What Else?!

The Lausanne Witch Trials: well, the "!@#$ you, Landis!" we've all been expecting is in, and, as predicted, the boy's been completely screwed by a perfect storm of dubious sample results, grossly incompetent French lab chimps, and grotesquely concerted cowardly unethical leakmeister character assassination by venomous self-serving fearmongers desperate to justify their own egregious inability to conduct a just testing procedure--and that's a damn compliment even *if* you assume he *did* do it. Way to go, WADA and UCI--your reputations as the sterling guardians and objective enforcers of fair sport are secure!

So what did the 3-zip firing squad actually conclude? Let's review the decision: (1)Floyd's a meanie; (2) his witnesses are meanies; (3) his lawyers are double meanies; (4) ergo, meanies oughta pay. Specifically, the lab excoriated Landis and his legal team for "forcing costs higher" and "focusing on minor procedural imperfections," while "Landis' witnesses crossed the line, acting for the most part as advocates, not scientists objectively assisting the Panel in the search for truth" (notably, I saw no similar reproof along the lines of "UCI's desperate attempts to minimize the colossal !@#$up of the astonishingly untalented lab nits, plus the organization's publicity-slut push for conviction before the ink even dried on the A sample vial, crossed the line from neutral enforcement to outrageous butt-covering.") In other words, (1) Landis kept saying he was innocent; (2) his science team kept saying he was innocent; (3) his lawyers zealously argued he was innocent; and (4) if you think any underpaid sap domestique's ever gonna challenge our unimpeachable perfection ever again, you got another thing comin' mister, because you we're whacking with only 100 grand in legal fees, but the next obstreperous !@#$%$ who tries it, we're gonna take his goddamn house, and he's gonna have to ride his decaying $10,000 team bike to the leaking tarp and stinking outhouse he's gonna have to set up in a blackfly-infested scrub heap of killer-bear-crowded woods. All right, guys, I stick a syringe full of dope into my rump every evening just to get enough energy to flick the remote control, I confess--now please don't hurt me! Anyone else thinking we're gonna see a *lot* more quiet deals with the narcs from now on?

The Gloating: as Landis issued a short statement noting he's "saddened," and his legal eagle Maurice Suh simply stated the violations weren't merely "technical in nature," smug USADA guru Travis Tygart wasted no time weighing in, flaying Landis for not only trying to "abuse the system," but trying to embarrass the French lab and the "entire antidoping system." Um, not to invade the Happy Planet of Frolicking Faeries and Cavorting Unicorns you're living in, Travis, but hasn't it occurred to you that even if Landis had 'fessed up to being the filthy repugnant cheating skank you're sure he is, the lab and the entire antidoping process have *still* embarrassed themselves?

The End Result: ah well. For Landis fans--and I rather am one, despite my lingering ambivalence about his true culpability--at least we can hope to see Floyd in team kit again someday, as for my money it's almost inevitable Michael Ball's gonna offer him a truly obscene gob of moolah to ride for Rock Racing in '09. And if there's any silver lining to this swollen black cloud o' career-destroying death, it's that it's so shocked the entire peloton that they've all been riding clean ever since August 2006. Oh, wait...

The Devil Wears Spandex

3, 2, 1...: as our delicate hothouse flower Iban Mayo gently raises the wish that a decision on his idiot case might be made sometime before his actual clinical death from old age, Floyd Landis at least gets to enjoy The Crappiest Weekend Ever, as CAS kindly announces that they're gonna wait to formally announce their near-inevitable decision to jack him til Monday, giving a good two days for an alcohol-induced blackout to take effect before he has to hear the verdict. Trustbut, I'm pulling for your hero!

Ah well. If we never get to see the boy ride again (and that'd really be a damned shame), at least he'll have a second career as a model along with Tom "Gladiator" Boonen:



Good luck Floyd!

Greener Pastures: presumably unhappy with being told to blow at the Tour because all the firepower's going to back Cadel's GC shot, aging-but-still-dangerous sprint wank Robbie "Road Rage" McEwen's apparently been courting others of late, include Oleg "I Heart Dopers" Tinkov, who also might have a shot at luring Giro wonderstud Franco Pellizotti away from Liquigas as it becomes ever more certain that our ambitious climbing sensation is gonna be pressed into service at the feet of bellissimo new hire St. Ivan of Varese. And to think I'd lost respect for Team Tinkoff for hiring pimping then immediately firing the cheating trifecta of Tyler Hamilton, Jorg Jaksche, and Danilo Hondo--how far the publicity ho has risen!

A Confession: no, I'm not a paid troll for disgusting dopers like Jan Ullrich and Roberto Heras, as those who believe I'm part of the cabal of amoral pro-doping sport-destroying scuzzbags might suggest--I do it for free--but I do concede that, my personal annoyance with the really-not-at-fault Alberto Contador over we love Klodi and Leipheimer's perpetual subservience notwithstanding, and even though I do maintain there's no way Contador was the only one not imbibing (even unwillingly) at Liberty Seguros, the Tour de France is gonna be a total freakin' joke this year without the boy being allowed to defend Michael Rasmussen's '07 Tour title. Of course, Cadel gets massive points for replacing his dull wheel-sucking with occasional actual attacks this season, and even Alejandro Valverde gets huge kudos for having such a smashing season even without the helping hand of his gynecologist Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes, but oughtn't Contador in all fairness, with his sap lieutenants on hand, be allowed the chance to stomp 'em into utter gasping submission if they're so worthy? I'm *trying* to be fair here for once, ASO--hell, I won't even point out what total hypocrite bull!@#$ it is for you let Cofidis and Rabobank race this year--but Let Contador Ride! See Alberto fans?--I'm not against your boy, even if he *did* absorb enough performance enhancers in a day to fuel the entirety of T-Mobile for a week at his old gig!

I Love EPO

So Put Another Vial in the Cooler, Baby: well, it's great news for the cyclists just ahead of the Grand Boucle, as a new study shows that athletes using EPO are highly unlikely to get caught, which raises the question what the hell Manolo Saiz was smoking when he (or his crack medical squad) was (allegedly!) doping up Roberto Heras, if any clown--much less someone with as much (alleged!) expertise as our mastermind--can pull it off without a drug bust. Sue his !@@ Roberto!

Old Friends: okay, doping bad, yap yap, anyone who does it has all the moral street cred of a serial killer and deserves to be banned for life, yap, anyone (and I name no names here) who won't shut the hell up about it afterwards should be smothered in barbecue sauce and thrown into a pit of starving rabid wolverines. But in light of the news that one's odds of sneaking a blood-booster past the narcs are somewhere north of "ginormous", am I the only one feeling a twinge of sympathy for our late lamented exile and monstrous cheating pig Jan Ullrich, for whom watching a slew of compatriots he knows damn well are still at this very moment no less stoked than he ever was triumph at the Tour must leave him wallowing in a particularly grim sludgepit of his own personal Hell? Sure, the sport's a cesspool, but please don't give up your love of the bike Jan--even poor Landis, who at least was spared your own quick-n-painless flameout in *his* endless miserable melodrama, still hits the road (and mountain) when he can!

Question o' the Day: okay, it's been indeed a quiet season so far, with only a couple of funny blood values detected, and lord knows some people's tearful messages as to the evils of doping have had plenty of press time to take effect, so perhaps it's true that, except for a few loathesome renegades, our beloved peloton is clean as a whistle now and for all time in the future. Back to reality. Any predictions on who, if anyone, or which team, if any, is likely to get nailed at the Tour this year?

You Blow, Bjarne!

Jacked of All Trades: okay, CSC-Saxo Bank has an embarrassment of riches with boys like Carlos Sastre, baby and senior Schleck for GC, attack-happy slobbering Labrador Retriever Jens for a breakaway stage victory and general peloton destruction, Fabian Cancellara to take damn near anything he feels like and best of all general god Stuey O'Grady, but Riis, you *still* suck for hosing Bobby Julich out of his second consecutive (and at his creaky age, probably last-ever) Tour de France! Not to diss the very fine backup roster of Gustov Sorensen and Arvesen--when, after all, your very own too-young-for-diplomacy Andy Schleck helpfully pointed out, "we're not going to be the ones going back for water bottles" (obvious, but ouch, you cold little rugrat!)--but doesn't Bobby's smashing palmares, skill and experience qualify him at least for that? Aiiiiggghhhh!

In Like Flynn: As Milram builds its baby-blue leadout around Erik Zabel with Petacchi both kicked off the team and banned (and with party-boy Boonen out at the moment as well, leaving the green jersey, in my estimation, to Thor Hushovd, Thor Hushovd, or Thor Hushovd, but it's a crappy way to win it), the obnoxious yet fairly amusing Riccardo Ricco' has announced he's going to tag along with Saunier Duval for the Grand Boucle, leaving the rabid gazzetta dello sports tifosi variously going nuts with anticipation of a Ricco'-Cunego matchup and doubting that even Ricco' is ready to reach emerging Classics specialists Cunego's one-night stand with a Grand Tour win, and leaving me in a state of total misery that Iban Mayo is not leading, or least being very-gently-asked-so-he-won't-freak-out-and-have-a-major-nervous-breakdown to participate by the squad, since they fired his !@# before that weasel Pat "Dick" McQuaid even had the chance to pimp his 18th "B" sample to Bob's We Swear to Confirm Any Results You Want Us To Lab o' Horrors. Speaking of which, anyone want to hand poor Landis his (likely monstrous) verdict before, say, Contador's zipping along with a glass of champagne on the Champs-Elysees toasting his own 7th Tour win?

Happy Happy Joy Joy: and, as we-still-love-even-if-let's-face-it-it's-highly-doubtful the-boy-escaped-the-T-Mobile-drug-czars-without-an-astonishing-amount-of-illicit-crap- in-his-system Andreas Kloden gets viciously screwed yet *again* despite his dandy performance in the Tour de Suisse, and the versatile Levi Leipheimer isn't even gifted with the late-career opportunity to subsume his own achievable ambitions beneath his jailbait superior for the second year in a row, no-one could seemingly be happier over Astana's idiot ban from the Tour over some petty whining French power grab than last year's second-place finisher (yeah, you heard me) Alberto Contador, looking forward to taking his Grand Tour 3-fer with the Vuelta and "watching the Tour on TV," presumably in the same sense that he was "relaxing at the beach" before winning the Giro on two days' notice, which means anyone left to contest the Vuelta better watch out, as not only is Contador gonna crush 'em on his own merits, but if Klodi is forced to be Contador's !@#$% in 400-degree weather at the Vuelta every day for 3 weeks instead of pursuing his own goals at the rather more temperate Tour, I imagine he's gonna be extra motivated to slap around the field just out of annoyance. More, though the boy thought about bailing for another squad, Contador just couldn't let the team down (or Klodi or Levi up, apparently) when Johan'd built the team all round him. Humble, adorable, a great athlete, and charitable too--watch out Basso, you've got a rival in the teen-dream department, and this one actually seems sincere!

Can We *Please* Shut Off the Faucets Now, For !@#$'s Sake?: finally, if I wasn't happy I don't get HBO before, I sure as hell am now, as St. David Millar predictably hits the airwaves with a special that apparently delves into the irresistible pressure he was under to dope from soulless bottom-dwelling teammates and evil plotting management and how only his strong sense of morality--which totally coincidentally kicked in the second he was busted alone in a hotel room with enough drugs to stun a rampaging ox, but not before--saved him and kept him clean after the good-guy narcs thankfully brought down his career. Y'know, nuthin' against the man's surely genuine transformation from doping cheating scuzzbag to repentant red-handed ex-con, but would anyone else rather jam a !@#damn spoke in their eye than listen to this self-congratulatory !@#$%^%$#@ again? Oh, for the days of implausible (in the sense of grotesquely lying) denials and graceful withdrawal from the peloton!

(Time) Trial of the Century

Faster Pussycat: so despite totally coincidentally having the pancake-flat time time of his life at the Dauphine--and we all know what happened to we-still-love-so-shut-the-hell-up Roberto Heras right when that !@#$ started, not that I'm implying anything against a guy whose dog totally coincidentally has a carload of Op Puerto blood bags named after him--perpetual Tour podium presumptive Alejandro Valverde's incongruously professing relief that the Tour's rather short on such stages this year, which for my money is even better news for guys like dear little Sastre and why-can't-you-just-be-happy-smokin'-the-perfect-Vuelta-and-leave-the-Tour-to-that-twerp-Menchov Samuel Sanchez. Still, the boy's only finished one Tour to date, so it remains to be seen if he can even hold it together for any of the many stages he could without the assistance of alleged illicit practices possibly win. Good luck "Piti" (and you may need it with the narcs on high alert this year and all), but I'm still hoping Sastre kicks your !@#!

The Roman Empire: first, holy moly youngster Roman Kreutzinger, as if you've got to take a first pro win, the Tour de Suisse ain't a bad one, but more important, right on we love Klodi, and what total crap it is that our fabulous ex-Jan acolyte is being denied his certain podium (despite being Contador's outrageously-conscripted endless errand boy) at the Tour de France! Over in Holland, Tom Boonen sensibly took his inaugural return to the bike and resulting stage win at the Stoer Elektrotoer, which, for reasons no doubt completely irrelevant to his decision to participate, has gotten roundly slagged in cleanster circles for a total lack of doping controls. Welcome back Tommeke! Meantime, proving yet again that the Italians rock, Fabiana Luperini took a record-smashing sixth win over at the Giro del Trentino as US wondergoddess Mara Abbott snags the young riders' jersey. Now that they've all proven worthy of their trikes, can we stop making, say, the women's Tour de France so insufferably patronizingly lame?

French Letters: and, it's been nigh on a week since the vicious attack ankle-biters at UCI suspended the French cycling fed for being "disloyal" in siding with ASO having Paris-Nice and the Tour de France be French-sanctioned, and the consequences of this dreadful, near capital, punishment are clear: um, nuthin'. Next up: anyone who doesn't put their hand over their heart and recite the Pledge of Allegiance to UCI has to go stand in the corner face to the wall while all the good little cycling feds get to go out for recess. That oughta show 'em, Sheriff McQuaid!

The Ten Greatest Male Athletes the Wall Street Journal Has Ever Heard Of: so just as the irksome New York Times had almost graduated from the unbiased Landis-immolating bull!@#$ faux neutrality of such nobly disinterested parties as WADA's (ex) Dick "Dick" Pound to really a very dandy article on training by the ever-likeable Christian Van de Velde, only to toss all cred again barely a day later by publishing an agonizingly idiotic Tiger Beat piece on the impact of Lance Armstrong's starlet-slurping on his cycling and cancer-awareness legacies, the crack sports journalists over at the WSJ have come out with their Top Ten Athletes in the World list, and I gotta say, it blows, in that I cannot believe there is not a single freakin' cyclist among them. Why? Pro cyclists are too "one-dimensional," which presumably means that the attention-deficit coke-snorting French-cuffed martini-sucking adrenaline-whore commodities traders at the WSJ haven't the patience or sense to actually figure out what's going on during a race. What's worse, the Journal uses "stamina" as a key point of judgment, and cyclists *still* don't make the list. Let's face it, some pansy-!@# baseball player is moving tops--tops!--10% of a 3 hour game, and 90% of *that* time, he's "moving" by spitting tobacco lougies at the cameras like some inbred backwoods Deliverance extra. Is this remotely the same in the effort department as even the most sad-sack un-doped time-cut-missing also-ran Continental domestique in the peloton expends during the ride to the line in the morning check-in? Okay, "popularity"--well, they did give soccer its due international credit, but are you seriously telling me more people are lining up screaming for some gorilla shot-put no-neck more'n once every 4 years at the Big Show? Even "skill"--yes, it is very, very hard for some lunk the size, shape, and general maneuverability of a boxcar to squash an agile 200-lb quarterback, when basically all he has to do is lean his steriod-bloated corpse over its natural tipping point in a timely manner, but I'll bet a tailgate's worth of brew none of these bloated clowns could manage to stay upright grabbing a snack from a feed zone without squashing a half-dozen of the poor soigneurs they'd inevitably plow into. What the !@#$ WSJ?

The Gift That Keeps On Giving: finally, as Bjorn "Love Machine" Leukemans and Andrei Kashechkin await the results of their latest appeals, and both Alexander "IV" Vinokorouv and Michael "I Was !@#$%^!" Rasmussen get back to training to the distinct displeasure of the joyless whiners over at UCI, many congrats to the head of the Spanish cycling federation, sued by the bulk of the late lamented Liberty Seguros squad and now cleared of media leaks with regard to Operacion Puerto. Explain to me again why no-one's gone down for the cowardly disgusting self-serving total-hosing Landis leaks that had the boy wholly incinerated by a flamethrower's worth of toxic character-assassination vitriol before the poor boy had even got his boxers on the morning of his downfall?

The Cash Cow, At the Press Conference, With the Microphone

But Not if You Listen to Tom Boonen Tell It: yep, our strapping boy, still desperately seeking a way into the Tour de France after fruitless efforts to date on his behalf by Patrick "THIRTY YEARS OF DOPING, EXCEPT THIS TIME" Lefevere and a distinctly irked Quick Step, has now asserted that, apologies-for-nuthin' to the contrary, he never in fact snorted coke for fun at all, but was clearly slipped a mickey in his perfectly innocent alcoholic drink at a bar by some invisible heinous anti-Boonen provocateur. But the true evildoer, even worse than that stealthmaster Belgian-studmuffin-hating commie (or perhaps Spanish) spy? Yes, of course, it's his very own lawyer, who Tom now swears wrote and forced him to read that statement in which he basically copped to using the drug voluntarily, at least enough to mollycoddle the sponsors but not so obviously as to give the local prosecutors anything to actually grab on to, which might seem to contradict the boy's latest version of events. Right, blame the poor sap everybody's guaranteed to hate, you spineless bastard! Like you even need to Tom--don't you see now how everyone loves you *for* your sweet little booze-and-drug-induced foibles, not despite them?

It's My Party and I'll Be a Raging !@# If I Want To: and, Robbie McEwen sure knows his Miss Manners, as he manages to piss off not only the entire Tour de Suisse organization but also such amiable fellow riders as Fabian Cancellara by busily attending to hometown press accolades on his cellphone after his first stage win at the race the other day and going completely swearing ballistic at the rude asshole who dares interrupt his phone call by asking if he would mind coming up to the podium and enduring congratulatory handshakes podium babe kisses champagne and a huge pile of adoration utterly unmerited by his total wanker behavior. Today, though, Robbie wisely professed his love for all things Suisse, apparently attributing the whole hoo-ha to the inability of the linguistically impaired race minions to understand the actually complimentary meaning of the word "!@#$%&!. Allez allez we love Oscar Freire!

Watch Your !@#, Ricco'!: finally, congratulations to the mysterious "Manuel", the six year old upstart who recently took the maglia rosa over a competitive field of careening tots in the prestigious "Giro d' Minitalia." However, in an interview with gazzetta dello sport immediately after the presentation of the pink jersey, UCI's Pat "Dick" McQuaid stated that "a top rider at the Minitalia whose first name starts with M" has tested positive for the use of the banned performance-enhancing drug chocolate milk and that, despite the failure of an initial B sample tainted by cookie crumbs to confirm the result, backup Z samples have now been sent to a UCI-controlled lab in Siberia for analysis. Not so fast, you wily kindergarten dope-fiend!

My Fantasy Rider Press Conference

Good morning. I'm here before you today because I'm afraid my team boss is gonna fire me if I don't perform well in my next race/I cost the organization sponsorship dough/he's in a pissy mood over his fight with his wife last night. I'm dressed this nicely because we all saw how Landis got slagged for that backwards baseball cap/the sponsor doesn't want me publicly wearing its team kit/I'm desperately hoping to keep my million-euro endorsement gig with the company that makes this suit.

I'm very sorry that I got caught openly snorting coke at a club/blood-doping with an IV in my arm poolside after the race/inhaling huge quantities of asthma meds even though my only "medical condition" is gout. It honestly didn't occur to me that just because you don't have Iban Mayo/Jan Ullrich/Floyd Landis to smack around anymore, you really meant any of that "zero tolerance" crap with regard to the rest of us, particularly since you let Michael Rasmussen wear the maillot jaune for a week last year knowing he'd skipped doping controls/are still letting freakin' Valverde ride/can't possibly believe any of that ridiculous crocodile-tear snake-oil bull!@#$ David Millar and Ivan Basso are selling. Anyhow, I'd like to apologize to my directeur sportif for getting us yanked out of the Tour/grandma for hiding my stash in her glove compartment/superdomestique for screwing him over yet *again.* Lucky for some of you, I'm not gonna name my dealer/expose my team's systemic doping practices/out any of my filthy teammates, because I still want a reliable source for blow/know what happened to Sinkewitz and Jaksche when they tried it/don't want to be wheel-whacked off a precipice by a vengeful peloton next time I take a start line.

I now plan to take a short break from cycling to change my racing license to Monaco/try to work out a cakewalk deal with UCI/find a better doctor. Finally, in the interests of signing a lucrative deal with Liquigas/the latest Discovery incarnation/any hard-up Continental squad that'll please, please take me, I hereby promise to go to rehab even though I'm not an addict, I just enjoy using drugs recreationally/become an impassioned crusader against everyone but me using performance-enhancing substances/be a lot more discreet next time. I will now take preapproved questions/commence bawling/sue any bastard who dares write the truth about me. Thank you.

Now, *that's* a rider I'd (1) respect and (2) forgive. Pony up, you drug-stoked wussbags!

Neutral Country My !@#!

Blowin' in the Wind: so, the fallout from Tom Boonen's little coke poz continues, with the righteous Tour de Suisse barring him from the race and even considering bagging Quick Step if they don't do the right thing, UCI WADA and the Belgian cycling fed shrugging it off as not their problem, Bouyges-Telecom ditching contract negotiations with the boy, and the Tour de France feeling awfully uncomfortable with the whole thing. Um, not to question the Tour de Suisse's superior morality here, but wasn't Jan "I Love Ecstasy" Ullrich allowed to actually go ahead and win the thing twice after his own little partying indiscretion? Meantime, the tifosi over at gazzetta dello sport are engaged in a spirited argument, one side generally defending the coke, and the other, of course, in a state of total nationalist outrage that Basso only confessed to wanting to dope, Di Luca was nailed for merely knowing some doctor with a record of doping everyone else, Petacchi was busted for drugs even CAS acknowledged he took out-of (since they were after)-competition as well, but some big Belgian is getting off the hook for actually taking a drug within 3 days of a pretty important race. Me, I think maybe Boonen ought to be prosecuted for stupidity, but really, so long as he ain't snarfing it out of his musette at the feed zone, well, how else do we expect these national-hero tabloid-fodder babe-magnet rock-stars-of-the-peloton to behave--and judging how riders of the past are viewed, won't it actually just be considered part of his charmingly misbehaving bad-boy appeal someday? Tip for the future: though apparently the narcs are only targeting "suspected riders" from now on, presumably those they don't like and not those that they do, Tom, please just stick to zipping your Lamborghini along at twice the speed limit on the autobahn after a long night at the club--nobody, it seems, minds that!

The Apology: yep, after meeting with a no-doubt displeased Quick Step management, our Tommeke has humbly apologized, completely voluntarily "taking a break" as he no doubt contemplates whether Quick Step is gonna completely mutually fire his !@# (though notably Patrick "30 YEARS OF DOPING" Lefevere is understandably indicating reluctance to give up his major source of income on such a trifling personal issue) and wisely beginning the St. Millar-like course of sincere repentance and even more sincere likelihood of another valuable ProTour contract or the continuance of this one as he snorts away his regrets on the beach in Monaco. Wishing you a speedy recovery from the recreational coke use you won't cop to, and for heck's sake Tom, *try* at least to keep the illicit hijinks to the off-season!

Local H: finally, right on big George Hincapie for smokin' the field at the Dauphine, and here's hoping you can take one at the Tour de France without being ordered to sit on someone's wheel next time!

Thor-n Between Two Time Trialists...

Feelin' Like a Fool: okay, so I admit I jumped up shrieking like a granny-panty-tossing blue-hair at a Tom Jones show when we love Thor Hushovd completely smacked around the rest of the field in the Dauphine prologue, but when we also love Levi Leipheimer came through and brutally crushed even that, I gotta say, I was caught on who to yell for more. But aside from Thor's recent bizarro morphing from sprint king into time-trial specialist, let's talk about what was *really* unusual on Sunday: Alejandro "Piti Is Not My Dog" Valverde, of all people, coming in third on a short, flat time trial course. Taking today on what was at least an uphill sprint? Sure. But come on, gack it up people--tell me honestly you weren't all thinking "Doper!" same as I was when he crossed the line in that shocker!

Phil and Paul Are Gods: y'know, I almost felt sorry for 2006 Tour de France second banana/maillot jaune anyway Oscar Pereiro yesterday, as the perfect team of Liggett and Sherwen said straight out they'd never seen him as the winner of that Tour and never will, because he took it on one escape where he wasn't even a marked man, then, mercifully switching the focus from the really pretty decent Pereiro's shortcomings and on to Floyd Landis' total hosing, expressed annoyance with ASO's handing off the jersey without a definitive ruling and that's it's flat disastrous for both the rider and the sport to have no resolution damn near two years on. Right on Phil & Paul--suck up the embarrassment of the complete farce that's been this process, CAS, and free Floyd already!

In Defense of Contador (As Much As I'm Capable, Anyway): Okay, Michael Rasmussen is indisputably the *true* winner of the 2007 Tour de France, but as no-one appears inclined to give him back the maillot jaune that was cruelly ripped from him days before the finish line and before the time trialists even had the chance to scare the bejeezus (if not the actual jersey) out of him in the last few days, it seems to me there's only one other thing left to be done: let baby Contador defend the Chicken's, I mean his own grossly unjustly stolen, Tour de France title. Let's be honest ASO: (1) You hate Bruyneel because (a) you think Lance doped his way through 7 consecutive Tour titles and (b) an American of all coarse cultureless pigs made French riders look like simps; and (2) you think Contador doped at Liberty Seguros, so you don't want him in there now. Well, so does anyone else with any sense, you petty little wanks, but really, hasn't everyone else effectively decided to forgive such alleged youthful discretions to keep Cycling's Next Great Savior on wheels, particularly given the wholly mitigating factor that when he and the rest of his vulnerable generation came under the influence (so to speak) of the formidable genius Manolo Saiz, the child was merely a helpless freshman at the high-school-senior party, virtually held upside down at the keg by his ankles and forced to chug by the big jocks til he yacked? Add to this the thrilla of a Giro that makes this year's Tour parcours look like a kiddie 1k, the reality that a reasonable proportion of the high-level peloton is still gonna try to sneak by your narcs anyway, and that the disgusting and amateurishly indiscreet antics at Astana last year were by basically a whole 'nother team, and you really do look like a bunch of petulant crybabies not letting him in. Of course, you could argue he's "on vacation" as he was just before the Giro and thus won't be on form for the race even if you did back down, but given that "on vacation" appears to be Kazakh for "training on 24% gradients on strategically important mountain passes for 18 lung-busting hours a day," even that last-ditch hope doesn't wash. You've got nothing to justify your actions, in sum, except the fear of losing face if you change your minds and let our wiry little prodigy play. Is this really a good enough reason to deface cycling history in the making, I ask you?

Vanilla Ice (Well, Snow): speaking of Tour de France decisions, cyclingnews is reporting that rakish speed demon Tom Boonen, lately busted yet again for speeding and last year named by a fellow local jock as his drug dealer, has now allegedly tested poz for coke in an out of competition doping screen, perhaps putting ASO in even more of an uncomfortable position as it contemplates the positives and negatives of the participation of yet another fan-beloved ratings-increasing yet vaguely-tainted cash cow. Oh Tom, not to worry--I'm sure it was your Dad's. Or your grandmother's. Or Simoni's. Or...

History Rock: finally, for those of you who bear, as I do, the secret shameful opinion that dopers do-really-suck-so-please-get-the-hell-off-my-back-about-my-being-an-apologist but the despised Jan Ullrich was still a gloriously compelling trainwreck to watch and the peloton's exponentially the lamer without him, I bring you this wholly traumatic link to "his" 2006 Giro blog, found courtesy of faithful reader Marc. (If, however, you have any fellow-feeling at all for the harmless Matthias Kessler, or any natural sense of delicacy whatsoever with regard to the intimate life of Simoni's bike pump, don't say I didn't warn you that this guy is some sick !@#$.) For those of you who *can* still bear to look at him after you wake up screaming in a cold sweat, I see that from Jan's actual personal website, you can send family, friends, or perhaps even Jan's little BFF Ivan Basso any one of a selection of handsome Jan Ullrich e-cards. Enjoy, and share the beauty that is Ullrich!

Napoleon Dynamite

The Spoils of War: as the big boys test their legs for the Tour de France at the Euskal Bizkleta and the Dauphine-Libere this weekend, and Il Piccolo Principe Damiano Cunego finally gets the chance to prove that even if he can't take another Giro he can still take out Alejandro "Did Not Either" Valverde at the Grand Boucle, ASO and UCI continue their vicious competition in the petite-dictator-trying-desperately-to-prove-his-manly-supremacy department by ASO putting their precious race under the auspices of the French Cycling Fed in a jab to the petty tyranny of the ProTour and mandating a 100k euro fine for any team-spawned doping poz and UCI's Pat "Dick" McQuaid going postal at the obvious prospect that the Tour he's worked so hard to clean up is gonna be a veritable hotbed of open EPO shoot-ups and an utter opium den of languid pre-race IV drips. Right, Pat, your overwhelmingly effective commitment to pure sport has been clearly proven by such zero-tolerance measures as (1) the inability of your incompetent bungling lab chimps to reliably track label and interpret a urine sample to the breathtakingly rigorous standards of a Romper Room science experiment and (2) knowingly allowing Michael Rasmussen to wear the maillot jaune at the Tour for damn near a week despite being perfectly aware the boy'd missed a huge passel of pre-race doping controls by lying about what hemisphere he was training in. You trying for a Man of the Year award from "High Times" magazine or what? Either way, allez allez dear little Sastre, and I call bull!@#$ on Moreau being jacked out of defending his title!

Contract News: and, Alessandro Petacchi's wussed out on his threat to retire if banned, as he's reportedly near to signing a deal with Team Tinkoff, which is interesting if for no other reason that team owner Tinkov is the same guy who bought a boatload of publicity for his new squad by signing half the riders linked to Op Puerto then, in shock at the discovery that they were accused of anything which any dumbass football fan would've known, fired 'em as soon as he'd milked those cows for all the cheap sleazy publicity they'd bring 'em. Anyway, glad to see those classified ads are paying off for you Ale-Jet! Danilo Di Luca, meantime, has offered up quite the shocker (though perhaps not in light of his poor Giro run hardly being a major selling point to the big boys), extending with LPR til 2011, which actually mightn't be that bad a move considering how much his ostensible support staff wiped the floor with him and half the ProTour teams in the Giro. Either way, any bets on Petacchi's late-season performance, after such a glum start to the season and a break-in period for a whole new lead-out train?

I'm Too Sexy for My Shirt, Too Sexy for My Shirt: okay, we all know that Rock Racing, despite its leadership by that intolerable egomaniac camera whore Michael Ball, has indeed some of the most bitchin' team kits to rock the peloton since Lampre's fabulous 80s pink-and-turquoise. And I know the guy's in the fashion biz, dedicated to scamming vulnerable label addicts into paying 8 grand for a pair of pre-shredded jeans. But is that any excuse for this greedy narcissistic blowhard to go around demanding $180 for a simple team jersey that's not even in its recent eye-searing acid green, particularly given their results this season (no, one win by Oscar Sevilla in Reading, despite quite admirable competition, isn't quite the team palmares of, say, Astana)? The hell with that ridiculous ripoff crap--pony up a mere $103 for the fine CSC jersey of we love Bobby Julich or the dandy new Slipstream argyle of big Maggy Backstedt or Dave Zabriskie at a wholly worthwhile 99 bucks instead!

That's Why I Wanna Be a Rock Star: finally, I see that the previously-modest Cadel Evans is ratcheting up the A-list factor, hiring a badass bodyguard for the Tour de France to swat off the swarming babe and press contingents and developing an entourage that would put P. Diddy's to shame. Holy moly, next thing you know the boy'll be unbuttoning his shirts down to his navel like Mario "the Chest" Cipollini and slurping on a little Olsen twin. Watch out Cadel, you don't want all that preteen shrieking along the roads of the Alps to drown out the instructions from your team car!

All the News That's Unfit to Print

Wheels on Fire: think that just because whiny also-ran Riccardo Ricco' finally manned up and congratulated Contador on winning the Giro that Ricco's gonna let that damned Spaniard keep 4 seconds on him on the next Grand Tour they both get to race? Well think again pals, because as this classified photo leaked from the Saunier Duval mechanics' workshop shows, Ricco's got a whole new strategy. That's right, if that saccharine little press slut gets within 30 meters of Riccardo on, say, the Alpe d'Huez, Ricco's gonna flick a hidden flamethrower switch on his carbon fiber steed/advanced armament carrier and freakin' immolate him:



Now *that's* tactical riding, baby--and don't say you weren't warned, Alberto!


Quote o' the Day That I Could Live Without: legendary genius Bernard Hinault in the Velonews Tour de France issue re: we love Iban Mayo: "...Mayo, despite the talent he's demonstrated, does a lot better watching the Tour on TV in the comfort of his own home." Gnurk! Okay Bernard, leaving aside the fact that that may actually not be entirely incorrect, and the more salient point that he doesn't have a team to ride it anyway, we've seen how badly the boy reacts to positive reinforcement like "you can win the Tour someday"--*must* we hurt our fragile flower even more with negative assessments? If he functions best--and when he does, it's so very well--in a happy little bubble of no feedback from anyone anytime anywhere ever, I say, let our little Iban (if indeed he ever finds a team again) float free!

And Now, the Classified Ads: well, folks, with unemployment rampant in the pro peloton thanks to the specters of positive-tests past, ongoing (valid or crap) suspensions, and current suspicious irregularities, it occurs to me that there's a lot of very fine riders out there who could use some help getting a new gig, and in the spirit of helping one's fellow alleged doper, I mean man, and in the even unlikelier event that the team managers or their lackeys would even be interested much less aware, I humbly post this forum's first "Positions Wanted" ads (contact info upon request):

--Late-career Italian sprinter, up-to-date on latest medical advances in oxygen-delivering technology, # of professional victories somewhat uncertain due to confusing CAS ruling, seeks lead-out train. Therapeutic Use Exemption for buckets o' asthma meds. Still fit enough to kick Cavendish's @#% in a sprint.

--All-rounder seeks squad. Robust, loooooves the ladies, CAS ruling blames poz on doofus team doc. Won't rat out other riders, because we all know what happens when riders do *that*, but support staff fair game.

--Superlative Basque climber, former Next Lance Armstrong, available maybe someday. Seeks nurturing environment where I won't be excessively lauded if I win and will be protected from press criticism when I lose. Multiple Grand Tour stage victories. Prefer very, very gentle Spanish-speaking squad.

--Tour de France winner goddammit, still gamely training on mountain bike, won't cop to crime I didn't commit. Vindication and honorary B.S. in Crap Monkey Labwork Studies anticipated late June 2009. Much stronger than last lame squad would suggest.

--Domestique seeks captain. Dad promises to stay home next Giro.

--Attempted doper, successful Teen Beat pinup career, recently obtained angel's wings, likely early parole to attend 2008 Worlds in Varese, seeks...Ha Ha! Liquigas signed me already! Suckerrrrrssssssss...

--Recent Giro attendee, unusual blood values, seeks team that won't buy into the misleading farce that is the Biological Passport. Will work for food and free massage.

--Kazakh superdomestique, cleared by national cycling fed on idiot UCI screwup. Proven Grand Tour stalwart, super-loyal. Not afraid of needles.

That concludes the "jobs wanted" section for today. Best of luck to all and sundry!

The 2008 Racejunkie Giro d'Italia Awards

Okay, having (1) nursed my 3-week cycling.tv-coverage-zombied post-Giro-downer hangover with a nice bottle of wine from we'll-always-love-and-if-you-don't-go-to-hell Gilberto Simoni's home stomping grounds and (2) fortunately survived the Harrowing Plane Ride of Imminent Death that temporarily kept me from timely end-game mountains coverage or damn near anything at all for all eternity, I humbly wrap up this year's Giro d'Italia coverage for both my faithful readers by, for once, truly giving credit where credit is due. Thus, without further ado, a nice bottle of Prosecco and a bonus video of "Podium Babes Gone Wild" goes to:

I Call Bull!@#$ Award: to man-o'modest-expectations Johan Bruyneel, natch, for claiming the maglia rosa was a total unplanned and unhoped-for shock to the system, only to have Alberto show up 5 seconds later in perfect-fitting pink helmet, socks, gloves, shoe covers, musette and interior chamois. By the way, did anyone else think, even for a shameful second, that after weeks of virginal blushing, aw-shucks hemming-and-hawing, and charming self-deprecation at every suggestion the boy can ride a bike better'n your average beer-swilling couch lump, Contador's sprinter-worthy chest-thumping gesticulating across the line at the time trial belied his true filthy down-n-dirty bite-me-Ricco' eat-my-dust-you-pathetic-weaklings nature?

Like A School In Summertime...No Class Award: brilliant and generally quite likable young upstart Mark Cavendish, happily affirming to the press that Andre Greipel's stage win was in fact a gimme by his captain, right when an annoyed and ego-bruised Greipel had just denied it to the same press corps. We get it, you rock, it was truly dandy of you to body-block Bennati for Greipel, can you sprinters *please* ever shut the !@#$ up?

Mountain King: who else? 'Nuff said. Now that he's getting married as promised on account of those stage wins, does he get to wear the green jersey under his tux?

An Officer and a Gentleman: yes, baby Contador's modest, perfect, and ever so cute as a button, but this one actually goes to Danilo Di Luca, who didn't blame his teammates, some crap fictional ailment, his soigneur, the weather, an unduly weak espresso or his mechanics for his largely disappointing performance, instead candidly copping to a simple failure of form and, after expressing only modest hopes for a pick up, had the guts to fruitlessly attack in the mountains anyway in the final weekend. Right on Il Killer!

Tifosi of the Year: no, it's not the guys who even the gentle Emanuele Sella had to frantically swat off him like killer bees nor the helpful loyalists who wreck rider's lines on an excruciating ascent by sticking giant foam fingers in their faces, it's Marco Pantani's, for splendidly and wholly irrelevantly plastering his name and visage all over the roads, on every race-side banner, and in 90% of the comments on the Gazzetta dello Sport boards, despite the fact that technically (if not certainly in the hearts of all concerned) he's not actually raced in the Giro this year. Tell me, can a bunch of rioting drunken British soccer louts or screaming Dorito-spraying beer-gutted American football fans match such love?

General Team Bitchin'-ness Prize: though Gibo's loyal lieutenants came a close second, this one goes to the boys at LPR, who managed to take a wad of stage wins and several days in the maglia rosa while herding Di Luca along with a competence far beyond their craptastic Continental paychecks. Give these boys a raise, and a ProTour license while we're at it!

Shot Through the Heart!/And You're to Blame! Award: yep, this one's for Simoni, for whom I am still hoarding a miserable heartbreak over his hideous breakdown that whacked him flat off the podium in what is likely his last Grand Tour ever (and who the hell is going to cover his mountain bike races so I can see 'em? Dammit!), but who rallied to 3d in a fabulous mountain time trial in which he actually beat Contador like anyone gives a rat's fuzzy !@#, then broke away from the gruppo maglia rosa to take second to the unbeatable Sella's penultimate stage. First, major points to Gibo's tifosi for giving him the adulation he's due for an incredible career even amidst the fuss over at-the-moment-perhaps-stronger-riders-but-certainly-lesser-men. Second, next time even Phil or Paul refers to him like he's some decrepit old bat from the era before those ridiculous Horseless Carriages I'm gonna really get irked. Third, man Gilberto, you did a great job thwapping that obnoxious jerkface protege Ricco's body into shape at Saunier Duval, but like you couldn't have done something about his mouth?

Domestique O' the Race: Oh Klodi. You cracked, you got sick, yet you still wordlessly managed to slap around that little twerp Ricco' til he cried for mercy in the Alpine passes before you keeled over on the next to last day with a lung infection, though as with the other Grand Tours on which you have podiumed, you are more than capable of taking your own. Oh well, better to work for outwardly-amiable little Contador than toddler tyrant Ricco', right?

Shameless Nationalist Rah-Rah Award: yep, Christian Van de Velde, for taking the maglia rosa on day 1 even if it meant that poor we love Dave Zabriskie didn't get to. Dag nabit, and forza Christian!

Total Freakin' Stupidity Award: Y'know, I'll forgive the Italians damn near anything, up to and including the fine points of Italian grammar I've spent the last weeks being too dense to comprehend and that no-one told me doesn't even matter because folks actually speak Ladino in the Dolomites, but waiting for Leonardo "Aaacck! Snoorrtt!" Piepoli to crash out after he'd already helped Ricco' to stage wins, when Stefano Garzelli and Alessandro "Post-Race Doping Violation" Petacchi were barred from riding at all, is absolute !@#$%$^%!. What the hell were you twisted amoral goons even thinking, RCS?

Ricco'...Un-Suave Prize: finally, this one goes to red-faced rabid wolverine shrieking crybaby you-know-who, who had the great good sportsmanship not only to rip into Pellizotti and Sella for failing to be his !@$%#%$ and hunt Contador down by daring to ride for their own GC placements instead when they also happen to ride for other organizations, but also handsomely--if unproductively he'll find, I imagine--humiliated his own teammates at really a very fine squad by snarking that if he had a backup team like Astana's , he'd've obviously ground the rest of the field and especially Contador into the dust like a spit-covered cigarette stub too. Um, not to slag such piercing strategic analysis, Riccardo, nor such spectacular excuses for why you continue to bite at the individual time trial, but if you are really thinking about taking the Tour some day mightn't you not want to insult boys who now have a vested interest in accidentally touching wheels and nudging your ungrateful !@# down the mountainside on the Alpe d'Huez?

All right folks, if I've missed something or made a lousy call (and I'm sure I have), spit it out. Til then, it's on to the Dauphine and the riders' prep work for the irritating Tour de France, and we love Jens!

Simply Irresistible

Might As Well Face It/They're Addicted to Drugs: yep, another boy whacked out of the Giro by tragic medical problems turns out to have been felled by some unusual blood values instead, and as Milram first suspends then outright sacks Igor Astarloa before today's stage even gets far off the blocks, our sensible hero has already consulted with legal counsel and is threatening to sue. I'm telling you Thor, Milram's going south with their current crew, now's the time to upgrade your lead-out train from Credit Agricole since Julian Dean's hit the bricks and the team'll pay anything to earn some redemption!

Talk Dirty to Me: meantime, over at the Giro, Riccardo Ricco' continues to show the same discretion and reserve as a fistfighting transvestite prostitute on the Jerry Springer show with the press corps, leading even equable Boy Scout wunderkind Contador to scornfully point out that it's the experience that counts, and that it's therefore we love Gilberto Simoni, not his tantruming braggart rugrat of an ex-protege, he fears the next two days in the mountains. Damn straight, Prince Alberto! The tifosi over at Gazzetta dello Sport, however, remain suspicious amidst their gallant compliments and general resignation to another Spaniard taking their race, calling bull!@#$ on our beach boy's claim to have spent the week prior to the Giro relaxing on the white sands of the spiaggia, unless, of course, said beach is neatly paved, has an 18% gradient, and our maglia rosa was reposing on a sweet titanium road bike with a water bottle instead of a nice thirsty towel with a pina colada instead. As to the remaining Italian GC threats, they remain cool to speculation that they'll form an alliance to take out Contador tomorrow, with Di Luca humbly hoping to show well for himself, Simoni calmly predicting it'll simply be leg-against-leg, and Levi Leipheimer correctly supposing they'd rather eat their own young than work together and at this point they're merely fighting for podium scraps. Either way, forza Gilberto--until that arrogant nit you mentored learns to verbally smack around the rest of the peloton with half your deadly grace, I can't bring myself to root for him!

Arf, arf, arf!: and, congrats (spoiler!) to our favorite slobbering attack dog Jens, who, cheering himself up after a rare outburst of temper in which he slammed a few compatriots for weasellingly drafting off the team cars at the time trial, faked out the break today by mourning his fatigue to a couple of his mates, thus leaving them uninterested in responding to his sudden attack til it was too late to usefully react, impressing even wily tactician Paolo Bettini and leaving him to truly mourn the last chance he had of taking a stage at this year's Giro. Vai Paolo, there's still the Olympics and the Worlds, and time to cause damage between!

Tick, Tock: finally, I hesitate to curse both we love Iban Mayo and poor hosed Floyd Landis, but doesn't anyone else think, CAS aspirational dates-o'-doom aside, it would be awfully nice if even one of them found out whether he was ever gonna ride a bike again in competition before the rest of their generation is cheering on the Grand Tours from the rocking chairs in their "active elder" communities? Free Iban dammit--after all, it's not like there's no-one else to go after!

See No Evil

Or Any Good Either, Apparently: not to start out cranky, folks, but am I on a boatload of crack or did no one watch the same freakin' time trial I did yesterday? As I saw it, we love insult-king-of-the-peloton Gilberto Simoni not only absolutely wailed on saps like Di Luca still-didn't-deserve-Heras'-Vuelta Menchov and even narcissistic twerp ex-protege Ricco', but actually took five seconds on Prince Alberto, yet all I see in the post-race coverage--including willfully-blinded apologists-for-all-Italians gazzetta dello sport and tuttobici, no less--is Ricco's headed for second, yap, Contador's maglia rosa is wrapped up, yap, poor Danilo, yap. C'mon, people, the boy's just aging, not wrapped in linen and stuffed in a sarcophagus already for !@#$'s sake, plus he made half the GC contenders look like helpless grinding toddlers on defective Big Wheels--where is the love for Gibo already?

Speaking of Love: congrats to revelation-of-the-Dolomites Emanuele Sella, who in addition to crushing everyone but Pellizotti yesterday and taking two of the nastiest days in the race outright apparently promised his girlfriend they'd get married if he took a stage in the Tour, which not only means they're getting married in few weeks' time but that presumably because of the two-fer (and Sella's likely overstuffed bank account next season) they're off to a lovely honeymoon as well. Meantime, back to the time trial itself, was anyone else absolutely kneecapped by we love Jens Vogt's amazing performance in terrain even he had no chance of excelling in? See what happens when he gets bored--right on Jens, you've still got a chance for a stage win the next two days! Of course, I can't help but hope poor cursed Paolo Bettini gets one of 'em, particularly as, while I relax in the wilds of California, my wee nephews keep shouting his name at the top of their incredibly powerful lungs asking when the World Champ is going to win one. Patience, my little tifosi--he'll come around!

Take That, Ivan!: finally, I see Franco Pellizotti's continuing his campaign to dope-slap Basso (and his adoring 2009 team management) into utter submission, taking the time trial and generally beating up most of the rest of the field in his desperate attempt to keep St. Ivan of Varese crushed under his cleats when he dares show up in training camp come January to challenge Pellizotti's hard-earned supremacy. Y'know, if only he'd stop preening the feathers on his glowing new angels wings for five minutes, I'd actually rather root for him to have a smashing comeback, but I can't help but sympathize with Franco that just as he gets rid of Di Luca due to some pesky alleged tape recordings discussing doping injections he's gotta get it together to obliterate some other shmoe he never even anticipated. Speaking of angels, could David Millar kindly whine a little less about yesterday's mountain time trial--yes, we *know* it didn't give you an ideal forum for weeping about how repentant you are for your tragic doping bust and how obviously triumphant you can be without using the good stuff, but can you just let the climbers have their day? Much appreciated!

Free Roberto!: holy moly, speak of the devil, or at least the devil who prefers discretion to grossly calculated martyrdom and publicity-whore wah-wahing, as Tuttobici reports via a Spanish website that The Only Guy Who's Doped The Last Few Years Besides Jan Ullrich, evil renegade Roberto Heras, may return to the Vuelta with Karpin Galicia in the unlikely event the race organizers will let someone who had his title stripped from him two years ago--and worse, is too old for a few more years of camera-friendly Teen Beat-pretty repentance like Ivan Basso (or, some might suggest, former teammate/Manolo "Mystery Skin Patch" Saiz-nurtured Contador, if some didn't want his legal team on his or her !@#)--back in the race. Hmmmm...to let him in only to choke after two solid years off the saddle would be heartbreaking; on the other hand, it would be deeply satisfying to watch him smack Menchov around in the mountains again if he's been sneaking in some significant saddle time on the sly...decisions, decisions!

Okay, two flat/rolling stages and then it's time for Simoni to make his rivals weep again. Forza Gibo--and in bocca al lupo the next two days Paolo and Jens!

A Sunday in Sell(a)

Killer Queen: so as Ricco failed to successfully pound "the beach boy and the Kraut" into submission as promised the last two days, he did at least show he still had the wherewithal to put some pain into rival Contador even after athsma-whacked tugboat Leonardo Piepoli crashed out with a snapped collarbone, just enough for a charmingly modest Contador to peg him for his main rival but not enough to prevent him from knife-twistingly having to watch The Next Indurain pull on the maglia rosa after today's stage. Thankfully, Simoni survived and even fought back after an earlier series of excruciating cracks, leaving the smug smack talk ("I can still be in pink tomorrow")to his former protege and merely venturing that "at least now we know who's in the game." Our baby genius, meantime, refuses to acknowledge his emerging supremacy in any of but the most vague terms, professing he could lose the maglia rosa tomorrow and not be disappointed. Holy moly, this Mother Theresa of the peloton could give St. Ivan of Varese a run for his money in the martyrdom corsa rosa,if only he, like Basso, had the evil lapse to attempt to dope! Then again, he *did* start out his career on Liberty Seguros...oh, shut the hell up, I'm sure as the rest of his besotted sighing unquestioning fan club that the kid is clean as a first winter snowfall on the prairie, but like it never occurred to you either in the darkest corners of your miserable black hearts!

The Tifosi: and, the tifosi reactions--never understated to begin with--are in, full of admiration of Sella's smashing two-fer, endless tributes to the general superiority of Marco Pantani to all other riders(irrelevant as to the current GC, but strangely touching in the same sense it is when tanked-up sentimental Red Sox fans bellow "Yankees Suck!" from the bleachers even when we're actually playing the As at that moment), buckets o' tributes to Gibo, and, while on the whole gracious to Contador, not a few fans distinctly outraged that some Op Puerto-linked Spanish guy is blushing in the maglia rosa when certain Italians who oughta be there and certainly aren't any dirtier than Captain Innocent are barred from their own freakin' race. Me, I'm still reeling from the ignominious crack of we still Andreas Kloden, who if he hadn't exhausted himself dragging around that bushwhacking blood-doping tool Vinokorouv last season would certainly have retained enough strength not to fall apart in the Dolomites. Go for a stage win, Klodi--if you're out of GC, why not pile on the hurt for at least one day in the sun?

Now Click Your Heels Three Times and Say: there's no mountain time trial like Simoni's...there's no mountain time trial like Simoni's...there's no mountain time trial like Simoni's...

Climb Every Mountain...

...Kick Ricco's !@#: okay, as usual I'm fruitlessly rooting for the guys who'll inevitably blow, but I cannot help but sincerely hope that, as any remaining weaklings get spit out the back of the peloton like gummy two-wheeled loogies, aged-like-a-fine-cheese-we-love-smack-talkin'-2x-Giro-god-supreme-Oscar-the-grouch-whiner Gilberto Simoni, having mentored Riccardo Ricco' to such clearly smashing effect last season at Saunier Duval (though as Ivan "Basso Non E' Uomo" Basso can tell you, the obnoxious youngster quite lacks Gibo's suave way with an insult), utterly kicks the boy's arrogant ungrateful scrawny !@# in the mountains, particularly the Marmolada. Of course, I'd settle nearly as happily for Gibo humiliating Di Luca, but as Ricco' has by far the stronger team (especially with Leonardo "Salbutamol" Piepoli on hand), that just seems unsportsmanlike. (Gaaaaaassssp--is that the base of the Fedaia? I feel an asthma attack coming on! Totally legitimately, of course.) Meantime, I'd just as dearly love to see everybody's perpetual !@#$$% Andreas Kloden take it, since if he's no friend to the Italian peloton as a whole he's at least fond of the cuisine, but since I presume he'll be horsewhipped into serving Contador (who, breaking ranks with his usual equanimity, finally snarked back at Ricco' for his beach-beer-'n'-doping-implications by saying he's not afraid of him, but does fear Simoni, which naturally earns him massive points in my eyes), one can also reasonably assume he's totally hosed as usual. Forza Gilberto and Klodi!

Sunshine On My Shoulders Makes Me Happy: and it's too damn bad there's barely been any in Italy this month, as the grimly impressive Giro body count continues to mount and it becomes ever harder to find a rider in or out of the field who doesn't have a fractured wrist or elbow or a gory chunk torn out of his team kit. It's tough to pity anyone wearing the maglia rosa in the most beautiful race on earth (outside perhaps the Vuelta, natch), but was I the only one grimacing the last few days when poor dented Visconti limped so gingerly about the podium? Please, weather gods, let this Giro be won by honest (hah!), leg-to-leg combat--not the crash-driven vagaries of good luck and bad landings!

Mo'Letta Blues: and, the denials are flying fast and thick today, with Andrea's angry dad swearing there's no Viagra tablets anywhere (a dispute one could foreseeably resolve by taking one and, well, waiting), the mystery liquids with Andrea's name on 'em were mineral water, and the syringes were for his personal use, one imagines because it takes a massive injection of performance-enhancing drugs to control the raging beast that is a two-horsepower Italian minicar. Andrea himself seems more than irked, denying he's done anything wrong or was going to, but unless Dad's willing to take the hit for the Viagra, he's gonna have quite the trouble I believe pinning that one on Grandma...oh, just own it Andrea, and go with the "podium babes" defense--everyone'll understand if you're a bit tired after 6 hours a day in the bike saddle!

Tour de Give It Back to Rightful Owner Rasmussen Dammit!: so I see Michael "I Was !@#$%^!" Rasmussen finally headed to court to demand the millions of euros the spineless hypocrite pimp-weasels over at Rabobank wussed him out of, as they (and UCI, who also deserve to be sued, those punks) knew full well the Chicken wasn't where he told UCI'd be during his accidentally missed pre-race doping controls and still happily let him flash his garish Rabobank outfit and maillot jaune all over the Tour de France 'til ASO discovered the deceit and ignominiously tossed the team out of the race. I understand if he'd actually *lied* to you, Rabobank--but you took advantage, you got busted, cut the crap with the wah-wah-I'm-so-remorseful St. David Millar profit-driven crocodile tears already!

Update Quote O' The Day: "I was the first to attack. We were a bunch of sheep today, not a pack of lions." ---Who else? Vai Gibo!

Umm...They're Doping to Accomplish *What* Exactly?

I Guess Those Creepy Bob Dole Ads Paid Off: as Gerolsteiner pulls Andrea Molleta from the Giro and then suspends him from the team as his dad is busted by the narcs in a doping raid, details begin to emerge about exactly what was found in the car: a unaffiliated amateur DS, a fridge, a passel of syringes containing a mystery liquid hidden in toothpaste tubes, and a pile of 80-odd tablets of Viagra. Now, this might *seem* to be a bit much for one rider, but it is a three week race after all, and fortunately as we know, systemic team doping is yesterday's news, so Gerolsteiner--unlike, say, Rabobank at last year's Tour--appears to be remaining comfortably in the warm embrace of the shiny clean peloton. Whew! Okay, it dilates the blood vessels, I get it...or are the race-tired Gerolsteiner boys merely looking to violate the hands-off rules regarding the podium babes?

Vai Gilberto!: and, as the gazzetta dello sport tifosi whack foreigner Klodi hard upside the head for daring to criticize even-they-admit-he's-rather-a-wank Riccardo Ricco', and the bodies continue to pound into the tarmac on wet roads as Paolo Bettini still searches desperately for his first win o' the season which he likely won't get (but then, I never count him out) in today's flat sprint finish, congrats to hardworking Simoni domestique Alessandro Bertolini and for Gibo letting him off the leash for a well-earned stage win, wisely conserving his own energy while DiLuca and Ricco' poked at each other half the day up the hillsides like quarrelling little brothers in the family minivan backseat. Forza Simoni!

Missing the Point: finally, as UCI continues to persecute riders it has only the most shoddily-handled monstrously crap cases against, it apparently managed yet another truly impressive screwup: by failing to answer some outstanding questions about blood-doping Vinokorouv lieutenant Andrei Kashechkin, the hands-tied Kazakh federation has cleared the boy to race effective immediately. Nice work, UCI--thank heavens we've got you there protecting the sport from cheating lying skanks! Meantime, trustbutverify reports that the low-key Floyd Landis has been out and about on the roads supporting charity, and that the boy can feel charitable towards anyone (except perhaps charitably like running over Pat "Dick" McQuaid with his bike at 35 miles an hour) is testament to his generosity and self-restraint. If he gathers eight thousand cameras around starts bawling and hugs every forlorn big-eyed tot in sight, Pat, can he get a new ProTour contract and a nice spokesman gig with UCI too?

What Is So Rare As A Day In June?

A Freakin' Ruling on the Iban Mayo Case, Before the Poor Sod Keels Over: as usual, our beloved defenders-o'-truth-and-justice over at trustbutverify are hot off the presses, this time with the report that, contrary to earlier rumors that had an actual verdict due on the 21st, only we love Iban Mayo's hearing was on today and an actual judgment as to whether no-one's ever gonna hire him again anyway no matter what CAS decides is due "sometime in June." Y'know, tempted as I am to hope that his inevitable jack-over gets egregiously delayed, considering how badly the boy hits the skids when he gets compliments like "you're the next Lance Armstrong," can these clods kindly not keep his fragile psyche in suspense for too long while he waits to be told the considerably less warm-n'-fuzzy "your career is over"? Aiiigggghhhhh!

Woo-hoo Klodi!: oh right, and that other guy, as stalwart baby Contador takes a handsome second in the key individual time time with a fractured elbow, yap, this brilliant youngster is gonna win 8 million Grand Tours and make Miguel Indurain look like a Cheeto-stuffed wind-sucking autobus-bound couch slug barely able to bloat off his Barcalounger for another beer, much less to victory, yap. But more importantly, woo-hoo Klodi! Just when I feared that all this "Klodi's gonna take it" talk was gonna freak out our reticent hero into truly Iban Mayo levels of admiration-driven incapacitation, Andreas blasts through to a thoroughly impressive third, which means that if Johan Bruyneel has a soul, he oughta hand over team leadership to Klodi and let him domestique Contador in the equally beautiful if even more more wrongfully scorned Vuelta instead. And was anyone else *so proud* of we love Gilberto Simoni, who I'd frankly assumed would just get irretrievably whacked in the first part of today's course, and with his 10th place is now well within a minute's time of Ricco' and Di Luca on GC? Forza Gibo, you fabulous crank--and don't count on spraying that champagne in Milan too soon, Danilo, especially if your lowly worker bee Savoldelli (still smashing despite his craptacular mechanical failure) has anything to say about it!

The Sissy-boy Slap-Fights Heat Up: meantime, the vicious verbal smackdowns that are the hallmark of any good Giro d'Italia are flaming along, this time with Andreas Kloden telling folks how he really feels about his compatriots, namely that Ricco', a talky little jerk, "isn't a champion," Patrik Sinkewitz' accusation that Kloden doped at T-Mobile is total crap, Ricco' and Rebellin don't have as many doping controls as he does, and as to CSF Navigare, late of Priamo's stage win, let's not even talk about *them* (tho' I imagine now CSF's pissed-off legal team is gonna make you talk, or pay), and while we're at it, Germany in its entirety can blow, because it's outrageous how the press coddled that weasel Ivan Basso while wringing Jan Ullrich's neck instead. Andreas does, however, like Italian food, and admires Di Luca, which oughta keep the tifosi at bay at least long enough for him to dash to the team bus before someone tries to defend their heroes and kick his !@#...good luck and stay safe, Klodi!

Thunder God Is Right, Baby!: so not only did we-love-and-everyone-underestimates Thor Hushovd take his second win of the season at the Volta a Cataluna prologue, but he's now taken his third win by snagging the day's sprint. Bennati, Cavendish, Robbie, Forster, Zabel--keep lookin' under your arms buddies, he's gonna zip off your wheels and whiz by your shiny spandex rumps at the Tour!

99 and 44/100% Pure: finally, one cannot help but note with utter shock and horror that Portuguese Continental squad LA-MSS, lately the home of such fine Op Puerto-linked dope hounds as Constantino Zaballo and Angel Vicioso, was raided just today by the local narcs on suspicion of "widespread" illegitimate hijinks. And after T-Mobile, Liberty Seguros and Astana (old Astana! old Astana! please don't sue me Johan!) had all restored my faith in this sport, I had honestly thought systemic team doping was just a long-gone relic of the dirty cheating amoral scumsucking '90s! Oh, my trusting heart's been broken yet again....

Darn Near Contemporaneous Update: wow, are Astana's lawyers on the ball, as before the ink was even dry on this post CSF's pit bulls swore legal vengeance on the loose-lipped Andreas and Klodi's already wisely apologized for being "misunderstood". That'll teach you to wank to the press again!

Snort in Haste, Repent at Leisure

Unless You're Leonardo Piepoli: yep, looks like right after Petacchi went "on vacation," he was actually sacked, I mean "mutually separated", just like Johan Bruyneel "mutally separated" pouty-lipped poster boy Ivan Basso's tainted dirty !@# off the team bus at 200 miles an hour after exhaustively whoring him for the cameras at the Tour of California last year til the boy finally had to concede the obvious. Still, I can't help but feel some ambivalence here. Sure, the pro peloton's got a truly freakish staggering proportion, relative to non-moneybag-cyclists, of chronic asthmatics and other stricken delicates whose sufferings can only be totally coincidentally alleviated by the sledgehammer use of performance-enhancing drugs during critical moments in stages in races they want to win, which may render the more cynical among us (not me, of course) somewhat suspicious, but on the other hand, it seems like complete and total bull!@#$ that Petacchi's (who after all took some of his drugs *after* the stage ended) now mutually separated his rump miserably on the couch in a mortifyingly ignominious end to his astonishing career while that same salbutamol-OD'ing perp from last year's Giro Leonardo Piepoli is, for no other apparent reason than that he has the sense to race with a license from no-standards Monaco, ostentatiously pulling that arrogant whining little twerp Ricco' up the hill for a stage win this very week. Fine, purge the peloton of every dirty cheating dope-snorting pig (and CAS didn't even think Petacchi was cheating), the sport'll be better off if utterly empty with the two sap-but-honest riders that are left--but do it consistently people, or this entire effort's a grotesque hypocritical half-@#$#@ (cough! McQuaid! cough!) farce! Still, as the Milram sponsors affirm their pride in their strict but just anti-doping policy, no word yet from the poor (well, not poor--I'm pretty sure that satin-draped pin-up calendar he did last year'll get him a nice-paying gig on the Milan runways, if he can't get a new one in cycling) jobless boy as to whether he'll keep his promise to retire if banned. I *told* you, Thor--get the lead out and lunge for that better lead-out train already! Look, they make some nice dip--everyone likes dip right, you can work for these guys!

Armstrong, Flirt Hollywoodiano: oh sure, he's won a bunch of dull old Tour de Frances, campaigned for cancer research and opened a dandy new bike shop--but what's the front-page news on gazzetta dello sport about Lance Armstrong, now that his rock-star romance is over and he's apparently done slurping on that little Olsen twin? Yes, he's snuggling up with inhumanly cheerful actress Kate Hudson. Um, not to distract the primary sponsors of the Giro d'Italia from what's clearly far more important, but isn't there some little local race meandering about that you might want to report on?

Piti on Parade: speaking reluctantly about the comparatively lame Tour de France, I see Alejandro "Man, Am I Lucky I'm Spanish" Valverde was scoping out some key passes in the Pyrennees today, joined by least-respected-second-place-finisher-in-Tour-history-ever-to-be-given-the-maillot-jaune Oscar Pereiro. Apropos of nothing I swear, is anyone else concerned that, despite Christian Prudhomme's most fervent hopes and ridiculous exclusion of posturing, the Tour might not be as Stain-Stick spotless as our pure and noble peloton cleansters would have us believe? And on a related subject, nice work by Riccardo Ricco' implying that Alberto Contador must've been taking something stronger'n sunscreen to whip him into such immediately smashing shape for the Giro after being interrupted lounging beachside (though now the boy's chances may be hamstrung by an arm injury right where he rests on his time-trial bars, though I doubt it--who cares, go Klodi!)--forget climbing skills, he's clearly learned *something* from his year's tutelage under the peerless Gilberto Simoni! Stuff like this keeps the reactionary among my loathed profession in business (not me, alas--but I'm still open to making copies and other humiliating drudge work for Ivan Basso's lawyer!)--Saunier Duval, expect a little phone call from Astana's pinstriped goon squad!

No Surprises: and, I see baby prodigy Marianne Vos has made every other phenomenal cyclist on earth look like a helpless crawling talentless wussbag yet again as she takes it in El Salvador--like a wee Mark Cavendish but without the smug disregard for her (barely) elders. Right on Marianne--though I'm still hoping Marta Bastianelli whups you in the Worlds for a two-fer this year!

Forza!: Finally, just a small note to you Simoni-hatas that, while the boy could certainly be looking better so far as he gacks along going backwards while Di Luca and Ricco attack every six seconds, Gibo's total lack of legs eight days into the corsa rosa is clearly just a wily stalling tactic so he can hoard his energy under the radar until it's time to stealth-brutalize those egomaniacal weaklings on the deadly Passo Fedaia. It'll happen dammit--eat his dust and weep for your pathetic monstrous time loss in the Dolomites, Il Killer!

It's Raining Men!

No Hallelujahs: yep, the (literally) bloody mess that is the Giro d'Italia has grimly continued, with half the boys hitting the deck like drunken sailors in days of relentless pouring rain, the riders utterly unable to recuperate from their wounds by shower, massage, or even timely dinners due to endless late-night transfers and, just as the weather gods smile on the peloton at last, we love Levi Leipheimer and jailbait climbing god Maurizio Soler lose time they sorely need when a police moto wipes out right in front of 'em. Can these guys' luck *get* any worse? Oh man, now I've cursed 'em...

Talkin' Smack: and, it's already a war o'the words in our beloved race, as toddler wunderkind Mark Cavendish opines he kicked old bag Daniele Bennati's !@# the other day because "I'm younger," Ricco' aims to become even more of a petulant blame-gaming prima donna than we adore Gilberto Simoni by lashing out at everyone in sight for his troubles, Jurgen Van den Broucke is derided for taking advantage of a planned rider slowdown to skip out on a breakaway for not having or caring about his wife and family; just-denuded maglia rosa Pellizotti suggesting world champ Paolo Bettini is an inscrutable peloton-hating sell-out for refusing to join the riders' protest over yesterday's long stage and !@#$-slapping Basso as the one who's gonna have to prove he can handle team leadership at Liquigas next year, and even ever-equable gentlemen like Stuey O'Grady cheerfully attributing his race-ending clavicle-snap to guys "mak[ing] stupid mistakes and rid[ing] like idiots" and Contador and Leipheimer struggling not to antagonize RCS for letting 'em in the race while simultaneously calling bull!@#$ on the post-stage Transfers o'Death. And just to show you how right baby Cavendish is about decrepit ancient slug Bennati, I humbly bring to you the sprint replay:



Hamilton's Believe It or Not: holy crap, it's plausible folks--Tyler "I Ate My Twin" Hamilton's homologous blood doping defense could be true after all, as a 9-year old girl who went to hospital with abdominal pains is found to be carrying her embryonic twin inside her stomach. Tyler, if this was you, I owe--and hereby offer--you a sincere, abject apology for doubting such a reasonable excuse. But if you did it anyway, I *still* want my fifteen bucks back for the Tyler Hamilton Foundation hat I defaced with fabric paint protesting your innocence, buddy!

Leuk of the Belgish: meantime, it's a happy day for Bjorn "Love Defense""No Wait It Was My Dumb!@# Team Doc!" Leukemans, as his ban is overturned effective immediately and his case remanded by the Belgian Council of State on the grounds that there was "no fault" by the "accused person." Bjorn, natch, jumped to announce he's been training diligently and could use a new squad, leading one, of course, to think of such havens for nondopers-but-still-outcasts as Rock Racing. Bjorn, get ready to ride in a flamin' skull kit--Michael Ball's bottomless ego is likely going nuts with a good two days out of the newspapers already!

Thor, Thor, Thor of the Jungle: finally, a much-belated "woo-hoo!" to ever-underrated Giro-dissed sprint king Thor Hushovd for taking his first win of the season at Dunkirk, just in time for Credit Agricole to tank financially and desperately seek a bailout, putting the future of its perhaps extraneous (to soulless number-crunching euro-hoarding greed-buckets) bike squad in some doubt. Y'know, not to displace we love ageless slogger Erik Zabel, but with Alessandro Petacchi "on vacation," I hear Milram could use a new guy....