhaps brash, he's only hiring folks who've at least actually paid their dues. Finally, it would be nice if everyone--the narcs, the cycling feds, the broader governing bodies, *and* the cyclists--followed the rules, sucked it up when they failed to prove someone guilty, and at least made some pretense of fairness and integrity. Holy crap Floyd, with this kind of righteous rampage, you could've taken the '06 Tour even with Basso Ullrich and Vino on hand--but please, please, for the love of my profession and the pre-appeal sanity of your innocent advocates, promise you'll call your poor lawyer first next time!
Pagare Le Tasse, You Cheapskate!: speaking of Rock Racing, Lion King Mario Cipollini has, after weeks of dithering and correspondingly breathless minute-by-minute rumormongering in the Italian press, finally signed on as both a manager and rider, with his first goal the Tour of California and, after that, using the pleasing fact that the team's given him "carte blanche" to do what he will with it, ramping up awareness of cycling (and Rock in particular) in the U.S. by endlessly promoting the suave "Mario brand." And the tifosi? According to the clamor over on the comments pages at Gazzetta, delighted to see their beloved icon back for entertainment value, impressed by the Americans' wily score, convinced he can't actually race worth half a neo-pro any longer, and in universal agreement that he's just pimping himself to feed his ego and to collect the money, which, by the way, he ought to pay up to the tax authorities already, since they themselves can't get out of it. Can anyone doubt that, even assuming that Americans continue to focus bizarrely on the Golf Channel and an excess of shows featuring guys sitting in a boat drinking beer and nominally fishing, he'll at least electrify a troubled sport? Vai Mario!
Do You Come From a Tour Down Under?: finally, in welcome relief from the endless run of sleazy doping scandals, booze-fueled off-season car wrecks, and relentless judicial farces, it's back in the saddle, baby, as the Tour Down Under starts with a stellar cast of Aussies including Robbie McEwen, Allan Davis (brought down by Op Puerto at Liberty Seguros, and lately defended by UCI of all people, who hardly came to Beloki's defense, those !@$%^^%$), Graeme Brown, and, best of all, a finally mended Stuart O'Grady, and Team Slipstream--reviled above but having nonetheless a hell of a team including we love stage winner Dave Zabriskie--has successfully scored its first grand-tour invite to the beautiful Giro. Enjoy the ride boys--but I still hope the Italians kick your !@#!
Pagare Le Tasse, You Cheapskate!: speaking of Rock Racing, Lion King Mario Cipollini has, after weeks of dithering and correspondingly breathless minute-by-minute rumormongering in the Italian press, finally signed on as both a manager and rider, with his first goal the Tour of California and, after that, using the pleasing fact that the team's given him "carte blanche" to do what he will with it, ramping up awareness of cycling (and Rock in particular) in the U.S. by endlessly promoting the suave "Mario brand." And the tifosi? According to the clamor over on the comments pages at Gazzetta, delighted to see their beloved icon back for entertainment value, impressed by the Americans' wily score, convinced he can't actually race worth half a neo-pro any longer, and in universal agreement that he's just pimping himself to feed his ego and to collect the money, which, by the way, he ought to pay up to the tax authorities already, since they themselves can't get out of it. Can anyone doubt that, even assuming that Americans continue to focus bizarrely on the Golf Channel and an excess of shows featuring guys sitting in a boat drinking beer and nominally fishing, he'll at least electrify a troubled sport? Vai Mario!
Do You Come From a Tour Down Under?: finally, in welcome relief from the endless run of sleazy doping scandals, booze-fueled off-season car wrecks, and relentless judicial farces, it's back in the saddle, baby, as the Tour Down Under starts with a stellar cast of Aussies including Robbie McEwen, Allan Davis (brought down by Op Puerto at Liberty Seguros, and lately defended by UCI of all people, who hardly came to Beloki's defense, those !@$%^^%$), Graeme Brown, and, best of all, a finally mended Stuart O'Grady, and Team Slipstream--reviled above but having nonetheless a hell of a team including we love stage winner Dave Zabriskie--has successfully scored its first grand-tour invite to the beautiful Giro. Enjoy the ride boys--but I still hope the Italians kick your !@#!
Wednesday, January 16, 2008
Blood Is Thicker Than Water (Especially When It's Pumped Full o' Dope)
Lance to the Music: as cycling confronts its greatest battles between good (Landis, Iban, due process) and evil (doping, lab chimps, hypocrite enabler oversight agencies) in a decade, and previews the exciting race-season plans of some of the most seasoned (Bettini, Leipheimer, Sastre) and fresh (Contador, Soler, baby Schleck) talents seen in years, the mainstream US sports press has taken a huge leap forward in awareness and recognition of this beautiful sport by reporting today the crucial cycling news that--right, Lance Armstrong is going to run the 2008 Boston Marathon. Can someone *please* tell me what it'd take to expand these guys' dimwit horizons beyond the latest grunting inarticulate no-neck stomping someone's head into the turf in the end zone?
Rollercoaster (Of Drugs): and, in the wake of allegations that Rabobank riders Michael Boogerd, Michael Rasmussen, and Denis Menchov blood-doped at a new lab in Austria, the wagons are tightly a' circling, with the team predictably denying both knowledge and responsibility, Boogerd distinctly pissed to be hounded in his nascent retirement, Rasmussen's lawyer noting they're too busy suing those bastards at Rabobank and getting the Chicken back in the peloton to even be bothered with such nitpicking at the moment, and Menchov carefully keeping his distance from the fray beyond a standard "did not either" to the press corps. Luckily, the TV station responsible for breaking the story has now issued an apologetic press release disclaiming these revelations, though the German authorities, lately burned by such innocents as Jan Ullrich and Patrik Sinkewitz, have affirmed their interest in pursuing the case nonetheless. Not to reopen old wounds here, nor even to suggest that Menchov's attacking ability in the mountains has increased of late by similarly odd and exponential proportions as Roberto Heras's time-trialling once did, but if there's even an ounce of truth to these surely scurrilous accusations, Menchov, hand over the 2005 Vuelta back to Heras you undeserving skank!
It's DeLicious, It's DeLovely, It's DiLuca: meantime, I see that Tuttobici raises a lively debate over Danilo DiLuca's freakishly low testosterone values after last year's Giro stage to Zoncolan, with one expert claiming that DiLuca had the "pipi" of a cherub and the only way to've gotten that was an illicit post-stage IV drip to evade the testers, DiLuca's team doc insisting he never gave the boy one, DiLuca also claiming he didn't but who cares they're perfectly licit under the rules anyway, and another expert smacking the 1st one by pointing out that on a tough stage like Zoncolan a properly hydrated cyclist can easily snarf a liter of fluid every 20 minutes, which can basically dilute a boy's testosterone levels enough give him a sex change on the spot entirely. Still, our friends over at CONI--just days ago deciding to go after the Spaniards in annoyance of the sport's persecution of the Italians--remain unhappy with merely nailing DiLuca on his relationship with an Oil-for-Drugs doc, so they've now obtained his Zoncolan file in the hopes of getting him with something more substantive. Y'know, I wish the talented and amiable DiLuca all luck on this, but hey, if it gives we love Paolo Savoldelli a crack at LPR team leadership at the Giro this year, I can live with that. Forza Il Falco!
Earth Angel (Will You Be Miii-iine?): and, clean-sport crusader St. David Millar has finally been trumped in the soulful repentant wah-wah department in truly stellar fashion by none other than the dreamy Ivan Basso, who humbly confesses in an interview on Gazzetta that he is actually grateful for his two-year (attempted) doping ban, because he has become, in this time of introspection, a better man. Indeed, it is the best thing that has ever happened to him, for he has reflected upon his actions, been laid bare for all to see (the tifosi *wish*!), and is not only determined to reform, but to follow his true passion: helping innocent bambini in need through his beloved charity Intervista. And indeed, it's lovely, noble work by Basso, and a pleasure to see a rider commit himself to such purity of both sport and spirit. Apropos of nothing, anyone else notice that the contract wars over the boy have been heating up among the more ambitious and loaded Continental squads lately?
As Tom Goes By: finally, in actual race news, resurgent sprint god Tom Boonen's laid out his goals for the season, notably remaining hunkered down in Monte Carlo to avoid the shrieking swooning fanatics who barely let him leave his house in Belgium, then, after stretching his legs in Qatar California and Paris-Nice, taking on San Remo, Flanders, and Paris-Roubaix for the win. Okay, I still want Thor Hushovd to kick his !@# (shut the hell up, I know it's unlikely)--but it's nice to hear Boonen's back on form! Interestingly, Boonen concedes that, though Quick Step teammate Paolo Bettini lives nearby, he barely sees the World Champ, training about instead with Steegmans and Pozzato. Trouble in Paradise? Sleazemongering minds want to know!
Rollercoaster (Of Drugs): and, in the wake of allegations that Rabobank riders Michael Boogerd, Michael Rasmussen, and Denis Menchov blood-doped at a new lab in Austria, the wagons are tightly a' circling, with the team predictably denying both knowledge and responsibility, Boogerd distinctly pissed to be hounded in his nascent retirement, Rasmussen's lawyer noting they're too busy suing those bastards at Rabobank and getting the Chicken back in the peloton to even be bothered with such nitpicking at the moment, and Menchov carefully keeping his distance from the fray beyond a standard "did not either" to the press corps. Luckily, the TV station responsible for breaking the story has now issued an apologetic press release disclaiming these revelations, though the German authorities, lately burned by such innocents as Jan Ullrich and Patrik Sinkewitz, have affirmed their interest in pursuing the case nonetheless. Not to reopen old wounds here, nor even to suggest that Menchov's attacking ability in the mountains has increased of late by similarly odd and exponential proportions as Roberto Heras's time-trialling once did, but if there's even an ounce of truth to these surely scurrilous accusations, Menchov, hand over the 2005 Vuelta back to Heras you undeserving skank!
It's DeLicious, It's DeLovely, It's DiLuca: meantime, I see that Tuttobici raises a lively debate over Danilo DiLuca's freakishly low testosterone values after last year's Giro stage to Zoncolan, with one expert claiming that DiLuca had the "pipi" of a cherub and the only way to've gotten that was an illicit post-stage IV drip to evade the testers, DiLuca's team doc insisting he never gave the boy one, DiLuca also claiming he didn't but who cares they're perfectly licit under the rules anyway, and another expert smacking the 1st one by pointing out that on a tough stage like Zoncolan a properly hydrated cyclist can easily snarf a liter of fluid every 20 minutes, which can basically dilute a boy's testosterone levels enough give him a sex change on the spot entirely. Still, our friends over at CONI--just days ago deciding to go after the Spaniards in annoyance of the sport's persecution of the Italians--remain unhappy with merely nailing DiLuca on his relationship with an Oil-for-Drugs doc, so they've now obtained his Zoncolan file in the hopes of getting him with something more substantive. Y'know, I wish the talented and amiable DiLuca all luck on this, but hey, if it gives we love Paolo Savoldelli a crack at LPR team leadership at the Giro this year, I can live with that. Forza Il Falco!
Earth Angel (Will You Be Miii-iine?): and, clean-sport crusader St. David Millar has finally been trumped in the soulful repentant wah-wah department in truly stellar fashion by none other than the dreamy Ivan Basso, who humbly confesses in an interview on Gazzetta that he is actually grateful for his two-year (attempted) doping ban, because he has become, in this time of introspection, a better man. Indeed, it is the best thing that has ever happened to him, for he has reflected upon his actions, been laid bare for all to see (the tifosi *wish*!), and is not only determined to reform, but to follow his true passion: helping innocent bambini in need through his beloved charity Intervista. And indeed, it's lovely, noble work by Basso, and a pleasure to see a rider commit himself to such purity of both sport and spirit. Apropos of nothing, anyone else notice that the contract wars over the boy have been heating up among the more ambitious and loaded Continental squads lately?
As Tom Goes By: finally, in actual race news, resurgent sprint god Tom Boonen's laid out his goals for the season, notably remaining hunkered down in Monte Carlo to avoid the shrieking swooning fanatics who barely let him leave his house in Belgium, then, after stretching his legs in Qatar California and Paris-Nice, taking on San Remo, Flanders, and Paris-Roubaix for the win. Okay, I still want Thor Hushovd to kick his !@# (shut the hell up, I know it's unlikely)--but it's nice to hear Boonen's back on form! Interestingly, Boonen concedes that, though Quick Step teammate Paolo Bettini lives nearby, he barely sees the World Champ, training about instead with Steegmans and Pozzato. Trouble in Paradise? Sleazemongering minds want to know!
Monday, January 14, 2008
It's a Sunshine Day!
Come On, Get Happy: well, the list of disgraced dope-snorters snagging sweet new Continental gigs continues to grow, as Jorg Jaksche, ex-denizen of a truly stellar collection of reputed opium dens (Telekom, ONCE, Liberty-Seguros, Tinkoff) and lately bemoaning the end of his career, has landed happily at ex-Unibet team Collstrop (along with Jose Rujano (correction, he's at Caisse d'Epargne now), himself busted briefly for doping back in the day and since best known for scaring the crap out of the Italians at the Giro). Hell, you couldn't get into a freakin' ProTour race when you actually had a license as Unibet; given a few of the current teams tooling along without sanction, adding guys like these has to significantly up your chances for wildcard invites to the big shows! Tell me again why !@#$%%$ we love Joseba Beloki and even notably guilty Roberto Heras had to retire when every !@#$^*% whiner with a comparatively suckmaster palmares is landing a !@#$&! new job with every !@#%!$#@ amoral squad in the peloton?
When It's Time to Change: meantime, CONI prosecutor Ettore Torri affirms that he's interested in talking to Contador and Valverde, apparently because he's now irked that the same Ivan Basso he went nuts trying to bust now can't ride while other gentlemen associated with the exact same seedy underworld characters are allowed to keep riding. Interestingly, Torri shows some sympathy for the cyclists, at least until he bars them from Italian soil and thereby kicks their @$$es out of the Tour de France this year, viewing them as "victims of the system" whom it is sad to disqualify, when it is really the doctors and other scumbags who so wrongly convince them that they must take banned substances to even hope to compete. Oh my word Ettore--you're not actually thinking of holding anyone on the teams responsible for the syringes they push?!--the horror, to go after such obvious innocents!
I Think I Love You: and, it's a lovebeat over at Astana and Caisse d'Epargne, as Kloden arrives in New Mexico with the rest of his Kazakh squad so he can hear how completely Johan Bruyneel's gonna jack him over this year in a whole new language, and Pereiro and Valverde wax poetic on the virtues of shared team leadership at the Tour, in which Valverde, who has barely managed to finish the thing once, will naturally be king, but in which Pereiro has not only repeatedly worn the maillot jaune but also actually, unlike Valverde, almost won (that would be my comparison, not Pereiro's, because he has class). Um, not to beat a dead horse here, but does !@#$%ing *anybody* left on this planet care about the Vuelta?
Keep On: finally, on a distinctly more somber note, Marco Pantani's fatal coke provider was sentenced to 4 years in jail and a 300,000 euro fine, which mamma Pantani, still desperately seeking further investigation into the true circumstances of her son's death, has graciously decided to use to found a youth cycling academy in his honor. Tell me again why every !@#$%^! weasel who copped to taking entire Grand Tours doping during that same era was able to get off with a shrugging halfhearted wah-wah to the press and a lucrative management lordship when guys like poor Marco Pantani were made to pay an ultimately horrific price for the exact same !@$$%^$?
When It's Time to Change: meantime, CONI prosecutor Ettore Torri affirms that he's interested in talking to Contador and Valverde, apparently because he's now irked that the same Ivan Basso he went nuts trying to bust now can't ride while other gentlemen associated with the exact same seedy underworld characters are allowed to keep riding. Interestingly, Torri shows some sympathy for the cyclists, at least until he bars them from Italian soil and thereby kicks their @$$es out of the Tour de France this year, viewing them as "victims of the system" whom it is sad to disqualify, when it is really the doctors and other scumbags who so wrongly convince them that they must take banned substances to even hope to compete. Oh my word Ettore--you're not actually thinking of holding anyone on the teams responsible for the syringes they push?!--the horror, to go after such obvious innocents!
I Think I Love You: and, it's a lovebeat over at Astana and Caisse d'Epargne, as Kloden arrives in New Mexico with the rest of his Kazakh squad so he can hear how completely Johan Bruyneel's gonna jack him over this year in a whole new language, and Pereiro and Valverde wax poetic on the virtues of shared team leadership at the Tour, in which Valverde, who has barely managed to finish the thing once, will naturally be king, but in which Pereiro has not only repeatedly worn the maillot jaune but also actually, unlike Valverde, almost won (that would be my comparison, not Pereiro's, because he has class). Um, not to beat a dead horse here, but does !@#$%ing *anybody* left on this planet care about the Vuelta?
Keep On: finally, on a distinctly more somber note, Marco Pantani's fatal coke provider was sentenced to 4 years in jail and a 300,000 euro fine, which mamma Pantani, still desperately seeking further investigation into the true circumstances of her son's death, has graciously decided to use to found a youth cycling academy in his honor. Tell me again why every !@#$%^! weasel who copped to taking entire Grand Tours doping during that same era was able to get off with a shrugging halfhearted wah-wah to the press and a lucrative management lordship when guys like poor Marco Pantani were made to pay an ultimately horrific price for the exact same !@$$%^$?
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Angels in Chains
Smooth Criminals: so, the legal problems continue to roll on for the peloton, with ex-Liberty Seguros prodigy Alberto Contador and dog-slandering innocent Valverde being called to testify over at the CONI Op Puerto inquiry, embittered rat fink Patrik Sinkewitz continuing to appeal his relatively meager one year ban for testosterone (already up in July, just in time to set him into a rage as he watches the Tour de France on TV from home like the rest of the couch-bound civilian saps), Matthias Kessler taking issue with his two-year sentence despite his attorney copping to his having "the highest value ever measured" (hell, he can't be any dirtier than Vinokorouv, right?), Leukemans continuing to blame his team doctor's stupidity in the absence of a plausible love defense, noble crusader for justice Andrei Kashechkin begging for work as he campaigns against testing not for problems with veracity but for atrocities against human rights, Rock Racing-presumptive Mario "the Chest" Cipollini getting nailed for Italian back taxes despite scamming residency in Monaco and facing a surprisingly hostile populist uprising from the oppressed tifosi over at Gazzetta dello Sport who think that even a very pretty whining coddled cyclist ought to have to pay up just like the rest of the peons to the tax authorities despite the latter thieves clearly deserving death, Marco Pantani's poor mom, convinced of foul play, still begging the Italian authorities to reopen the inquest into his passing, and Landis counting down to his March 19 frying, I mean appeal, at CAS on the heels of his strange and clearly pissed-off email chat with a resolutely ignorant and defensive USA Cycling's Steve Johnson (do you actively *want* to set CAS into a rage before they even have the chance to dope-smack your legal team in person, Floyd?). On the plus side, I see the tragically careening Vandenbroucke has emerged from his earlier breakdown to ride again and fellow dope hog Danilo Hondo's now joining Gilberto Simoni over at Diquigiovanni, so I really think that our beloved sport's finally on the upswing here, don't you agree?
Unibet They're !@#$%! Anyway: and, in actual racing news, I see Unibet, which fared so well at the kind hands of UCI last year, has now been reborn as Pro Continental squad Collstrop, thereby guaranteeing that their blameless riders will continue to be senselessly victimized by the irrelevant grasping power plays of UCI and a truly endless parade of crybaby race organizers, only now for a lot less money. Now we're getting somewhere! Euskaltel, meanwhile, somehow managed to come up with the cash or some alternate seduction to re-sign the brilliant Samuel Sanchez all the way up through 2010, with Sanchez modestly only aspiring to a stage or two in this year's Tour to the relief of Tour GC aspirant/humble Vuelta superdomestique Haimar Zubeldia, making me hope against hope that, despite Sastre Contador and Valverde gunning primarily for the Tour, the boy will still have some legs left in September and there'll actually be more'n a halfway-coordinated neo-pro Spaniard left to ride, and more importantly do justice to, our perpetual beautiful mountain-monster also-ran the Vuelta. Venga Sanchez--and get your priorities straight already!
Yellow Journalism: no, not mine, but it's beyond my comprehension how our golden squad Saunier Duval could have its much-emasculated team presentation (confident baby Giro aspirant Ricco', Leonardo "How I Got Off for Last Year's Test Results is Beyond Me" Piepoli, and a couple 'nother stalwarts excepted) without anyone in the audience standing up and screaming "Where the !@#$ is we love Iban Mayo, you spineless coward punk-@$$ weaklings?!" Man alive people, even the Spanish cycling fed risked coming up for air from their endless make-out session with Alejandro Valverde to back him, what more validation do you want? Free Iban--and resume his freakin' paychecks you wussbag cringing sell-outs!
Unibet They're !@#$%! Anyway: and, in actual racing news, I see Unibet, which fared so well at the kind hands of UCI last year, has now been reborn as Pro Continental squad Collstrop, thereby guaranteeing that their blameless riders will continue to be senselessly victimized by the irrelevant grasping power plays of UCI and a truly endless parade of crybaby race organizers, only now for a lot less money. Now we're getting somewhere! Euskaltel, meanwhile, somehow managed to come up with the cash or some alternate seduction to re-sign the brilliant Samuel Sanchez all the way up through 2010, with Sanchez modestly only aspiring to a stage or two in this year's Tour to the relief of Tour GC aspirant/humble Vuelta superdomestique Haimar Zubeldia, making me hope against hope that, despite Sastre Contador and Valverde gunning primarily for the Tour, the boy will still have some legs left in September and there'll actually be more'n a halfway-coordinated neo-pro Spaniard left to ride, and more importantly do justice to, our perpetual beautiful mountain-monster also-ran the Vuelta. Venga Sanchez--and get your priorities straight already!
Yellow Journalism: no, not mine, but it's beyond my comprehension how our golden squad Saunier Duval could have its much-emasculated team presentation (confident baby Giro aspirant Ricco', Leonardo "How I Got Off for Last Year's Test Results is Beyond Me" Piepoli, and a couple 'nother stalwarts excepted) without anyone in the audience standing up and screaming "Where the !@#$ is we love Iban Mayo, you spineless coward punk-@$$ weaklings?!" Man alive people, even the Spanish cycling fed risked coming up for air from their endless make-out session with Alejandro Valverde to back him, what more validation do you want? Free Iban--and resume his freakin' paychecks you wussbag cringing sell-outs!
Thursday, January 10, 2008
Celebrity (Cyclist) Deathmatch
Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely--And Boy, Do They Want It: as the teams smile for the cameras at their official 2008 roll-outs, one thing seems to be clear: it ain't gonna stay pretty for long. Over at Liquigas, we've got co-captains Pozzato and Bennati utterly delighted to be at each other's humble service at all times despite their unfortunate, and seemingly irreconcilable, desire to win all of the exact same races; for team LPR, the cover of the latest TuttoBici's got Paolo Savoldelli lounging trustingly on the saddle of a bike while Danilo DiLuca maintains a smiling deathgrip on the handlebars; and, over at Astanadiscovery, Johan Bruyneel's already announced his intention to force the completely !@##ed Andreas Kloden to drudge for boy-wonder Contador all season, and while we're at it, Kloden better shut up and like it, because if for example there's even the slightest suggestion that that unwanted Vino-tainted leftover was involved in the late T-Mobile's little 2006 blood-doping roadtrip or presumably anything else not to his liking, Johan looks forward to personally shoving him off the team bus into a crevasse. Anyone want to bet on how long these happy little Bert-and-Ernie pairings are gonna last?
Black Is the New Black: in addition to the rosters, the '08 team kits are also coming out, with High Road mercifully sparing us the sight of George Hincapie dressed like a humongous Barbie with discreet wee red and yellow logos against a black background with white stripes up the sides; CSC cuing us in on their rigorous purity by going mostly white with a big red logo and a bit of black swooping sideways from the bottom; and our frank friends over at Rock Racing perhaps considering either an IV graphic against a dirt-colored jersey or an orange prison jumpsuit ensemble. Hell, it beats the retina-searing Barney outfits over at Lampre!
CONI Island: and, the Italian prosecutors, apparently more than irked that Ivan Basso remains a Teen Beat national icon and DiLuca and Petacchi get to play again at this coming Giro despite some, well, physiological oddities at the last one, have now decided to reopen Op Puerto on their end, announcing their intent to call in DSes, team doctors and even riders to testify in the hope they'll be able to keep *somebody* guilty from riding on Italian soil anytime soon. Sadly, point man Dr. Eufemanio Fuentes may already be otherwise engaged, as the Germans plan to call him on the carpet in the latest round of litigation between Jan "I'm Gone! What the Hell More Do You Want?" Ullrich and Dr. Werner "Fine, You Didn't Pay Fuentes 35,000 Euros, You Paid Him More" Franke, and as the man's already laid claim to next year's Nobel Prize for services to cyclists, if nothing else his testimony oughta be lively in that venue. Fortunately for CONI, wherever Fuentes may ultimately talk, "wingnut" translates just fine into Italian...
This Landis Your Land: finally, it's with awe, admiration, and a total lack of ability to comprehend the charts they're using to illustrate the science they're trying to explain to the dimmer bulbs among us that I bid a happy 1000th post to the impassioned pursuers of Truth, Justice, Beauty, and Floyd Landis' Ultimate Acquittal over at trustbutverify. Are they right that Floyd didn't do it? Who the hell knows, but then again, thanks to the grossly careless and flat-out incompetent self-interested lab chimps who mishandled his samples, and the disgusting preening leakfest by the triumphant goons over at UCI & co. that spawned the press' colossal feeding frenzy before Landis even had time to hit the snooze button the morning it all broke, that's precisely the point. And while I certainly think any rider who dopes his way to the podium ought to go down, and that such tactics are deeply unfair to the clean rider (um, riders) left in the peloton, I do think that before we light a boy up like a flaming ball of pitch and fling him off a trebuchet to his doom we should at least be more than half-assedly able to prove that the cheating skank actually did it. So while I hope the dedicated scribes over at TBV needn't actually write another 1000 posts before the whole repulsive farce is resolved, lest the poor exhausted things have to hit up a good team doc themselves for some sustenance-of-ill-repute just to stay awake, I'm grateful they've stuck it out this far nonetheless. Allez allez trustbut!
Black Is the New Black: in addition to the rosters, the '08 team kits are also coming out, with High Road mercifully sparing us the sight of George Hincapie dressed like a humongous Barbie with discreet wee red and yellow logos against a black background with white stripes up the sides; CSC cuing us in on their rigorous purity by going mostly white with a big red logo and a bit of black swooping sideways from the bottom; and our frank friends over at Rock Racing perhaps considering either an IV graphic against a dirt-colored jersey or an orange prison jumpsuit ensemble. Hell, it beats the retina-searing Barney outfits over at Lampre!
CONI Island: and, the Italian prosecutors, apparently more than irked that Ivan Basso remains a Teen Beat national icon and DiLuca and Petacchi get to play again at this coming Giro despite some, well, physiological oddities at the last one, have now decided to reopen Op Puerto on their end, announcing their intent to call in DSes, team doctors and even riders to testify in the hope they'll be able to keep *somebody* guilty from riding on Italian soil anytime soon. Sadly, point man Dr. Eufemanio Fuentes may already be otherwise engaged, as the Germans plan to call him on the carpet in the latest round of litigation between Jan "I'm Gone! What the Hell More Do You Want?" Ullrich and Dr. Werner "Fine, You Didn't Pay Fuentes 35,000 Euros, You Paid Him More" Franke, and as the man's already laid claim to next year's Nobel Prize for services to cyclists, if nothing else his testimony oughta be lively in that venue. Fortunately for CONI, wherever Fuentes may ultimately talk, "wingnut" translates just fine into Italian...
This Landis Your Land: finally, it's with awe, admiration, and a total lack of ability to comprehend the charts they're using to illustrate the science they're trying to explain to the dimmer bulbs among us that I bid a happy 1000th post to the impassioned pursuers of Truth, Justice, Beauty, and Floyd Landis' Ultimate Acquittal over at trustbutverify. Are they right that Floyd didn't do it? Who the hell knows, but then again, thanks to the grossly careless and flat-out incompetent self-interested lab chimps who mishandled his samples, and the disgusting preening leakfest by the triumphant goons over at UCI & co. that spawned the press' colossal feeding frenzy before Landis even had time to hit the snooze button the morning it all broke, that's precisely the point. And while I certainly think any rider who dopes his way to the podium ought to go down, and that such tactics are deeply unfair to the clean rider (um, riders) left in the peloton, I do think that before we light a boy up like a flaming ball of pitch and fling him off a trebuchet to his doom we should at least be more than half-assedly able to prove that the cheating skank actually did it. So while I hope the dedicated scribes over at TBV needn't actually write another 1000 posts before the whole repulsive farce is resolved, lest the poor exhausted things have to hit up a good team doc themselves for some sustenance-of-ill-repute just to stay awake, I'm grateful they've stuck it out this far nonetheless. Allez allez trustbut!
Tuesday, January 08, 2008
'Cuz Tonight I'm Gonna Party Like It's 1999
Party on Wayne! Party on Garth!: so I see Worlds podium finisher/Amstel Gold champ/Gerolsteiner golden boy Stefan Schumacher, who blamed his pre-worlds "irregular" blood values on a tummyache and later crashed his car after a night at the disco while under the influence of alcohol, has now had to explain another pretty "irregularity" issue, this time, why he also tested poz that night for amphetamines. Now, I'm not inclined to give poor Schumi much of a hard time on that one, as I certainly didn't begrudge we-still-miss-and-yes-I'm-a-lowlife-hypocrite Jan Ullrich's little alleged rendezvous with Ecstasy, but in return, can we all please cut the stupid, nay downright insulting, "how could I have tested poz I didn't even know I was taking anything" defense he's pushing? In competition--fine, what innocent rider knows what "vitamins" your beloved and trusted team doc is giving you? But even in my wildest paranoid theorist fantasies I don't imagine that, say, a desperate UCI or immediate rival is following a given cyclist around dissolving speed into his drinks in the off-season in an effort to trip him up. You're wasted, you're tired, there's no decent espresso around, no hard feelings, man up already! Luckily, the German cycling fed has declined to pursue any case against him, because unlike the last time Ullrich got busted for amphetamines and got his @#$ suspended for it, the fine antidrug hounds at WADA have lately decreed that out of competition amphetamines are actually just fine. Poor Jan--can you never be on the winning side of any embarrassing scandal?
Fighting the Good Fight: meantime, having failed to get the dreaded (and worse, actually potentially useful) blood-values "passport" up 'n' running til the riders have had plenty of time to work their way up to their desired baselines before the 2008 Tour de France, UCI has once again put its foot down in the fight against doping by sensibly testing...um, Michael Boogerd, who already freakin' retired two months before his Christmas Eve surprise visit from the vampires. Good God, UCI...is that Bernard Hinault I see over there? Go get 'im, boys!
Rock Steady: so with Oscar Sevilla officially on board over at Rock Racing, Michael "Napoleon Complex" Ball has gone even more off his head, this time responding to his wheel sponsor's post-Tyler-Hamilton-signing bailout (and the tenuous continued sponsorship of other equipment makers) by angrily proclaiming he'll make better wheels, he'll make cooler wheels, he'll buy all your companies and make his own damn components, he'll personally weave the carbon fibers for the rims, no, he'll personally roll himself up into a ball, jam himself into Hamilton's bike and *be* the wheel...um, I'll concede to the pro-Rock Racing crowd that he's certainly livening things up around the dull ol' peloton, but is anyone else concerned that poor we love Freddy Rodriguez has signed on with a guy that even a tankload of sedatives can't soothe?
Okay, That's One New Year's Resolution Broken: finally, having briefly forgiven Denis Menchov for winning the 2007 Vuelta fair and square, I'm now forced to irrationally loathe him yet again, this time for saying he's bailing out of the '08 Vuelta in favor of going for gold again at the Tour and will prep for it via the Giro. Now, I won't even mention that it's darned lucky for Menchov that the rightful winner of the '07 Tour won't be in Rabobank team kit to defend it this time, but more to the point, how dare you usurp Heras' Vuelta and bother with winning another one when you don't even value this beautiful race, you unappreciative twerp? *Must* the Vuelta always be the sad-sack Jan Brady to the fawned-over Marcia that is the Tour? Aaaiiiigggghhhh!
Fighting the Good Fight: meantime, having failed to get the dreaded (and worse, actually potentially useful) blood-values "passport" up 'n' running til the riders have had plenty of time to work their way up to their desired baselines before the 2008 Tour de France, UCI has once again put its foot down in the fight against doping by sensibly testing...um, Michael Boogerd, who already freakin' retired two months before his Christmas Eve surprise visit from the vampires. Good God, UCI...is that Bernard Hinault I see over there? Go get 'im, boys!
Rock Steady: so with Oscar Sevilla officially on board over at Rock Racing, Michael "Napoleon Complex" Ball has gone even more off his head, this time responding to his wheel sponsor's post-Tyler-Hamilton-signing bailout (and the tenuous continued sponsorship of other equipment makers) by angrily proclaiming he'll make better wheels, he'll make cooler wheels, he'll buy all your companies and make his own damn components, he'll personally weave the carbon fibers for the rims, no, he'll personally roll himself up into a ball, jam himself into Hamilton's bike and *be* the wheel...um, I'll concede to the pro-Rock Racing crowd that he's certainly livening things up around the dull ol' peloton, but is anyone else concerned that poor we love Freddy Rodriguez has signed on with a guy that even a tankload of sedatives can't soothe?
Okay, That's One New Year's Resolution Broken: finally, having briefly forgiven Denis Menchov for winning the 2007 Vuelta fair and square, I'm now forced to irrationally loathe him yet again, this time for saying he's bailing out of the '08 Vuelta in favor of going for gold again at the Tour and will prep for it via the Giro. Now, I won't even mention that it's darned lucky for Menchov that the rightful winner of the '07 Tour won't be in Rabobank team kit to defend it this time, but more to the point, how dare you usurp Heras' Vuelta and bother with winning another one when you don't even value this beautiful race, you unappreciative twerp? *Must* the Vuelta always be the sad-sack Jan Brady to the fawned-over Marcia that is the Tour? Aaaiiiigggghhhh!
Give Him Back his Mayo Jaune, Dammit!
No, Not the Tour's; Saunier Duval's: as the Spanish cycling fed miraculously shows the same guts it has in protecting its amore Alejandro Valverde by declining to pursue we love Iban Mayo on the grounds that further review would be improper as he's already been absolved, and be, more frankly, "against the principles of justice," the heavy-handed goons at UCI, already stung by the Landis teams' allegations--well, concrete showing--that they and the same hack lab that analyzed Iban's Z sample are a pack of self-aggrandizing bias-driven snipe-hunting monkeys who routinely flout their own rules whenever it suits them, remain determined to take Iban's crap case to the Court of Arbitration for Sport, thereby smugly ensuring that even if Iban didn't do it, or they're simply too stupid to prove that he did, he's gonna remain teamless, jobless, and broke in 2008, lose valuable Giro and classics prep time as the other paycheck-graced boys cavort in their team kits at training camp, and likely be unable to find a team at all for 2009 except those coarse pigs over at Rock Racing, when all this time he ought to be riding about in Saunier Duval team kit, on Saunier Duval's bank account, getting ready for his continued post-meltdown resurgence for the coming year. You blow, Pat "Dick" McQuaid! Why don't we just drag this out until he's actually personally clinically dead, and you can dance a mazurka on his ignominious grave? Look, UCI. Even if you're right, you blew it. Procedural-dithering an opponent to death--waiting it out til someone's broke, incapacitated, or has gone to Trip the Light Fantastic--is a wussbag litigation tactic of the bitter, pathetic, meritless, and weak. You lost; suck it up, take it like a grownup, and get back to nipping at Valverde's ankles like some relentless crazed Chihuahua, why dontcha? Meanwhile, free Iban--woo-hoo!
Saturday, January 05, 2008
Rock 'n' Repugnant
Rock (Un)Steady: so as Frankie Andreu bails out of the obnoxious Michael Ball's new team, purportedly because he didn't like the way 'business' was being conducted between the team and sponsors, he also managed to note that he'd totally coincidentally been left out of several 'recent decisions' involving the courtship and signing of certain riders, presumably boys like busted-or-presumed dopers like Hamilton, Santi Botero and Oscar Sevilla, much less the rumored seduction of legendary Mario "the Chest" Cipollini (tho' no wonder there's confusion there, since even his manager can't keep his story straight for two consecutive days in the Italian press on whether his client's been in talks with Rock Racing or not.) What's more, he is "not entirely comfortable" with the way Ball is hoping to meet his team's goals, which, to those of us with sordid minds, raises the not implausible inference that a team whose riders have been publicly told "win your race or I'm firing your worthless !@#" are perhaps just a little less likely than the rest of even the existing scumpacked filthy cheating peloton to be inclined to stay clean--especially, and I'm sure these guys are all perfectly honest when they say they've never taken anything stronger than a cappuccino so this is a total non sequitur, if they've already got some personal expertise in that area. All right, Ball, you've proven you're an @#$hole; now, can you DS?
Beware the Ides of March: interestingly, though, Ball might not actually have to run his own show, as none other than Floyd Landis--who recently learned his date with doom at CAS is set for March 19, absolutely guaranteeing by its exceedingly late arrival to the party that even if he wins (and he should) he's completely screwed out of any real chance at the Tour for all time, much less ever redeeming his rep as to the old one--has been rumored to be talking to Rock Racing about serving as an "unofficial advisor," as he'd need an actual license from the same clowns who've spent the last two years stomping the poor boy into the dust to do so officially. Does this seem utterly idiotic, not to say unfair, to anyone else, given how guys like Bjarne "I Won the Tour with a Needle in My Rump" Riis and Rolf "Hell, I Doped Last Week!" Aldag are faring in the management ranks at the moment?. Landis, sensibly, has met this rumor with a polite "no comment," kindly mentioning, however, that he does believe the, well, less reputable boys on the team do deserve a second chance. Floyd, not to criticize your truly admirable support for other riders who have been punished for things they claim, same as you, not to even have done--but given that you've got a rather crucial hearing coming up in which every relevant blowhard witchhunting cycling organization on the planet is already claiming you're clearly a lying dope-suffused Tour-thieving testosterone-snarfing dirtbag, is it really going to help your already tenuous chances of victory by claiming sympathy for and solidarity with boys they all believe are even grimier? Save yourself first, Floyd--if you can!
Like a Rhinestone Cowboy: and, tiresome antidoping zealot Dr. Werner Franke (now backed up by "anonymous sources") is at it again, claiming that a "Rhine convoy" of at least two cars from T-Mobile took off for an evening of relaxation 'n' blood doping at the Freiburg clinic during the '06 Tour de France, where the goods were apparently labeled--since the whole dog-naming thing hadn't worked so well for Dr. Fuentes--after a merry band of Disney cartoons. Anyone want to guess which rider was hopped up enough to be "Dopey"? Still, Patrik Sinkewitz, who ought to know, continues to dispute this theory, firmly maintaining that he at least rode alone to the team docs' lair, and while we're at it, thanks all you bastards for rewarding him with a big "screw you" for the brave act of coming out and confessing his sins like you all said a cheater should, 'cuz if any of you holier-than-thou hypocrites think any other rider's gonna talk after how he and Jaksche have been jacked for breaking omerta, you're !@#damn nuts. If it's any comfort, Patrik, I'm sure Rock Racing's still got an opening and some cash...
Mambo Italiano: finally, I see the Italians are already gearing up for the Giro and talking the requisite smack, with the surprising (relative) exception of we love Gilberto Simoni, who in his prep for his '08 stage to Pampeago and hopefully more, not only openly admired recent Saunier Duval protege Riccardo Ricco' and baby Schleck as the men of the future, but, in a shocking bout of self-restraint, merely called DiLuca a weakling and Cunego a nonentity before declining to even insult Ivan Basso at all. Gibo, what's gotten into you in your old age? As for Paolo Bettini, his money's on Ricco as well (on Pozzato if he doesn't get 'caught up in watches and clothes,' pretty amusing for a guy who just sold off his extra Ferrari to buy an airplane, but then, he's got a few good results already), but I'm personally too busy swooning over the news he's considering sticking around for the '09 Giro to care. Vai Paolo, and Gilberto, don't take any crap from that pouty-lipped punk Basso just because he's already been anointed Saint of All the Universe by the Italian cycling press and tifosi!
Beware the Ides of March: interestingly, though, Ball might not actually have to run his own show, as none other than Floyd Landis--who recently learned his date with doom at CAS is set for March 19, absolutely guaranteeing by its exceedingly late arrival to the party that even if he wins (and he should) he's completely screwed out of any real chance at the Tour for all time, much less ever redeeming his rep as to the old one--has been rumored to be talking to Rock Racing about serving as an "unofficial advisor," as he'd need an actual license from the same clowns who've spent the last two years stomping the poor boy into the dust to do so officially. Does this seem utterly idiotic, not to say unfair, to anyone else, given how guys like Bjarne "I Won the Tour with a Needle in My Rump" Riis and Rolf "Hell, I Doped Last Week!" Aldag are faring in the management ranks at the moment?. Landis, sensibly, has met this rumor with a polite "no comment," kindly mentioning, however, that he does believe the, well, less reputable boys on the team do deserve a second chance. Floyd, not to criticize your truly admirable support for other riders who have been punished for things they claim, same as you, not to even have done--but given that you've got a rather crucial hearing coming up in which every relevant blowhard witchhunting cycling organization on the planet is already claiming you're clearly a lying dope-suffused Tour-thieving testosterone-snarfing dirtbag, is it really going to help your already tenuous chances of victory by claiming sympathy for and solidarity with boys they all believe are even grimier? Save yourself first, Floyd--if you can!
Like a Rhinestone Cowboy: and, tiresome antidoping zealot Dr. Werner Franke (now backed up by "anonymous sources") is at it again, claiming that a "Rhine convoy" of at least two cars from T-Mobile took off for an evening of relaxation 'n' blood doping at the Freiburg clinic during the '06 Tour de France, where the goods were apparently labeled--since the whole dog-naming thing hadn't worked so well for Dr. Fuentes--after a merry band of Disney cartoons. Anyone want to guess which rider was hopped up enough to be "Dopey"? Still, Patrik Sinkewitz, who ought to know, continues to dispute this theory, firmly maintaining that he at least rode alone to the team docs' lair, and while we're at it, thanks all you bastards for rewarding him with a big "screw you" for the brave act of coming out and confessing his sins like you all said a cheater should, 'cuz if any of you holier-than-thou hypocrites think any other rider's gonna talk after how he and Jaksche have been jacked for breaking omerta, you're !@#damn nuts. If it's any comfort, Patrik, I'm sure Rock Racing's still got an opening and some cash...
Mambo Italiano: finally, I see the Italians are already gearing up for the Giro and talking the requisite smack, with the surprising (relative) exception of we love Gilberto Simoni, who in his prep for his '08 stage to Pampeago and hopefully more, not only openly admired recent Saunier Duval protege Riccardo Ricco' and baby Schleck as the men of the future, but, in a shocking bout of self-restraint, merely called DiLuca a weakling and Cunego a nonentity before declining to even insult Ivan Basso at all. Gibo, what's gotten into you in your old age? As for Paolo Bettini, his money's on Ricco as well (on Pozzato if he doesn't get 'caught up in watches and clothes,' pretty amusing for a guy who just sold off his extra Ferrari to buy an airplane, but then, he's got a few good results already), but I'm personally too busy swooning over the news he's considering sticking around for the '09 Giro to care. Vai Paolo, and Gilberto, don't take any crap from that pouty-lipped punk Basso just because he's already been anointed Saint of All the Universe by the Italian cycling press and tifosi!
Monday, December 31, 2007
Happy New Year!
Resolve This: well, looking back at my last year's New Year's Resolutions, I see unfortunately that they lasted about as long as St. David Millar in front of a camera before the waterworks start, so despite their dubious utility, and my even more dubious willpower, for the sake of peace and love and redemption and all that other commie socialist hippie crap, I hereby sincerely try again:
1. I will not excoriate the know-nothing non-cycling press for whatever idiot comments they make after Landis inevitably loses his CAS appeal. However, on actual cycling freaks, it remains open season. I will, though, send the brilliant and faithful pro-Floyd analysts over at trustbutverify some nice flowers in consolation for their loss.
2. I will not slag St. David Millar quite so relentlessly, on the entirely fair and reasonable point raised by his Shameless Defender that at least he didn't gack up some completely ludicrous eye-roller of a denial like Ivan Basso. But if he cries one more time like some couch-welded Cheeto-snorting rugrat suddenly deprived of his XBox for the first time in a decade, all bets are off, honey.
3. I will sell, or at least rent, my immortal soul to the first person who gets me a legitimate working press pass to the Giro d'Italia, though in the interest of good sportsmanship, I caution any and all comers that should you try to resell it on E-bay, it likely ain't gonna be worth the postage.
4. I will continue to loathe Bjarne Riis for jacking over Bobby Julich for the Tour this year, no matter how kind, humane, rational, understanding, and forgiving this fine and diplomatic cyclist personally is about it.
5. I will pay more attention to cyclo-cross, track, and the grossly undercovered women's peloton. Sure, these things are never actually broadcast so one can see them, but it can't be that expensive to catch a plane to Europe every weekend, right?
6. I resolve to forgive Denis Menchov for winning in fine form the 2007 Vuelta, despite my lingering and deeply unjust resentment against him for the disastrous results-stripping outcome of the Heras affair in 2005 for which he bore no responsibility whatsoever. However, I *am* still rooting for Samuel Sanchez to kick his @#$ in 2008.
7. I resolve not to project onto faultless innocent prodigy Alberto Contador my annoyance when Johan Bruyneel viciously screws over we love Levi Leipheimer and, next year, we also love Andreas Kloden, at the Tour de France *again*. As an added bonus, I'll stop mentioning the wholly irrelevant fact that he's a product of both Manolo Saiz and Liberty Seguros every time he takes a stage win.
8. I promise not to be snarky about Petacchi, DiLuca, and Basso's pouty studmuffin status, because there's certainly nothing wrong with being both a genius cyclist and also very, very pretty. However, if any one of them drapes himself in satin for a calendar, struts his stuff on a Milan runway, or rips his shirt off for gazzetta dello sport again, it's all over, baby!
9. I will give one free pass on massive verbal abuse for the wily and entertaining provider of the 2008 Best Doping Excuse of the Year. Cuz you know, no matter how many guys got drawn and quartered over failing to mask it properly this year, *some* little eejit's gonna try it again (and blow it again) next season.
10. I will...no, I just can't promise anything with regard to that scorched-earth witch-hunting Iban-hating weasel hypocrite Pat "Dick" McQuaid. I just plain can't. Oh well, perhaps I'll be a better person next year!
All right, that's about all the personal improvement I can stomach for one year. Happy New Year to all, and to all a good night!
1. I will not excoriate the know-nothing non-cycling press for whatever idiot comments they make after Landis inevitably loses his CAS appeal. However, on actual cycling freaks, it remains open season. I will, though, send the brilliant and faithful pro-Floyd analysts over at trustbutverify some nice flowers in consolation for their loss.
2. I will not slag St. David Millar quite so relentlessly, on the entirely fair and reasonable point raised by his Shameless Defender that at least he didn't gack up some completely ludicrous eye-roller of a denial like Ivan Basso. But if he cries one more time like some couch-welded Cheeto-snorting rugrat suddenly deprived of his XBox for the first time in a decade, all bets are off, honey.
3. I will sell, or at least rent, my immortal soul to the first person who gets me a legitimate working press pass to the Giro d'Italia, though in the interest of good sportsmanship, I caution any and all comers that should you try to resell it on E-bay, it likely ain't gonna be worth the postage.
4. I will continue to loathe Bjarne Riis for jacking over Bobby Julich for the Tour this year, no matter how kind, humane, rational, understanding, and forgiving this fine and diplomatic cyclist personally is about it.
5. I will pay more attention to cyclo-cross, track, and the grossly undercovered women's peloton. Sure, these things are never actually broadcast so one can see them, but it can't be that expensive to catch a plane to Europe every weekend, right?
6. I resolve to forgive Denis Menchov for winning in fine form the 2007 Vuelta, despite my lingering and deeply unjust resentment against him for the disastrous results-stripping outcome of the Heras affair in 2005 for which he bore no responsibility whatsoever. However, I *am* still rooting for Samuel Sanchez to kick his @#$ in 2008.
7. I resolve not to project onto faultless innocent prodigy Alberto Contador my annoyance when Johan Bruyneel viciously screws over we love Levi Leipheimer and, next year, we also love Andreas Kloden, at the Tour de France *again*. As an added bonus, I'll stop mentioning the wholly irrelevant fact that he's a product of both Manolo Saiz and Liberty Seguros every time he takes a stage win.
8. I promise not to be snarky about Petacchi, DiLuca, and Basso's pouty studmuffin status, because there's certainly nothing wrong with being both a genius cyclist and also very, very pretty. However, if any one of them drapes himself in satin for a calendar, struts his stuff on a Milan runway, or rips his shirt off for gazzetta dello sport again, it's all over, baby!
9. I will give one free pass on massive verbal abuse for the wily and entertaining provider of the 2008 Best Doping Excuse of the Year. Cuz you know, no matter how many guys got drawn and quartered over failing to mask it properly this year, *some* little eejit's gonna try it again (and blow it again) next season.
10. I will...no, I just can't promise anything with regard to that scorched-earth witch-hunting Iban-hating weasel hypocrite Pat "Dick" McQuaid. I just plain can't. Oh well, perhaps I'll be a better person next year!
All right, that's about all the personal improvement I can stomach for one year. Happy New Year to all, and to all a good night!
Saturday, December 29, 2007
Herasy!
There is No Joy in Racejunkieville/Mighty Heras Has Bailed Out: fine, he's a dirty doping tainted product of a filthy cheating generation of selfish liars and the spinelessly abandoned son of a Machiavellian organizer of systemic Spanish treachery, yap, he got what he deserved just like Vinokorouv and Ullrich, yap, he should burn in hell with the rest of Manolo Saiz' EPO-snarfing blood-doping perverted poseur proteges, yap yap yap. But even accepting as, well, implausible, his astonishing explosion in time-trial mastery in 2005 (and believe me, I do), let's talk about what else we still love Roberto Heras nonetheless is and was: one of the most beautiful climbers in the history of the sport, bar none, and no matter what the hell you're on, you can't turn the lumpen grinding of an Evans into that. A brief review of his palmares: a blazing start to his career with a Giro stage (against a pretty formidable field of Italians with national pride as stake, no less) while at Kelme; years of mountain servitude to Armstrong at Postal in a domestique role far below his actual capacity for personal victory; and, with teams that let's be honest here were seldom gifted with the power of the squads reserved for the season's earlier Tour, 3 smashing Vueltas plus Menchov's, who, whatever Heras may have been stoked on, clearly wasn't ready to earn it in his own right til this year in any case. But Heras is of course correct in throwing in the towel--no matter what he was allegedly offered by any of the Continental teams, none of them could do him or his existing legacy any justice at this point, especially after two years out of competition and no hope of returning to the support level ProTour 'til he's hit 35, already downgraded back to domestique when he gets there. Self-aggrandizing human frailties and all, Roberto, your retirement's a great loss!
Now, before both of you go off all affronted on my continued adoration of Heras and resolute respect for his unparalled climbing genius in the face of his grotesque disrespect for pure sport, let's consider his sainted contemporaries, shall we? 107 riders implicated in Op Puerto in 2006, less than a year into Heras' exile, including basically all of Liberty Seguros and the entire Grand-Tour-contender elite. Yet, as evidence mounts that several teams have been intimately involved in organizing and directing broad-brush doping programs among their cyclists, and damned recently at that, many of these boys not only continued to ride in the comparative poverty and obscurity of Continental squads, but remained cuddled in ProTour luxury til later misadventures cast, or sometimes failed to cast, them out. And in light of such shenanigans, is it really so likely that only the stars of the teams were doped up by their masters, and the press-pimped baby Next Lance Armstrongs were not? I object not to harsh antidoping punishments--which, even aside from the benefit of fostering integrity, hopefully encourage safe-supplement practices that protect the riders' health even better than say our hero Eufemiano Fuentes--but to their shockingly arbitrary application by the ringmasters over at UCI, WADA, the race organizations, and the sports federations. Even the Darwinian explanation of natural-selection-by-culling-of-the-reckless-and-stupid fails to comfort, as it seems ironic that one should be rewarded by being an even wilier bastard (worse, in the cases of those who could afford outside assistance, a richer wilier bastard) than one's more broke or merely luckless contemporary. Explain to me again how doping is discouraged at all if there's a smashingly high chance that, assuming you manage not to irk somebody important, you'll actually manage get away with it?
Of course, the new generation of riders is clean nowadays, and are committed to truth beauty justice and fairness in a way that the cheating sad-sacks of prior days were not; such follies will, after all, die utterly as the dirty tacticians of the old school, victims of their decaying bodies and even more decayed souls, age out of the peloton. Right, Kessler and Sinkewitz?
Oh Roberto. You should have melted down for the cameras, pimped your equally-dirty-but-more-discreet compatriots to the narcs, and raised a few euros for the bambini in your exile. Perhaps you might still find a home as a born-again DS somewhere if you fess up now?
Now, before both of you go off all affronted on my continued adoration of Heras and resolute respect for his unparalled climbing genius in the face of his grotesque disrespect for pure sport, let's consider his sainted contemporaries, shall we? 107 riders implicated in Op Puerto in 2006, less than a year into Heras' exile, including basically all of Liberty Seguros and the entire Grand-Tour-contender elite. Yet, as evidence mounts that several teams have been intimately involved in organizing and directing broad-brush doping programs among their cyclists, and damned recently at that, many of these boys not only continued to ride in the comparative poverty and obscurity of Continental squads, but remained cuddled in ProTour luxury til later misadventures cast, or sometimes failed to cast, them out. And in light of such shenanigans, is it really so likely that only the stars of the teams were doped up by their masters, and the press-pimped baby Next Lance Armstrongs were not? I object not to harsh antidoping punishments--which, even aside from the benefit of fostering integrity, hopefully encourage safe-supplement practices that protect the riders' health even better than say our hero Eufemiano Fuentes--but to their shockingly arbitrary application by the ringmasters over at UCI, WADA, the race organizations, and the sports federations. Even the Darwinian explanation of natural-selection-by-culling-of-the-reckless-and-stupid fails to comfort, as it seems ironic that one should be rewarded by being an even wilier bastard (worse, in the cases of those who could afford outside assistance, a richer wilier bastard) than one's more broke or merely luckless contemporary. Explain to me again how doping is discouraged at all if there's a smashingly high chance that, assuming you manage not to irk somebody important, you'll actually manage get away with it?
Of course, the new generation of riders is clean nowadays, and are committed to truth beauty justice and fairness in a way that the cheating sad-sacks of prior days were not; such follies will, after all, die utterly as the dirty tacticians of the old school, victims of their decaying bodies and even more decayed souls, age out of the peloton. Right, Kessler and Sinkewitz?
Oh Roberto. You should have melted down for the cameras, pimped your equally-dirty-but-more-discreet compatriots to the narcs, and raised a few euros for the bambini in your exile. Perhaps you might still find a home as a born-again DS somewhere if you fess up now?
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
St. Ivan of the Dolomites (Part Deux), and Mother Theresa Eufemiano Fuentes
Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Stoked to the Gills: as a molto tranquillo Ivan Basso both continues his wholly admirable engagement in orphaned children's charity work and his rigorous solo training regimen, with most humble caveats that he understands the road back is a long one and he does not soon expect to compete as he he last did when he returns this coming October, a shamefully cynical part of my previously-idealistic-but-since-thwapped-into-morbid-acceptance-of-gruesome-reality brain cannot help but wonder, are we in for some horrid endless St. David Millar-style tearful wah-wah about his constant regret (that he was busted), complete with an ostentatious bawling on-camera breakdown every time some other unrepentant peloton ignoramus falls into the vicious clutches of the doping Dark Side? Not to condemn true changes of heart and sincere pleas for honorable sportsmanship here--I can't imagine any of these guys would voluntarily blow their Ferrari budgets trying to edge out their fellow dope hounds with even more potent concoctions if they needn't do it to win, after all--but is anyone else hoping that since Basso, unlike Millar, is still only copping to "attempting" to dope that he can at least restrain himself enough to kiss a few babies, sign a few autographs, do his job at the start line when he gets back in 2008 and just shut the hell up after that?
I Think, Therefore I Shouldn't Speak: so I see Operacion Puerto hero, Protector of Athletes' Health, and voracious publicity ho Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes is hitting the radio rounds in support of his fine therapeutic regimens, this time modestly opining that "they should put up a monument to me" and "they should give me the Nobel Prize" for his selfless work on behalf of cruelly oppressed drug-snarfing Grand Tour riders and classics podium aspirants everywhere. (The tifosi over at Gazzetta dello Sport politely suggested, between snorts of e-mockery, that if he really cared he might give us the names of all the cyclists implicated in Op Puerto for Christmas, but apparently his schedule of saintly do-gooding is already too jam-packed to fit in a stint as Santa Claus as well.) Deluded Napoleon-complex wingnut though Fuentes is, I must say I'm rather inclined to agree with him. After all, why pollute the most revered peaks of the cycling world with stupid tributes to the irrelevant likes of Fausto Coppi when you could adorn, say, l'Alpe d'Huez with a far more apropos six-foot marble statue of a syringe, a fridge, and perhaps a couple of riders' dogs to memorialize the power and integrity of this beautiful sport for generations, nay millennia to come?
The Morning After: meantime, over at Predictor-now-Silence-Lotto, the team has posthaste fired Studmuffin-o'-the-Peloton Bjorn Leukemans, as his B-sample for testosterone (lately being blamed, since the 'love defense' didn't appear to cut it, on a team doctor purposely giving a rider subject to 8 bazillion clearly delineated banned substances and total career destruction if he takes any of 'em a random mystery rub with ingredients our quack didn't even recognize as off-limits on the label) came back positive. Bjorn, however, gamely argues that he has another perfectly reasonable explanation for the unfortunate incident, but, of course, his meany of a lawyer won't let him talk til the Jan 10 hearing on the matter which totally coincidentally would appear to give him a good two weeks to figure one out. Good luck on that Bjorn!
Il Grande Gibo, Part Deux: finally, to the swooning adoration of tifosi everywhere, we love perpetual crankmaster Gilberto Simoni of all riders has suddenly gone all soft'n'sweet on us, expressing his greatest wish as making it to the Olympics in the blue jersey of his national team, warmly complimenting his fellows at Saunier Duval as key to his recent triumph on the slopes of the Zoncolan, looking back on this season as important not for his victories but for the courage and capacity to suffer that he found he still had, reflecting on the importance of riders becoming more involved in the calendar and character-building of the sport, and admiring the likes of Cunego, baby protege Riccardo Ricco and attack genius Leonardo Piepoli for the Giro long haul. Any takers on how long his apparent New Year's resolution not to slag anybody else is going to last? Vai Gibo!
I Think, Therefore I Shouldn't Speak: so I see Operacion Puerto hero, Protector of Athletes' Health, and voracious publicity ho Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes is hitting the radio rounds in support of his fine therapeutic regimens, this time modestly opining that "they should put up a monument to me" and "they should give me the Nobel Prize" for his selfless work on behalf of cruelly oppressed drug-snarfing Grand Tour riders and classics podium aspirants everywhere. (The tifosi over at Gazzetta dello Sport politely suggested, between snorts of e-mockery, that if he really cared he might give us the names of all the cyclists implicated in Op Puerto for Christmas, but apparently his schedule of saintly do-gooding is already too jam-packed to fit in a stint as Santa Claus as well.) Deluded Napoleon-complex wingnut though Fuentes is, I must say I'm rather inclined to agree with him. After all, why pollute the most revered peaks of the cycling world with stupid tributes to the irrelevant likes of Fausto Coppi when you could adorn, say, l'Alpe d'Huez with a far more apropos six-foot marble statue of a syringe, a fridge, and perhaps a couple of riders' dogs to memorialize the power and integrity of this beautiful sport for generations, nay millennia to come?
The Morning After: meantime, over at Predictor-now-Silence-Lotto, the team has posthaste fired Studmuffin-o'-the-Peloton Bjorn Leukemans, as his B-sample for testosterone (lately being blamed, since the 'love defense' didn't appear to cut it, on a team doctor purposely giving a rider subject to 8 bazillion clearly delineated banned substances and total career destruction if he takes any of 'em a random mystery rub with ingredients our quack didn't even recognize as off-limits on the label) came back positive. Bjorn, however, gamely argues that he has another perfectly reasonable explanation for the unfortunate incident, but, of course, his meany of a lawyer won't let him talk til the Jan 10 hearing on the matter which totally coincidentally would appear to give him a good two weeks to figure one out. Good luck on that Bjorn!
Il Grande Gibo, Part Deux: finally, to the swooning adoration of tifosi everywhere, we love perpetual crankmaster Gilberto Simoni of all riders has suddenly gone all soft'n'sweet on us, expressing his greatest wish as making it to the Olympics in the blue jersey of his national team, warmly complimenting his fellows at Saunier Duval as key to his recent triumph on the slopes of the Zoncolan, looking back on this season as important not for his victories but for the courage and capacity to suffer that he found he still had, reflecting on the importance of riders becoming more involved in the calendar and character-building of the sport, and admiring the likes of Cunego, baby protege Riccardo Ricco and attack genius Leonardo Piepoli for the Giro long haul. Any takers on how long his apparent New Year's resolution not to slag anybody else is going to last? Vai Gibo!
Friday, December 21, 2007
How Many Dopers Can You Fit on the Head of a Pin?
A !@#$*&' Lot of 'Em, if You're Rock Racing: so as we dearly love 3-time Tour de France podium finisher/34-year-old climbing god Joseba Beloki is forced to retire because he wasn't actually busted for anything except being on ONCE and Liberty Seguros (burn in hell, you soulless rider-pimping bastard Saiz!), 80-year-old Tyler "I Ate My Twin" Hamilton, lately booted off Tinkoff with fellow dopehound Danilo Hondo in a fit of moral righteousness as soon as its oligarch got done profiting off their names, has actually managed to score a new gig with Rock Racing, new home of dope-linked ex-Phonak-cohort Santi Botero incidentally and most recently noted for its obnoxious jean-seller owner's bizarrely slagging Chris Horner's ethics to a chorus of boos from the Velonews faithful. Tyler, with your slammin' new bank account--and assuming, and I still certainly hope I'm wrong here, that your protestations of innocence at Phonak of all squads lacked, well, accuracy--any chance you could reimburse me the 15 bucks I blew defacing my Tyler Hamilton Foundation hat defending your innocence before the disgusting perpetual intrigue of this beautiful sport finally debauched mine?
Did I Mention Burn In Hell, You Soulless Rider-Pimping Bastard Saiz?: and, as Joseba concedes defeat and mournfully schleps off into the sunset without even a DS sympathy gig at old home stomping grounds Euskaltel to show for it, I'd like to take a moment to pay tribute his spectacular palmares, including a fine podium finish at the Vuelta a Espana. Yap, yap, anyone Manolo Saiz touched was a colossal drug-snorting one-man corroded cesspool--even if so, can we honestly believe he was the only team manager force-feeding any or all of his brilliant proteges something more powerful than Tang? Beloki was gorgeous to watch on a climb at his height, he was just coming back beautifully even as a superdomestique years after his post-Tour leg-snap when Liberty Seguros went down, and the peloton's far the crappier for his loss. Tell me again why his tangential association with Op Puerto should've excluded him from the pack any more than, say, gentlemen with gigantic buckets of blood bags in Eufemiano Fuentes' fridge with ambiguous code names like "Valv" tatooed on 'em, or, say, half the riders on the recently-deceased alleged-Spanish-doper-refugee-camp Relax-Gam, who continue to ride to this day?
Unparanoid Conspiracy Theorist: finally, as an enraged Iban Mayo refuses to recognize Chatenay-Malabry's inevitable Z-sample poz on the not unreasonable grounds that they had no right to run the damn thing in the first place as a B-sample test in his favor had already been conducted, and that it's just the slightest bit possible that UCI had perhaps a vested interest in obtaining a positive result after spending the last six months crowing over his downfall, the Spanish cycling fed, which seemed noncommittal on the possibility of defending Iban yesterday given how tough it is to argue about a two-fer test positive, has now at least decided not to sanction the boy and to instead face the music with UCI and their certain whining, if their incessant swooning over Alejandro Valverde doesn't distract them beforehand. We'll see if that resolve sticks, but meantime, free Iban!
Finding My Happy Place: finally, in about the only bit of nonsucktastic news this week, gazzetta dello sport's got a bitchin' audio and video clip of Matteo Tosatto and Pippo Pozzato singing away, which for my money in the annals of jocks crooning is far and away better than the Red Sox croaking their way through "Dirty Water" so mortifyingly a few years back. If cycling doesn't work out for you boys (though it has pretty damn well to this point), at least you've always got a spot on the pop charts....
Did I Mention Burn In Hell, You Soulless Rider-Pimping Bastard Saiz?: and, as Joseba concedes defeat and mournfully schleps off into the sunset without even a DS sympathy gig at old home stomping grounds Euskaltel to show for it, I'd like to take a moment to pay tribute his spectacular palmares, including a fine podium finish at the Vuelta a Espana. Yap, yap, anyone Manolo Saiz touched was a colossal drug-snorting one-man corroded cesspool--even if so, can we honestly believe he was the only team manager force-feeding any or all of his brilliant proteges something more powerful than Tang? Beloki was gorgeous to watch on a climb at his height, he was just coming back beautifully even as a superdomestique years after his post-Tour leg-snap when Liberty Seguros went down, and the peloton's far the crappier for his loss. Tell me again why his tangential association with Op Puerto should've excluded him from the pack any more than, say, gentlemen with gigantic buckets of blood bags in Eufemiano Fuentes' fridge with ambiguous code names like "Valv" tatooed on 'em, or, say, half the riders on the recently-deceased alleged-Spanish-doper-refugee-camp Relax-Gam, who continue to ride to this day?
Unparanoid Conspiracy Theorist: finally, as an enraged Iban Mayo refuses to recognize Chatenay-Malabry's inevitable Z-sample poz on the not unreasonable grounds that they had no right to run the damn thing in the first place as a B-sample test in his favor had already been conducted, and that it's just the slightest bit possible that UCI had perhaps a vested interest in obtaining a positive result after spending the last six months crowing over his downfall, the Spanish cycling fed, which seemed noncommittal on the possibility of defending Iban yesterday given how tough it is to argue about a two-fer test positive, has now at least decided not to sanction the boy and to instead face the music with UCI and their certain whining, if their incessant swooning over Alejandro Valverde doesn't distract them beforehand. We'll see if that resolve sticks, but meantime, free Iban!
Finding My Happy Place: finally, in about the only bit of nonsucktastic news this week, gazzetta dello sport's got a bitchin' audio and video clip of Matteo Tosatto and Pippo Pozzato singing away, which for my money in the annals of jocks crooning is far and away better than the Red Sox croaking their way through "Dirty Water" so mortifyingly a few years back. If cycling doesn't work out for you boys (though it has pretty damn well to this point), at least you've always got a spot on the pop charts....
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Oh, There's No Place Like Hosed for the Holidays!
Pat "Dick" We Have Heard on High/Swearing, "Iban, You Will Fry": y'know, in this season of giving, it's so important to remember those in need, which is why it's so very touching to watch Pat "Dick" McQuaid and the desperate-for-credibility protocol-mangling incompetent lab chimps over at Chatenay-Malabry giving Iban Mayo's lonely underprivileged urine samples a heart-warming 800 opportunities to replicate their initial freak poz for EPO, which, after an irksome little negative by some crap Gent lab with no actual vested interest in the results, finally arrived in a true Christmas miracle, since apparently no known legitimate laboratory could come up with one using, well, science. Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus! Sadly, Iban's attorney at least is distinctly unappreciative, opining, in one of those feats of intuition that only the most intimate of lawyer-client relationships can foster, that though he doesn't know where Iban is, he's pretty sure his boy ain't happy, and will likely appeal. As for our ferocious bulldogs at the Spanish cycling fed, so eager to rush to defend the honor of Alejandro Valverde at the slightest hint of slander? Naturally, they immediately took to the airwaves in outrage and demanded...um...guys...you there? Hello? Anybody? Hellooooo-oooo....?
I Saw Mommy Kissing Leukemans: meantime, as Bjorn Leukemans' actual B sample comes back poz for exogenous testosterone, the virile young man continues to claim both his inherently-studlier-than-thou and vaunted act-of-love-interruptus defenses, fiercely asserting 'these values are natural!' Oh, Bjorn. I sympathize indeed if you didn't do this at all, but surely there's no shame (if still yet a suspension), in this open-minded, 'fess-up era of Bjarne and Zabel and Aldag, of admitting to needing a little help with such things now and then?
Landis Got Run Over By a French Guy: finally, as if Floyd Landis hasn't been dope-slapped enough lately by UCI, USADA, WADA, the press, disgruntled fans, and frankly everyone on earth except the thoughtful detectives at trustbutverify and (correct me if I'm hallucinating here) Lance-freakin-Armstrong of all people, the French cycling fed has undertaken the pointless exercise of smacking him around yet again, this time by making sure to ban him from non-UCI races in the rather unlikely event that Christian Prudhomme drops to his knee like a proposing swain and begs Landis to ride a non-UCI Tour de France next year. Now, if I recall correctly, the Landis-lovin' organizers over at ASO not only have spent the last year and a half calling Floyd a cheating testosterone whore, but also kindly introduced the route of the 2007 Tour de France with a video of Landis' head shattering, so I'm fairly sure--and this may be too speculative, I know--they're not exactly planning to rip the maillot jaune off Oscar Pereiro's back and joyously bear Floyd on their shoulders down the Champs-Elysees next year. But you go right ahead defending the unimpeachable Tour's virtue from the filthy likes of Floyd Landis, folks!
I Saw Mommy Kissing Leukemans: meantime, as Bjorn Leukemans' actual B sample comes back poz for exogenous testosterone, the virile young man continues to claim both his inherently-studlier-than-thou and vaunted act-of-love-interruptus defenses, fiercely asserting 'these values are natural!' Oh, Bjorn. I sympathize indeed if you didn't do this at all, but surely there's no shame (if still yet a suspension), in this open-minded, 'fess-up era of Bjarne and Zabel and Aldag, of admitting to needing a little help with such things now and then?
Landis Got Run Over By a French Guy: finally, as if Floyd Landis hasn't been dope-slapped enough lately by UCI, USADA, WADA, the press, disgruntled fans, and frankly everyone on earth except the thoughtful detectives at trustbutverify and (correct me if I'm hallucinating here) Lance-freakin-Armstrong of all people, the French cycling fed has undertaken the pointless exercise of smacking him around yet again, this time by making sure to ban him from non-UCI races in the rather unlikely event that Christian Prudhomme drops to his knee like a proposing swain and begs Landis to ride a non-UCI Tour de France next year. Now, if I recall correctly, the Landis-lovin' organizers over at ASO not only have spent the last year and a half calling Floyd a cheating testosterone whore, but also kindly introduced the route of the 2007 Tour de France with a video of Landis' head shattering, so I'm fairly sure--and this may be too speculative, I know--they're not exactly planning to rip the maillot jaune off Oscar Pereiro's back and joyously bear Floyd on their shoulders down the Champs-Elysees next year. But you go right ahead defending the unimpeachable Tour's virtue from the filthy likes of Floyd Landis, folks!
Sunday, December 16, 2007
The Year in Preview
Yep, You Read Right: well folks, the sun's nearly set on a lively 2007, so I thought that, for the two pro cycling fans still left after our latest year of disgusting revelations, we'd all take a nice, relaxing look ahead to what's sure to be a sparkling-clean 2008:
January: the boys stretch their legs and get working on their base tans at the Tour Down Under, except for the hardcore crowd over at CSC, which gets dropped in the Antarctic in their summer team kits with only an ice ax, a two-foot nylon fishing line, and a matchstick-length bit of medium-gauge wire to survive on. Bjarne smirks at shivering ice-rimmed helmet-cam coverage from palatial beachside cabana in Monaco.
February: woo-hoo, it's the Amgen EPO Tour of California! Levi set to take the win til Johan Bruyneel makes him personally pedal Alberto Contador up the mountains on the back of his bike in a child seat. Foiled again!
March: Gearing up for the Classics, baby! Breakaways Boonen Zabel and Petacchi stuck behind passing train at crossing; enraged Petacchi punches hole through freight car, egress gained. Back in the pack, George Hincapie's bike spontaneously combusts.
April: Iban Mayo's 367th straight B sample analyzed at Chatenay-Malabry finally comes back poz. Spanish authorities, still too busy man-crushing on certain Op Puerto-implicated favorites to complain to UCI, personally tar and feather him.
May: Il Grande Giro! Bettini pulverizes rivals; DiLuca climbs Pyrenees in 6.8 seconds, only to be demolished by rebellious domestique Savoldelli on descent; Simoni bids discreet goodbye to peloton by viciously impugning the manhood of whoever beats him to Pampeago; Edita Pucinskaite, Nicole Brandli 1st and 2nd at Giro d'Italia Femminile for 3d year in a row, exchange warm compliments.
June: Entire population of Belgium and Germany tests poz for exogenous testosterone; Pat "Dick" McQuaid immediately blames Spanish-Italian "mafia nations." Valverde, you cheating bastard! Results of Landis' unsuccessful appeal announced in predictable total farce; on the plus side, 80 years into this ridiculous travesty, Landis now eligible for Social Security due to advancing age.
July: Le Tour, what else? UCI allows 186 known dopers to start; after stripping rightful winner of maillot jaune on penultimate day, UCI awards to we love Phil Liggett, the only guy they're sure is clean. In non-Tour news, obscure Portuguese neo-pro tests poz for EPO; St. David Millar hospitalized for chronic sobbing, miraculously cured when cameras banned from ER.
August: the most beautiful Vuelta in years begins; no-one knows who wins it, though, as US coverage preempted by 21 consecutive days of round-the-clock bass-fishing. You blow, Vs.! Bettini takes gold in Beijing; WADA chief accidentally trampled flat by exuberant squadra azzura.
September: he's baaaaaa-aaacccck! Italians cut one month off comely studmuffin Ivan Basso's suspension for good behavior just in time for Worlds, erect giant golden winged statue of him in Verona; Basso snorts white powder openly at start line, takes race; in response to McQuaid's typical whining objections, tifosi riot, destroy UCI headquarters on grounds that any idiot knows that cane sugar's not a banned pre-race performance-enhancer. In other Worlds news, Robbie "Road Rage" McEwen suspended 3 months for chewing Daniele Bennati's earlobe off in sprint altercation.
October: UCI ProTour rankings released. Cadel Evans snakes UCI title off Danilo DiLuca on crap technicality for second straight year, offered 1 million euro to stay at Predictor for next year; Marianne Vos takes second consecutive UCI title in own right, offered 25,000 euro for 1-year DSB team gig and supplemental survival job as greeter at local Wal-Mart.
November: Erik Zabel, age 96, sweeps World Cup in all categories; Johan Bruyneel re-hires repentant Basso, creating perfect-storm screw-over trifecta of Leipheimer, Kloden and Contador; Landis finally caves, ostentatiously wah-wah's fake confession to press despite actual innocence; T-Mobile immediately reconstitutes itself, gives Landis sickeningly lucrative gig as Directeur Sportif.
December: Team camps again! Liquigas takes to the mineral baths; Astana to Elizabeth Arden for mani-pedis; remaining CSC riders tragically eaten by bears in wilderness.
Well, folks, only time will tell--but if *I* were CSC, I'd watch out carefully for renegade wildlife. Allez allez!
January: the boys stretch their legs and get working on their base tans at the Tour Down Under, except for the hardcore crowd over at CSC, which gets dropped in the Antarctic in their summer team kits with only an ice ax, a two-foot nylon fishing line, and a matchstick-length bit of medium-gauge wire to survive on. Bjarne smirks at shivering ice-rimmed helmet-cam coverage from palatial beachside cabana in Monaco.
February: woo-hoo, it's the Amgen EPO Tour of California! Levi set to take the win til Johan Bruyneel makes him personally pedal Alberto Contador up the mountains on the back of his bike in a child seat. Foiled again!
March: Gearing up for the Classics, baby! Breakaways Boonen Zabel and Petacchi stuck behind passing train at crossing; enraged Petacchi punches hole through freight car, egress gained. Back in the pack, George Hincapie's bike spontaneously combusts.
April: Iban Mayo's 367th straight B sample analyzed at Chatenay-Malabry finally comes back poz. Spanish authorities, still too busy man-crushing on certain Op Puerto-implicated favorites to complain to UCI, personally tar and feather him.
May: Il Grande Giro! Bettini pulverizes rivals; DiLuca climbs Pyrenees in 6.8 seconds, only to be demolished by rebellious domestique Savoldelli on descent; Simoni bids discreet goodbye to peloton by viciously impugning the manhood of whoever beats him to Pampeago; Edita Pucinskaite, Nicole Brandli 1st and 2nd at Giro d'Italia Femminile for 3d year in a row, exchange warm compliments.
June: Entire population of Belgium and Germany tests poz for exogenous testosterone; Pat "Dick" McQuaid immediately blames Spanish-Italian "mafia nations." Valverde, you cheating bastard! Results of Landis' unsuccessful appeal announced in predictable total farce; on the plus side, 80 years into this ridiculous travesty, Landis now eligible for Social Security due to advancing age.
July: Le Tour, what else? UCI allows 186 known dopers to start; after stripping rightful winner of maillot jaune on penultimate day, UCI awards to we love Phil Liggett, the only guy they're sure is clean. In non-Tour news, obscure Portuguese neo-pro tests poz for EPO; St. David Millar hospitalized for chronic sobbing, miraculously cured when cameras banned from ER.
August: the most beautiful Vuelta in years begins; no-one knows who wins it, though, as US coverage preempted by 21 consecutive days of round-the-clock bass-fishing. You blow, Vs.! Bettini takes gold in Beijing; WADA chief accidentally trampled flat by exuberant squadra azzura.
September: he's baaaaaa-aaacccck! Italians cut one month off comely studmuffin Ivan Basso's suspension for good behavior just in time for Worlds, erect giant golden winged statue of him in Verona; Basso snorts white powder openly at start line, takes race; in response to McQuaid's typical whining objections, tifosi riot, destroy UCI headquarters on grounds that any idiot knows that cane sugar's not a banned pre-race performance-enhancer. In other Worlds news, Robbie "Road Rage" McEwen suspended 3 months for chewing Daniele Bennati's earlobe off in sprint altercation.
October: UCI ProTour rankings released. Cadel Evans snakes UCI title off Danilo DiLuca on crap technicality for second straight year, offered 1 million euro to stay at Predictor for next year; Marianne Vos takes second consecutive UCI title in own right, offered 25,000 euro for 1-year DSB team gig and supplemental survival job as greeter at local Wal-Mart.
November: Erik Zabel, age 96, sweeps World Cup in all categories; Johan Bruyneel re-hires repentant Basso, creating perfect-storm screw-over trifecta of Leipheimer, Kloden and Contador; Landis finally caves, ostentatiously wah-wah's fake confession to press despite actual innocence; T-Mobile immediately reconstitutes itself, gives Landis sickeningly lucrative gig as Directeur Sportif.
December: Team camps again! Liquigas takes to the mineral baths; Astana to Elizabeth Arden for mani-pedis; remaining CSC riders tragically eaten by bears in wilderness.
Well, folks, only time will tell--but if *I* were CSC, I'd watch out carefully for renegade wildlife. Allez allez!
Thursday, December 13, 2007
Don't Tread On Me
I'm Not Bitter, I'm Just Going to Destroy You All: well, I see Alexander Vinokorouv is finally talking, and my, has he gone all Miss Manners, in a death-penalty-for-rudeness sort of way. Specifically, it was so ungentlemanly of his fellow riders not to call to offer him moral support after he completely !@#$ed Andreas Kloden at the Tour (and oh right, got pegged for blood doping) that any of these boys who are laughing at him now are going to be absolutely wetting themselves in terror in short order, because as soon as he pens his memoirs--and he's ready--any one of you riders who thinks naive little Vino wasn't paying attention to what the rest of you smug snow-white little !@#$s who never actually tested poz were doing for the last 10 years is gonna find out, when he personally names you, that you were wrong, wrong, wrong. That'll teach you proper etiquette, you bastards!
Hell Freezes Over: yes, folks, the unimaginable has happened, and just as a glum Jorg Jaksche concedes there's no way he can get a decent contract with T-Mobile in the tank, his career is over, and all his self-immolating confessions were for naught after all, the German prosecutors strike a massive blow for common sense and drop fraud charges against him on the astonishingly honest grounds that, since it's obvious the teams and sponsors knew and likely directed what all the riders were doing in the first place, no deception could, by definition, have occurred. Anyone else want to take bets on the likelihood of the cash-groveling apologists over at UCI and WADA doing the same? Didn't think so!
Amateur Hour: so I've just listened to the release of the baseball doping report, and all I can say is, man, are these guys a pack of Shirley Temples! You mean, when half the sport's tiny striplings suddenly developed necks and biceps the circumference of Humvees, it wasn't just from years and years of vitamins and Wheaties? And they really took banned substances when they knew darned well there wasn't a test that could bust them for it yet? And some very, very bad men truly helped them find this stuff as the very, very innocent managers turned a blind eye to these practices? Still and all, it's really sweet that they've decided steroids and HGH are bad, though for some unaccountable reason amphetamines don't seem to come under the same scrutiny, which let's face it a pack of guys who sit on their !@#$es hocking giant tobacco-juice loogies for three-quarters of every game could use just to move things along a little, and which so far as I can tell is great news for cyclists, who certainly might find the prospect of freely snarfing a little speed at the base of the Zoncolan both useful and appealing. Pat "Dick" McQuaid, Major League Baseball needs your help--can you call it a day on your fruitless quest to nail Valverde already, and go after some guys who are actually dense enough for you to catch?
...And a Happy New Year: for Samuel Sanchez, that is, but sadly not Euskaltel most likely, as the Basque climbing gods admit that they haven't anywhere near the cash needed to hold on to him past 2008, the boy has a passel of lucrative offers from other teams, and all they can do is sit around waiting for the ax to fall on decision day January 10. Y'know, I love Sanchez, and I don't begrudge him one bit riding off into the sunset with a squad that can amass him a truly spectacular bank account as well as inevitably add a Grand Tour to his already-stellar palmares. But am I the only one sorry to see a team that consistently develops and nurtures some of the most brilliant mountain goats in the business endlessly lose them to schmoes with bigger payrolls and far less deserving and fanatical tifosi? Oh well, here's your chance I guess Zubeldia!
Hell Freezes Over: yes, folks, the unimaginable has happened, and just as a glum Jorg Jaksche concedes there's no way he can get a decent contract with T-Mobile in the tank, his career is over, and all his self-immolating confessions were for naught after all, the German prosecutors strike a massive blow for common sense and drop fraud charges against him on the astonishingly honest grounds that, since it's obvious the teams and sponsors knew and likely directed what all the riders were doing in the first place, no deception could, by definition, have occurred. Anyone else want to take bets on the likelihood of the cash-groveling apologists over at UCI and WADA doing the same? Didn't think so!
Amateur Hour: so I've just listened to the release of the baseball doping report, and all I can say is, man, are these guys a pack of Shirley Temples! You mean, when half the sport's tiny striplings suddenly developed necks and biceps the circumference of Humvees, it wasn't just from years and years of vitamins and Wheaties? And they really took banned substances when they knew darned well there wasn't a test that could bust them for it yet? And some very, very bad men truly helped them find this stuff as the very, very innocent managers turned a blind eye to these practices? Still and all, it's really sweet that they've decided steroids and HGH are bad, though for some unaccountable reason amphetamines don't seem to come under the same scrutiny, which let's face it a pack of guys who sit on their !@#$es hocking giant tobacco-juice loogies for three-quarters of every game could use just to move things along a little, and which so far as I can tell is great news for cyclists, who certainly might find the prospect of freely snarfing a little speed at the base of the Zoncolan both useful and appealing. Pat "Dick" McQuaid, Major League Baseball needs your help--can you call it a day on your fruitless quest to nail Valverde already, and go after some guys who are actually dense enough for you to catch?
...And a Happy New Year: for Samuel Sanchez, that is, but sadly not Euskaltel most likely, as the Basque climbing gods admit that they haven't anywhere near the cash needed to hold on to him past 2008, the boy has a passel of lucrative offers from other teams, and all they can do is sit around waiting for the ax to fall on decision day January 10. Y'know, I love Sanchez, and I don't begrudge him one bit riding off into the sunset with a squad that can amass him a truly spectacular bank account as well as inevitably add a Grand Tour to his already-stellar palmares. But am I the only one sorry to see a team that consistently develops and nurtures some of the most brilliant mountain goats in the business endlessly lose them to schmoes with bigger payrolls and far less deserving and fanatical tifosi? Oh well, here's your chance I guess Zubeldia!
Monday, December 10, 2007
All Right Already, The Year In Review
Yes, it's almost time for the Year in Review, and while I'd hoped to blow it off til after the holidays, I see all the anal-retentive overachievers have already beat me to it, and as I don't want to be accused of cribbing off anybody, in addition to a brief news recap, I humbly present my picks of the best, worst, and distinctly most irksome of 2007:
Meeeeeem-ories, All Alone in the Mooon-liiight:
--January: Quick Step accused by current rider of years of systemic doping up to and including present day and current "major riders;" Belgian police immediately commence investigation of...um, Johan Museeuw? --February: Ullrich forced to officially retire as Basso rides on in comely glory; Levi takes Tour of California, but Basso flutters eyelashes, gets all Discovery publicity. You suck Bruyneel! --March: Bjarne Riis cops to doping in surprise of the year (that he'd cop to it, that is); Op Puerto closed; Classics marred by grisly crashes; Marianne Vos wails at Fleche. --April: Oops, Birillo *is* his dog--Basso "resigns" from Discovery; Simoni talks smack; O'Grady brilliantly takes Roubaix. --May: Simoni gives me his final Giro stage; DiLuca wins with some awfully funny hormone levels; Unibet screwed out of Tour; Landis monkey trial begins, manager exploits LeMond's childhood abuse and naturally hits rehab; Petacchi finally stops sucking. --June: Jaksche sings, to no reward; UCI won't act on Op Puerto file til after Tour, so it has some riders in it, but demands idiot virginity pledge, which works just great; Riis keeps we love Bobby Julich out of Tour; Vino promises not to screw over Kloden. Yeah, that one stuck, you !@#$%&*! --July: what else? Levi takes time trial; Rasmussen's Tour stolen; baby Soler smokes the mountains as baby Contador's handed the whole show; Iban Mayo hosed to unseemly delight of witchhunting skank McQuaid; Vino, of course screws over Kloden. --August: LeMond speaks, a *lot*; Disco dead for good--or is it?
--September: Sammy Sanchez rocks the end of the Vuelta; whatsisface takes it; Bettini and Valverde stick it to Pat "Dick" McQuaid, but DiLuca stays at home; Marta Bastianelli takes the cake; Floyd Landis completely !@#$%^*--surprise! --October: Landis appeals, Pereiro gets maillot jaune anyway, Tour officially a farce for 2 straight years in a row. Allez Floyd! --November: Discovery becomes Astana, Levi marches to his doom; Iban's B samples attempt travel world record; Rabobank knew all about Rasmussen's whereabouts; DiLuca out of Liquigas; T-Mobile's finally had enough; "Dick" Pound sez goodbye--aw, heck!--December: Giro, Vuelta announced, Tour still apparently only race on the entire freakin' planet worth mentioning; Rasmussen confesses pain; Vino sez goodbye. Well, that's about that folks, though we've still got two weeks left for some matchless disaster to top the year to date. Hell, I'm optimistic, aren't you?
And Now, Some Awards:
Domestique o' the Year: Shameless St. Millar Defender, this one's for you. Previously thought to be unable to see through his constant pathetic poor-me wah-wah-I'm-so-sorry-for-(getting caught)-doping veil o'tears, self-aggrandizing media-savvy crybaby David Millar nonetheless managed to dry his eyes enough to smash himself to pieces blazing a path day after day for his team leader at the Tour in terrain he had no business even riding in, if only til Vino tested poz over at Astana and David mind-bogglingly started ostentatiously bawling for the cameras *again*. See you next year at Slipstream, Millar--so long as I can keep the volume down low enough not to *hear* you next season!
Underrated Rider of 2007: Levi Leipheimer. Tour de California. Time trial at the Tour de France. 3d on the podium. National champ. Is there anything this smashing, humble boy can't do, except whore himself to the press and keep Johan Bruyneel from jacking him over?
La-la-la-la-la-I-Can't-Hear-You Award: ooof! we love Iban Mayo so go to hell's resurgent Tour de France and consequent doping poz. But then it wasn't. But then tough noogies pal it's going to come up positive anyway, dammit, if those talentless monkeys at Chatenay-Malabry have to be locked in a rat-infested dungeon to test his goddamn Z sample 'til the cows come home! La-la-la-la-la....
Paranoid Conspiracy Theorist of the Year: natch, slur-slinging total wingnut Pat "Dick" McQuaid, who unerringly saw in every German, Belgian, and Kazahk doping poz and systemic-team-doping scandal the nefarious cheating hands of the Italians and Spaniards. I *thought* "Kaschechkin" sounded suspiciously Roman...
Skankball Hypocrite Hosing of 2007: hands down, poor Andreas Kloden, who blew his own chances at the Tour at the services of yet another train-wreck of a master only to see his sacrifice completely gone to waste at the hands (and syringe) of a lying selfish egomaniacal blood-doping Narcissus. You suck, Vinokorouv!
Punk-Ass Move of the Year: no doubt, Machiavelli's right-hand man Johan Bruyneel, for luring Levi Leipheimer home to Discovery with the seductive promise of Tour de France team leadership, only to ditch him like yesterday's beer-goggled last-call hookup for the pretty wiles of the comely, brilliant, and clearly lying Ivan Basso, and, after a brief return to Levi's forgiving arms, dumping his ass yet *again* for Lance Armstrong's backup chosen successor, equally charming baby savant--and Liberty Seguros refugee for Chrissake--Alberto Contador. Damn, Levi, you're way too good to put up with this crap--will you *never* learn? Oh wait, you just signed with Astana...aiiigggghhhhh!
Abomination of the Season: You blow, UCI! Yep, Michael Rasmussen's stolen Tour. Sure, he totally accidentally bailed on a few measly out-of-competition doping controls--not that UCI, in retrospect, was actually performing any, as it wholly sensibly opined that riders are best tested for Tour de France doping in December--but given the 800 Op Puerto-linked riders that UCI not only allowed to start, but ride straight through til an actual poz, was it really fair to yank the poor Chicken out of the maillot jaune before he even lost it on his own merits in the time trial?
I'll Have Whatever They're Having Award: T-Mobile, of course, for having no idea whatsoever that any of their riders were doing anything wrong at all the last ten years, as the sponsors and managers swear to high heaven they made the team docs promise that they were only injecting half the team with decaf Clif Shots before and after every stage of every race anytime anywhere ever. Hey, I'll buy that...oooh, look, I can see all the individual molecules in the universe!
Riders o' the Year: Is there anyone Marianne Vos can't crush like a cockroach, or any mountain Maurizio Soler (sorry Sanchez, you were a close second) can't conquer? Venga venga, and see you at the races next year!
Team o' the Year: this was a toughie, especially as I'm a total Euskaltel apologist, but I'm going with CSC. Bjarne, your complete hosing of Dave Zabriskie and Bobby Julich made me yack. And yet, you backed dear little Sastre with guns blazing at the Tour, and we love Stewie O'Grady took Paris-Roubaix. Free Julich, and you may have a shot again next year!
Total Poindexter Website Prize: to the fabulous geniuses over at trustbutverify, who not only are perhaps the most impassioned defenders of Floyd Landis' virtue beyond only the boy himself, but actually seem to understand the detailed scientific arguments they put out that the rest of us (well, me) are too stupid to even coherently summarize. Floyd, you better be innocent, or you owe these folks a *major* freakin' apology!
Agonizing Peloton Loss of 2007: just as he finished up his little ban over some trifling misunderstanding at the '05 Vuelta, sorely-missed climber o' the gods Roberto Heras sez he can't get the deal he wants from the cash-strapped Continental squads and basically announces he's out of here. Yes, I'm exactly the sort of repugnant hypocrite I relentlessly excoriate on a daily basis--wah, wah, wah!
Doping Excuse of the Year: the ol' "in flagrante delicto" defense, courtesy of Predictor-Lotto testosterone poz Bjorn "Dirk Diggler" Leukemans. You can't make this stuff up folks, though it's entirely likely that he did.
Finally, Bull!@#$ Call of 2007: need it be said that if this were a real courtroom and not a grotesque farcical imitation of a crap episode of "Ally McBeal," Floyd Landis would be riding off into the sunset with a truly obscene cash-cow of a ProTour contract as we speak even if he'd slapped an exogenous testosterone patch right on the works in front of a camera-happy news crew? How the hell do you even sleep at night, McQuaid?!
All right, you Landis-lambasters and Heras-haters (that is to say, both my faithful readers), I'm sure there's more but I'm going to bed. What'd I get wrong?
Meeeeeem-ories, All Alone in the Mooon-liiight:
--January: Quick Step accused by current rider of years of systemic doping up to and including present day and current "major riders;" Belgian police immediately commence investigation of...um, Johan Museeuw? --February: Ullrich forced to officially retire as Basso rides on in comely glory; Levi takes Tour of California, but Basso flutters eyelashes, gets all Discovery publicity. You suck Bruyneel! --March: Bjarne Riis cops to doping in surprise of the year (that he'd cop to it, that is); Op Puerto closed; Classics marred by grisly crashes; Marianne Vos wails at Fleche. --April: Oops, Birillo *is* his dog--Basso "resigns" from Discovery; Simoni talks smack; O'Grady brilliantly takes Roubaix. --May: Simoni gives me his final Giro stage; DiLuca wins with some awfully funny hormone levels; Unibet screwed out of Tour; Landis monkey trial begins, manager exploits LeMond's childhood abuse and naturally hits rehab; Petacchi finally stops sucking. --June: Jaksche sings, to no reward; UCI won't act on Op Puerto file til after Tour, so it has some riders in it, but demands idiot virginity pledge, which works just great; Riis keeps we love Bobby Julich out of Tour; Vino promises not to screw over Kloden. Yeah, that one stuck, you !@#$%&*! --July: what else? Levi takes time trial; Rasmussen's Tour stolen; baby Soler smokes the mountains as baby Contador's handed the whole show; Iban Mayo hosed to unseemly delight of witchhunting skank McQuaid; Vino, of course screws over Kloden. --August: LeMond speaks, a *lot*; Disco dead for good--or is it?
--September: Sammy Sanchez rocks the end of the Vuelta; whatsisface takes it; Bettini and Valverde stick it to Pat "Dick" McQuaid, but DiLuca stays at home; Marta Bastianelli takes the cake; Floyd Landis completely !@#$%^*--surprise! --October: Landis appeals, Pereiro gets maillot jaune anyway, Tour officially a farce for 2 straight years in a row. Allez Floyd! --November: Discovery becomes Astana, Levi marches to his doom; Iban's B samples attempt travel world record; Rabobank knew all about Rasmussen's whereabouts; DiLuca out of Liquigas; T-Mobile's finally had enough; "Dick" Pound sez goodbye--aw, heck!--December: Giro, Vuelta announced, Tour still apparently only race on the entire freakin' planet worth mentioning; Rasmussen confesses pain; Vino sez goodbye. Well, that's about that folks, though we've still got two weeks left for some matchless disaster to top the year to date. Hell, I'm optimistic, aren't you?
And Now, Some Awards:
Domestique o' the Year: Shameless St. Millar Defender, this one's for you. Previously thought to be unable to see through his constant pathetic poor-me wah-wah-I'm-so-sorry-for-(getting caught)-doping veil o'tears, self-aggrandizing media-savvy crybaby David Millar nonetheless managed to dry his eyes enough to smash himself to pieces blazing a path day after day for his team leader at the Tour in terrain he had no business even riding in, if only til Vino tested poz over at Astana and David mind-bogglingly started ostentatiously bawling for the cameras *again*. See you next year at Slipstream, Millar--so long as I can keep the volume down low enough not to *hear* you next season!
Underrated Rider of 2007: Levi Leipheimer. Tour de California. Time trial at the Tour de France. 3d on the podium. National champ. Is there anything this smashing, humble boy can't do, except whore himself to the press and keep Johan Bruyneel from jacking him over?
La-la-la-la-la-I-Can't-Hear-You Award: ooof! we love Iban Mayo so go to hell's resurgent Tour de France and consequent doping poz. But then it wasn't. But then tough noogies pal it's going to come up positive anyway, dammit, if those talentless monkeys at Chatenay-Malabry have to be locked in a rat-infested dungeon to test his goddamn Z sample 'til the cows come home! La-la-la-la-la....
Paranoid Conspiracy Theorist of the Year: natch, slur-slinging total wingnut Pat "Dick" McQuaid, who unerringly saw in every German, Belgian, and Kazahk doping poz and systemic-team-doping scandal the nefarious cheating hands of the Italians and Spaniards. I *thought* "Kaschechkin" sounded suspiciously Roman...
Skankball Hypocrite Hosing of 2007: hands down, poor Andreas Kloden, who blew his own chances at the Tour at the services of yet another train-wreck of a master only to see his sacrifice completely gone to waste at the hands (and syringe) of a lying selfish egomaniacal blood-doping Narcissus. You suck, Vinokorouv!
Punk-Ass Move of the Year: no doubt, Machiavelli's right-hand man Johan Bruyneel, for luring Levi Leipheimer home to Discovery with the seductive promise of Tour de France team leadership, only to ditch him like yesterday's beer-goggled last-call hookup for the pretty wiles of the comely, brilliant, and clearly lying Ivan Basso, and, after a brief return to Levi's forgiving arms, dumping his ass yet *again* for Lance Armstrong's backup chosen successor, equally charming baby savant--and Liberty Seguros refugee for Chrissake--Alberto Contador. Damn, Levi, you're way too good to put up with this crap--will you *never* learn? Oh wait, you just signed with Astana...aiiigggghhhhh!
Abomination of the Season: You blow, UCI! Yep, Michael Rasmussen's stolen Tour. Sure, he totally accidentally bailed on a few measly out-of-competition doping controls--not that UCI, in retrospect, was actually performing any, as it wholly sensibly opined that riders are best tested for Tour de France doping in December--but given the 800 Op Puerto-linked riders that UCI not only allowed to start, but ride straight through til an actual poz, was it really fair to yank the poor Chicken out of the maillot jaune before he even lost it on his own merits in the time trial?
I'll Have Whatever They're Having Award: T-Mobile, of course, for having no idea whatsoever that any of their riders were doing anything wrong at all the last ten years, as the sponsors and managers swear to high heaven they made the team docs promise that they were only injecting half the team with decaf Clif Shots before and after every stage of every race anytime anywhere ever. Hey, I'll buy that...oooh, look, I can see all the individual molecules in the universe!
Riders o' the Year: Is there anyone Marianne Vos can't crush like a cockroach, or any mountain Maurizio Soler (sorry Sanchez, you were a close second) can't conquer? Venga venga, and see you at the races next year!
Team o' the Year: this was a toughie, especially as I'm a total Euskaltel apologist, but I'm going with CSC. Bjarne, your complete hosing of Dave Zabriskie and Bobby Julich made me yack. And yet, you backed dear little Sastre with guns blazing at the Tour, and we love Stewie O'Grady took Paris-Roubaix. Free Julich, and you may have a shot again next year!
Total Poindexter Website Prize: to the fabulous geniuses over at trustbutverify, who not only are perhaps the most impassioned defenders of Floyd Landis' virtue beyond only the boy himself, but actually seem to understand the detailed scientific arguments they put out that the rest of us (well, me) are too stupid to even coherently summarize. Floyd, you better be innocent, or you owe these folks a *major* freakin' apology!
Agonizing Peloton Loss of 2007: just as he finished up his little ban over some trifling misunderstanding at the '05 Vuelta, sorely-missed climber o' the gods Roberto Heras sez he can't get the deal he wants from the cash-strapped Continental squads and basically announces he's out of here. Yes, I'm exactly the sort of repugnant hypocrite I relentlessly excoriate on a daily basis--wah, wah, wah!
Doping Excuse of the Year: the ol' "in flagrante delicto" defense, courtesy of Predictor-Lotto testosterone poz Bjorn "Dirk Diggler" Leukemans. You can't make this stuff up folks, though it's entirely likely that he did.
Finally, Bull!@#$ Call of 2007: need it be said that if this were a real courtroom and not a grotesque farcical imitation of a crap episode of "Ally McBeal," Floyd Landis would be riding off into the sunset with a truly obscene cash-cow of a ProTour contract as we speak even if he'd slapped an exogenous testosterone patch right on the works in front of a camera-happy news crew? How the hell do you even sleep at night, McQuaid?!
All right, you Landis-lambasters and Heras-haters (that is to say, both my faithful readers), I'm sure there's more but I'm going to bed. What'd I get wrong?
Saturday, December 08, 2007
Little Pink Corvettes...
...Babies, You're Much Too Fast (Yes, You Are!): as Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes gleefully concedes himself to be the Master of All Peloton Doping at a conference, then bizarrely professes utter shock at the heretofore unheard-of news that Ivan Basso's already spent nearly a year on suspension for using Fuentes to "try" to do it, Jan Ullrich manages to dodge yet another bullet about his endless payments to said amnesiac bike-crack dealer when his latest newsmagazine dope-slap is upstaged by the even sexier allegations that five, yes five, T-Mobile riders drove up to the Freiburg University clinic for immediate blood boosts after the 2006 Tour de France prologue, when til now even whistleblowing busted dope skank Patrik Sinkewitz has only copped to going there solo. Now, correct me if I'm wrong here, but during the Tour de France, the teams would seem to have reason to be marginally curious about where half their riders are for an entire evening, given that they're paying 'em millions of euros a season not to !@#$ the team over, particularly when Ullrich's just been banned sacked and humiliated and the team's been sent skittering for cover from the press like rats from exterminators, and one would think that the team managers might've, well, noticed that all their boys' freakin' hotel rooms were empty when one's trainer might reasonably be expecting one to be resting up for the next day's fairly tiring race. UCI, any chance *now* you might question management's endlessly ridiculous assertion that the team doctors were acting entirely on their own with individual rogue cheating scumbag riders and the teams as always are utterly innocent when it comes to such outrageously slanderous claims of systemic doping?--Nope, didn't think so!
What the Hell, Bjarne?: meantime, over in actual race news, Lampre's manager has announced that baby Giro d'Italia champ Damiano Cunego might not even ride the beautiful Giro in favor of hopefully maybe a top-five spot at the Tour de France (and, if I were Lampre and the tifosi comments over at gazzetta dello sport are any fair indicator, I'd stay the hell away from a sizeable number of fans from Cunego's home stomping grounds who seem more than irked at the news that some stupid French race has hijacked him), and, worse, Bjarne Riis likewise sez that we love Carlos Sastre, graced this coming year with a Vuelta a Espana perfectly tailored to his climbing style and utterly stripped of its results-crushing time-trialling, likely isn't going to be allowed to race the thing at all, again so he can concentrate his efforts on a Tour de France whose craptastic endless races against the clock are hell-bent on keeping him off the podium even after prepping for this likely exercise in futility by bashing his legs to bits at the Giro. Can someone explain to me exactly why these two most beautiful races get completely hosed every single freakin' year to the benefit of a monstrously overrated Grand Tour whose results have either been clearly foreordained or mortifyingly disastrous for the last straight decade? Free Sastre, and the Vuelta, dammit!
What the Hell, Bjarne?: meantime, over in actual race news, Lampre's manager has announced that baby Giro d'Italia champ Damiano Cunego might not even ride the beautiful Giro in favor of hopefully maybe a top-five spot at the Tour de France (and, if I were Lampre and the tifosi comments over at gazzetta dello sport are any fair indicator, I'd stay the hell away from a sizeable number of fans from Cunego's home stomping grounds who seem more than irked at the news that some stupid French race has hijacked him), and, worse, Bjarne Riis likewise sez that we love Carlos Sastre, graced this coming year with a Vuelta a Espana perfectly tailored to his climbing style and utterly stripped of its results-crushing time-trialling, likely isn't going to be allowed to race the thing at all, again so he can concentrate his efforts on a Tour de France whose craptastic endless races against the clock are hell-bent on keeping him off the podium even after prepping for this likely exercise in futility by bashing his legs to bits at the Giro. Can someone explain to me exactly why these two most beautiful races get completely hosed every single freakin' year to the benefit of a monstrously overrated Grand Tour whose results have either been clearly foreordained or mortifyingly disastrous for the last straight decade? Free Sastre, and the Vuelta, dammit!
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