Most Gentlemanly!

Points Jersey: Cycling.tv has not only fixed its problem with the Prijs Vlaanderen coverage this weekend, but also very kindly and sincerely apologized for same despite my distinctly indiscreet rant about the loss of my coverage, as well as explaining their difficulties in coverage of the Giro--much appreciated, and I, too, apologize for my vitriol. UCI, ASO--anything you boys want to say to Unibet in the same spirit of earnest mea culpas, while we're at it?

Napoleon Dynamite: yep, the French are at it again, this time refusing pointless-tool-o'-vengeance Unibet.com's--but not Astana's--entry into the beautiful, and prestigious, Dauphine-Libere. Why? Of course, it's the unfortunate legal prohibition against teams from gambling enterprises competing on French soil, which poor hands-tied ASO can do nothing about, unless it happens to be any of the other ProTour gambling-sponsored outfits to whom they mysteriously won't apply the rules. Meantime, fearing also the denial of their entry into such no-name, no-status races as Liege-Bastogne-Liege and the Tour de France, Unibet has absolutely had it, giving up on ASO entirely and appealing directly to UCI to take some action on this whole sordid matter instead. They did, Unibet, don't you recall? They sold you down the river so every other ProTour team but you could ride their beloved Paris-Nice! What more do you want for your 8 gazillion euros, you whiners?

A Call to Arms(trong): in US cycling news, the poor nascent Tour of Utah's been cancelled for lack of funds, despite much interest from bereft US riders and both US pro cycling fans. Come on, Lance Armstrong, you're the most famous cyclist this country's ever known (sorry, we love Greg LeMond)! It's been almost 2 years in this short-attention-span media-sucking society since your last race and thanks to your high-profile Star Magazine speed-dating everyone still knows who you are--why aren't you out raising more money for this thing instead of dithering about contemplating a competitive life in speed skating? Help out your own here, for heck's sake!

Swim for It!: And finally, in highly amusing doping news, Dick "Dick" Pound's WADA has righteously decried the "serious breach of confidentiality" in leaking Ian "the Thorpedo"'s name and alleged doping to L'Equipe. Indeed, our noble friends at WADA are "especially shocked that the name of an athlete was given to the media" when there's been no clear positive test. Ummmm....Basso? Vino? Ullrich? Pretty much the entirety of Liberty Seguros? Anyone else see any inconsistency here? What asses. My advice: ditch the bikes, get down to your skivvies, and hit the water, boys--it's your only chance for justice from these gross bloated hypocrites!

April Fools

Rant o' the Day: You suck, Cycling.tv! I faithfully cough up $50 for your premium channel (which is still gonna hit me up for extra for the Vuelta and Giro, but I am so grateful for any scrap of play beyond crappy minimal US coverage I'm willing to suck it up, plus I digress) and conscientiously ignore any hint of other media coverage so I can happily watch the giant names swarm to the E3 Prijs Vlaanderen--and they do. So I watch O'Grady claw his way back from a monstrously ill-timed puncture all the way from the autobus to, ever so briefly, the breakaway, which is staffed by a stunning array of talent including but not limited to Tom Boonen, Fabian Cancellara ready to shepherd O'Grady to the sprint, and Philippe Gilbert, then Paolo Bettini smashes up the chase to nearly bridge to the leaders with a desperate then fading Oscar Friere on his wheel and O'Grady trying to pull his way back after Cancellara is obliged to leave him behind, the surging Bettini snaps his derailleur of all things in an utterly craptastic piece of luck and is suddenly gone entirely right as Boonen might've used the teammate, we're five kilometers out and what happens? Right, the coverage stops *absolutely* dead, a Zipp commercial pops up, and that's it! *5 freakin' kilometers* from the line you clowns!! Y' *think* we might've been interested in watching the outcome after two hours of surprising drama? Of course, Boonen was gonna take the sprint--but not if Cancellara was able to make a break for it and time-trial up to the finish--not that I was there to watch and wait for it, goons!

Joseba Beloki Contract Watch: no, but !@#$% Michele Scarponi of !@#$$% Liberty Seguros took the overall at Coppi e Bartali--as did @#$%^ Alberto Contador of !@$%$% Liberty Seguros the overall at Vuelta a Castilla e Leon. !@#$*!, Saiz, how can you stand yourself?!
!@#$*!!

First Scene Here: So I'm at the Beanpot Criterium today sizing up the US stars of tomorrow, and the Woman of the Day at least for sheer tenacity was the unknown (to me) rider from Williams, who fairly promptly fell well off the back of the lead group of nine then, as everyone else got lapped and pulled out, stuck it out all alone, and at a damned steady pace at that, for the 15 or 20 or so laps until, and through, the finish and her sweet top 10 spot in the stats. Right on sister, whoever you are!

Fast Track: Finally, I note that the late Isaac Galvez' partner Juan Llaneras paid a beautiful tribute to his mate by taking the points championship at the Worlds, and Olympic champ Anne Mears smoked not only the rest of the field, but also her own world record by a handsome margin, in the 500 meters. That, and in a completely unrelated road race, Jens Voigt took the GC at the Criterium International after taking a quite fine 7th in the time trial. We love Jens!

Ale-Nyet

Prince of Slides: well, I never thought I'd have to feel sorry for sprint king/Cipollini-in-waiting Alessandro Petacchi, at least not this decade, but, as he himself dispiritedly predicted, he bailed mid-stage in the Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali, a day after the race organizers already had to stretch the time limit in the team time trial to keep him alive, from the "psychophysical" stress still plaguing him from his spectacular tank in Milano-Sanremo. Could it be, then, that it's not just the shaky recovery from his smashed kneecap and resulting leg-strength power imbalance, nor just his embarrassing, if nicely healed, broken hand from its rage-induced team-bus meeting, but also the combined effects of the smack-talking by surging next-generation Daniele Bennati, the grim assessments of Cipo and lead out/elder master Erik Zabel, and the growing onslaught of press and fan abuse over his sudden decline and potential irrelevance have finally been getting to the poor boy? If that's the case, I'm inclined to say let's lay off him a bit and see if his funk rises ahead of next-target Gent-Wevelgem in April, but also that, if for whatever reason he hasn't the goods at this (hopefully brief) moment, he really oughta bite the ego bullet and let setting sun we love Erik Zabel, who proved last season he's still got game, out to play. Allez Erik, and Ale, snap out of it!

Vuelta a Castilla e Coppi e Settimana y Bartali: speaking of the week's two big races, I note briefly that Saunier Duval youngster/Vuelta a Espana stage winner Francisco Ventoso's taken two stages in the Vuelta a Castilla, Alberto Contador took a hotly-contested stage and the leader's jersey on team orders over Koldo Gil, and over at Coppi e Bartali, Ivan Basso dope-slapped any doubts about his recovery by taking about 6th in the time trial, two spots over a sleek Levi Leipheimer. Y'know, I'm sure it's just dedicated training, capitalizing on poor SOB Bjarne Riis' nurturance, the off-season wind-tunnel tweaking and Discovery's egregiously deep pockets in finding the perfect position and all, but again, does anyone else get a slightly disconcerting Roberto Heras flashback contemplating Basso's sudden power in the time trial? Brrrrrrrr!

Joseba Beloki Contract Watch: No, but !@#$%^$ Michele Scarponi from Liberty Seguros !@#$%%$ took a stage in Coppi e Bartali riding for &*(%$! Acqua e Sapone. !@$%#!@!

The Wounded: Happily, Tom Boonen's bum back has apparently been alleviated by a bike switch, enough to have him take a day's race in Belgium over a Robbie "the Ego" McEwen still sore from his crash in Milano. T-Mobile, meantime, whose management bungling seems to be exceeded only by its even worse luck this season, has possibly lost the entire spring of previous Gent champ Andreas Klier to a broken cheekbone and concussion sustained in a deeply uncomfortable hook-up with a tractor. Finally, leg-snapped Milano casualty David Kopp may see road time before season's end, if not by much, and Caisse d'Epargne's Jose Joaquin Rojas is eager to take his thrice-fractured spine over the cobbles at Hell of the North. Is it me, or is this the most disastrously, and early, accident-prone peloton in years?

Alors, Some Tours: the humdinger route for the 07 Deutschland Tour is out, and the question is, will anyone besides defending god Jens Voigt be allowed to hit the pavement? T-Mobile, desperate for wins, doesn't want anyone from Op Puerto in the race at all, which takes out about 1/3 of the peloton right there, and whines it may even boycott the race if any one of 'em shows; by contrast, the antidoping hawks over at the Tour itself have suddenly snaked out of their tough-guy refusal to let Basso and compatriots in, now claiming it's up to UCI to take action. A little nervous you'll throw a party and no-one'll come, boys? Weasels! Meantime, the Dauphine is set to take on the fearsome Mont Ventoux, with we love Levi Leipheimer defending (don't screw him on support just to save Basso's butt in the Tour, Bruyneel!), with Vino, Valverde, Pereiro, and Schleck all out for glory. We love Levi!

Dopers, and the Dopus Ex-Dopers Who Condemn Them: I see Johan Museeuw's endless old-news trial for buying dope from his vet has been delayed again, sure to set off the righteous alarm bells of tireless (and Lord, is he also tiresome) self-promoter St. David Millar, raging that the "buck stops with management" (now there's a revelation) to control the riders' baser instincts and hire the virtuous ones, like him, and more, the whole industry ought to model itself and its regimens o' purity on clean queens T-Mobile. Well, once the teams see how well T-Mobile's been doing this year, why *wouldn't* they jump on that bandwagon? Nit!

Muckraker, Muckraker, Rake Me a Muck

Riis' Pieces: Hot off the Belgian newspapers' recent field day with tales of Patrick Lefevere's decades o' doping, Belgian TV now reports, via a soigneur who I presume no longer wants to work in the biz, that Bjarne "CSC Stands for Clean Sport" Riis used EPO at Team Telekom to win the Tour de France, provided, apparently, by another rider via the ever-helpful team medical corps. Nice! More, his current rheumatism is allegedly linked to its use, quite an irony for the poor Op Puerto investigators who weren't able to nail anyone for doping-related health effects this century, outside perhaps a few pulled shoulder muscles from hefting dope-fueled trophies and outsized champagne bottles on the podium. Riis, meantime, hit back furiously with a monstrously empty nondenial, opining merely he doesn't like to focus on the past, though I'm not convinced he really wants anyone looking too closely at the present, either. Back to Telekom, while natch then-team director/tainted Ullrich associate/now Astana cleanster Walter Godefroot was not directly involved in the riders' hijinks, he did seem to concede he was "aware" of it at the time. So much for your golden boy, Astana--weren't you warned off this guy already when you hired him? Hearteningly, Erik Zabel, after a onetime concession, apparently dismissed the performance enhancement as unnecessary "for him." We love Erik, even, and maybe especially, if a little mightn't hurt a sprinter's chances in his twilight years! Most interestingly, Patrick "Not Me" Lefevere seemed quite ticked about the whole subject, snarling "What do you want? For everyone to get down on their knees and confess?" Well, yes, if you're gonna be a raging hypocrite and sue the offending newspaper for outing you for doing what you seem to be shrugging that you actually did do, jerk! Then again, if one more red-handed crybaby chooses not to pull a Millar and make us all utterly nauseous with his sanctimony, I suppose I'd be just as grateful for that. Please, just let this all end!

Teeming Masses: so, I've read an insightful suggestion or two that Tyler Hamilton's ignominious, and uncharacteristic, DNF in Tirreno-Adriatico was perhaps due to an unhelpful lack of doping activity. Y'know, it's certainly possible. However, in part because I proclaimed my faith in Tyler in indelible fabric paint on a Hamilton Foundation hat I laid out $15 for, I like to think it's because the boy hasn't been allowed to race against anyone more formidable than your typical caffeine-stoked weekend warrior (intimidating as they are, especially to the lame likes of me) for two years, and that, in cyclist years, he's perhaps getting a bit long in the tooth without the steady training that might possibly otherwise let him pull an Eki. Come back, Tyler--at least for a day or two in the Giro!

Feed Your Head: Look, I truly Support Drug Free Sport. To think that almost no-one but the recently canonized David Millar is clean is a knife in the chest. But the great Eddy Merckx has called it unrealistic, Indurain and many others have copped to popping various performance-enhancers like Mentos, and who gets busted and who doesn't seems an utter triumph of superior discretion over reckless stupidity. However, it also seems just wrong to simply throw in the towel. Suggestions, from the inevitably-wiser-than-I?

Lovely Weather for a Bike Ride Together: it's almost the Vuelta a Castilla y Leon, and welcome back to a fine field of boys, some fresh off the disabled list: Basso and Sastre, Oscar Pereiro, Levi, and Paris-Nice baby champ ascendant Alberto Contador. There's an opening time trial and I hope Levi's in shape a la Tour de California to take it. Venga Levi! Meantime, over in Italy, it's the Settimana Internazional Coppi e Bartali, with a humbled Petacchi, Cadel, Giro gods Savoldelli and Simoni and the afore-dissed Tyler Hamilton slugging it out for glory. Alright, I'm still annoyed by Discovery coldly tossing Savoldelli to the curb. He won't take it, but vai Paolo!

Crash Cart

Freire Oscar: Dormez-vous, Oscar, you earned it! Meantime, the rest of the pack was a (literally) bloody mess, as David Kopp was knocked unconscious and out with a broken nose, Axel Merckx, Davide Rebellin and countless others also hit the pavement in varying degrees of speed and pain, and Moletta flipped upside down and whammed head-first into the pavement on a break with Popovych after a nasty airborne encounter with a light pole. Yowch! Luckily, no-one seems permanently worse for wear, though I assume Kopp's season is pretty far in the tank, and after a last valiant solo charge by Popo and a dangerous attack by Phillipe Gilbert and Riccardo Ricco, the group glommed together behind a perfect Milram lead-out, Petacchi bonked, and Friere neatly shot off his wheel to take the win by a bike length. The man of the race? Besides the obvious, I call Paolo Bettini, who was caught out at an excruciatingly bad time behind a crash, clawed his way back from the autobus to the front of the race, set up the chase-down of Gilbert, and only faded at the very end--a testament to his sheer tenacity that he ever got halfway back in the first place. Vai Paolo! Meantime, Petacchi was bummed if generous towards his teammates in his 8th place finish, while Erik Zabel, who peeled away in the leadout as required but still came in ahead of him in 6th, seemed a bit more miffed at both their outcomes, remarking glumly that it was "in his contract." And Petacchi trash-talker du jour Daniele Bennati? Somewhere round about 26th if I recall. Try not to go too nuts over your earlier pounding of the old boy, Daniele!

Joseba Beloki Contract Watch: Nope, but @#%%^! Allan Davis from @#$^*&! Liberty Seguros came in second at Milano-Sanremo with Discovery's logo on his @$*. !@#%%*^!

Achtung Baby: Finally, it seems the Germans, lacking immediate means to exact belated vengeance on betrayer ex-unquestioned-cash-cow Jan Ullrich, have decided to go after the rest of the peloton in frustration, requiring escorts of all test-subject riders from the line to the, well, testing site, mandating that any rider whose A & B samples test positive be suspended by their teams no matter what crap legalistic nonsense (like, say, deal-killing error or actual innocence) the sporting courts throw their convictions out on, and, as earlier promised, barring any boy remotely 'under suspicion' from any start on German soil. Man, given that last giant arbitrary invitation-to-petty-revenge, is there gonna even be anyone left to start at the Deutschland Tour?

Milan-ow!-SanRemo

Bettini, Tiny Problem: well, the bodies continue to pile up ahead of Milano-SanRemo, as world champ Paolo Bettini's 'mild discomfort' from his crashouts at Tirreno turns out to be in fact a fractured rib, which presumably means, if he's still in, as I imagine he will be, he'll end up supporting sprintalicious Belgian man-candy Tom Boonen, himself thwapped alternately with an aching back and a cold. Over at Milram, the managers are already bemoaning the expected tank of we love Erik Zabel due a sore throat, and, in a demoralizing smack to the only healthy guy left in the peloton (and a pretty decent rider, I've heard), helpfully pointing out that aged-goods Alessandro Petacchi's form is inexplicably crap despite what was clearly a completely meritless aberrational run of early-season wins, as he certainly did "nothing" at Tirreno. Mario "the Chest" Cipollini, meanwhile, encouragingly echoed the sentiment that "something's wrong there" with the creaky old boy, putting his money on emerging talent/ego trip Daniele Bennati, and, perhaps, a resurgent we love Oscar Friere. Which seems reasonable, since besides Pozzato who wouldn't mind redoing his 06 win, the only other two sprint-capable boys left alive, Thor Hushovd and Baden Cooke, are now out with the ubiquitous gack-inducing intestinal bug felling the rest of the riders and a painful back, respectively. God, between the psychological abuse being suddenly heaped on poor Petacchi and the mass peloton implosion-of-the-body, is there going to be anyone left in one piece at the start line?

RCS and UCI Down by the Schoolyard: yep, the playground battle between the Grand Tours and UCI continues, this time by email, as the Giro organizers spam a pack of journalists that Tirreno and other RCS races oughtn't be considered part of the skeezbag ProTour, and UCI (never one to let legal niceties like, say, justice and due process, much less contract technicalities, get in the way of its own warfare til this point), whine back that, per the emergency agreement hammered out between all parties, while the Grand Tours needn't be bound by any ProTour obligations, UCI needn't remove the races from their calendars, either. So there! Meanwhile, ASO continues to take out its emotional issues with UCI on defenseless saps Unibet, denying them a start at the beloved Hell of the North despite the latter's desperate agreement to name their team after their bikes and wear entirely different Halloween-colored jerseys at every French start line they hit. You're still entirely right to noogie UCI into submission, ASO--but can't you just concentrate on pleasing the crowds by humiliating Pat "Dick" McQuaid at this point and leave the poor quivering directeur sportifs at Unibet alone?

Yellow-Belly: so I see St. David Millar, fresh from his admittedly very fine ride at Paris-Nice, is going for the general classification at the Tour of Georgia as his next big goal on his holy road to dope-free recovery. Aside from generally loving George Hincapie, this is just another reason to hope he--or anyone! Jesus Manzano, anyone!--takes out Millar at the line by a mortifying margin. I'm sorry, sort of, to be such a lousy sport here, but until Millar quits making out with his own reflection like some ghastly spandex-clad Narcissus, I swear I'm pretty well set to actively root against him--hopefully, though at this point not even necessarily, for someone who's also (declared himself, anyway) clean. Allez George!

WADA Farce!

Wa, Wa, Wa(da): irked by the Spanish decision to drop the Operacion Puerto case despite conceding widespread actual doping, and bouyed presumably by El Pais' massive assault on the judge in the case, WADA has quite belatedly petitioned the court a la UCI to be named as a party in the Spanish investigation so they can get access to the legions of damning files and conduct their own damn investigation, as both they, and UCI's Pat "Dick" McQuaid, are clearly (and literally) out for blood (bags). Man, WADA, you and UCI haven't required any actual evidence so far before you've gone around destroying the careers of every rider you don't like--why the sudden change in strategy? Meantime, El Pais, as noted, has helpfully lambasted the judge for a multitude of failings, including interpreting a lame law he didn't write, condoning illegal wiretaps, ignoring evidence that a combo of EPO and vitamin A caused brain problems for an anonymous cyclist, denying that Liberty Seguros throwaway Marcos Serrano's '06 Giro hospitalization was doping related, and letting Santi Perez and Tyler Hamilton off the hook for their blood-doping sins. That, and he smells, too!

T-Immobile: already whipped by a mortifyingly unsuccessful early-season run, with notable tanks in the Tour of California and virtually everything else they've competed in, implosion queens T "Eat Our Own Young" Mobile faced yet another humiliating smack as Andreas Kloden, tossed off the team for his egregious friendship with Jan Ullrich and wisely snapped up by Vinokorouv and Astana along with up-and-comer Mattias Kessler, took the overall at Tirreno-Adriatico in fine form after a second place finish in the time trial to Gerolsteiner's Stefan Schumacher. Am I the only one thinking the team managers are starting to bang their heads against a pole in the sudden painful realization of what their vengeful short-sighted conduct towards these boys last season has cost 'em? Somewhere, at least if he's half as mean as I am, Jan Ullrich is smiling. Just a little.

Meeting of the Minds(less): I see UCI and the Grand Tours are set to meet again as promised in April, apparently over the GT's nonfulfillment of their nonpromise to take on Astana and Unibet as automatic wildcards in all their races. Y'know, if that's what you really wanted, UCI, why'd you walk away without it? It's not like you've hesitated to throw your bloated crushing weight around til now, to the detriment of the most beautiful races and most talented cyclists on earth. Afraid that every French rider in the peloton was gonna defy your poseur oligarch proclamations and show up at the Paris-Nice startline with or without your impotent threats?

The Wounded: Finally, Milano-SanRemo, already decimated by the combined effects of crashes and particularly disgusting viral infections, has taken a whole 'nother pack of hits, with Thomas Dekker and Danilo DiLuca out with the gross flu afflicting most of the rest of the peloton and Jose Joaquin Rojas knocked momentarily unconscious, but apparently luckily otherwise undamaged, in a nasty training-ride encounter with a car. At this rate, only Petacchi's going to be in shape to show up, in which case he might as well walk the freakin' corsa and save the wear and tear on his bike. Please, everyone who's left, try to hold it together just til this weekend!

We'll Always Have Paris

Spanish Acquisition: well, it was a rip-roaring end to Paris-Nice, as Manolo Saiz' lost opportunities/kings o' the future Luis Leon Sanchez and Alberto Contador took the last two stages and the latter, after a brutal assault on the peloton and particularly the yellow jersey by Levi Leipheimer and Tommy Danielson and a smashing solo attack by Contador himself, the whole shebang from a valiant, if just plain beat, Davide Rebellin. So is he the new Miguel Indurain, as the press instantly began howling? I don't know (and to his credit he hasn't copped to it), though I'm beyond impressed, but I sure as hell do know that before he takes that hype to heart he oughta look at the cautionary psychological tale of we love Iban "the next Lance Armstrong" Mayo. We still believe in you, Iban!

Joseba Beloki Contract Watch: sorry Jan, but despite Wolfie's optimistic yammering to the contrary, I'm afraid you may be a lost cause at the moment, so speaking of Spaniards we love, the lately glum Joseba Beloki seems to have cheered up a bit, opining he's got two seasons left to ride and is actually in talks with a couple of teams, including perhaps Euskaltel-Euskadi. If there's any squad who could pull him out of his lingering post-Tour-accident, post-wholesale-Saiz-and -UCI-career- destruction funk, I imagine it's the reigning peloton mountain gods. Hire Joseba already!

Ow Italia: yep, briefly-upright world champ Paolo Bettini has crashed yet again in Tirreno, thwacking a pole dodging a skidding Elmiger, though he seems set, along with a back-sore Tom Boonen and a for-once *not* agonizingly injured Oscar Freire, to head out on the attack at Milano-Sanremo, which is more than one can say for poor Ivan Basso, continuing the Crappiest Start to the Season Ever by having banged up his wrist harder than initially thought in his crash in Tirreno and deciding to bail on Milano, his other major warmup for the Giro. Aside from his truly masterful avoidance of Jan Ullrich's fate and resultant Bill Gatesian bank balance (*cough* give your lawyer a raise! *cough*), is there anything that can go right for the boy this season?

Pot (Belge) At the End of the Rainbow

Magic Carpet Ride: well, it's at least a change from this week's rash of crash-outs in the unusually uncoordinated peloton, as Francaise de Jeux's Thierry Marichal, (very) late of the old Lotto squad in the 90's and the perplexing never-ending litigation of its doping scandal, dropped out of Paris-Nice to deal with a call-up from the Belgians, still investigating him (and a solid wunk of his ex-compatriots) for the use and sale of Pot Belge, a lively mix of methamphetamine and heroin. Now, I understand the performance value of methamphetamines, but heroin? Why not just fit up a hookah and some chaise lounges in the back of the team bus and turn it into an opium den for #$%^'s sake? Speaking of which, in a handsome parallel bit of legal hijinks, a Belgian court cleared Acqua e-Sapone-why-the-hell-is-Stefano-Garzelli-on-a-Continental -squad-this-year's Frank Vandenbroucke of EPO use, not because he didn't, but because UCI already nailed him because he did. I love double jeopardy, though I imagine Frank loves it more. And, Jan Ullrich propaganda god Wolfgang Strohband's bold prediction that Ullrich would return to the peloton somehow looks a bit more unlikely after his attorneys appealed to Spain to block transfer of Dr. Fuentes' blood bags to the Germans. Not that there's anything wrong with that, and I'm sure it's utterly unrelated to any actual culpability for anything on Jan's part. Oh heck, I still miss him!

Luck o' the Italians: yep, the body count continues to mount, as Ivan Basso recovers from his nasty crash in the Tour of California with yet another smashup that took him out with a sorely whacked but luckily unbroken wrist in Tirreno, his theoretically relaxing warmup to Milano-Sanremo. Fortunately, world champ Paolo Bettini, who also tangled wheels, remains reasonably unhurt, but GC threat Gutierrez is out with a vicious crack to the shoulder. Meantime, we love Carlos Sastre is still recuperating from his smashed lower spine and hip, and, with no apparent fractures, appears bound and determined to get back on the bike as soon as possible, with Vuelta a Castilla next on the agenda. Venga Sastre!

Climb Every Mountain: and, Discovery continues to earn its keep (and beg for sponsors) in Paris-Nice, as Popo snags a mountain finish in a sweet tactical ride, and Rebellin continues his day-old grip on the yellow jersey, for which I'm particularly grateful given my ongoing extreme annoyance with David Millar, though I'm still pointlessly rooting for Bobby Julich to grow wings in this race. You just wait 'til the next Classic, you shameless naysayers! Finally, in American race news, the Longsjo Classic is introducing a time-trial in 2007, and as it's a category in which the Americans have particularly smoked in recent years, I'm excited to see who turns up and justifies a long schlep along the Mass Pike to the glory that is Fitchburg. Woo-hoo!

Ciao Italia (e Francia)!

The Rain in Spain: well, all may now be sunny in Spanish skies, assuming the prosecutors' unsurprising appeal of the Op Puerto case closure gets tanked, but over the rest of Europe abuse is still pouring on the beleaguered peloton and its OP-tainted inhabitants. AG2R's Lavenu is incensed that riders clearly cheated and won't be punished (apropos of nothing, am I the only one wondering if any rider on any team not caught up in this scandal had the discretion to use another source besides the notorious Dr. Fuentes?), the organizer of the Vuelta, no friend to UCI, is urging them to go ahead and ferret out all concerned, and the Tour finds it "inconceivable" that the rogues caught "red-handed" should ever return to the peloton. And of course, what would doping be without Kelme leftover/grievously misnamed Jesus Manzano crying about how his lawyer was offered 180 thousand euros to go away, which, tragically, appears not to have worked--look, if *I* pay it, will you finally? Meantime, UCI, never one to shut its yap no matter how many times it's discredited by its own disgusting behavior, shall "absolutely" soldier on in its persecution of parties rightly or wrongly disgraced. God, doesn't anyone just run bike races anymore?

Break Like the Wind: over at Paris-Nice, new CSC signup/breakaway remnant really? Alexandr Kolobnev? nicely proved his worth to Bjarne Riis' Basso-smacked squad by just holding off the charging peloton at the line to take stage 2, as an oblivious (though afterwards typically good-natured) Tom Boonen mistakenly raised his arms in victory. Ouch! And today, one of Manolo Saiz' squandered genius jailbaits, now-Disco's Alberto Contador, thrillingly took an exhausting (multiple Cat 2s, a Cat 1 finish) mountain stage away from both an early break and a pounding Davide Rebellin, who took the leader's jersey off poor bonking Pellizotti as the struggling sprinter gacked off the back. And, with a fairly quiet American presence so far--surprising too, in light of the last few years' results--it was nice to see we love Levi Leipheimer in the day's top 10. Which begs the question, with Levi bearing such a fine palmares indeed at the shorter stage races the last couple of seasons, is Disco actually going to back him as he deserves with Contador already so smokin' this season, or will they make the youngster earn his place with a series of occasional stage wins and give Levi at least something remotely resembling what he signed up for (then had to settle for)? Allez Levi! And, over at Tirreno-Adriatico, Robbie "the Ego" McEwen snagged the first sprint, with Pozzato, we love Paolo Bettini, we love Oscar Freire and Ivan Gutierrez set to scare the @#$$ out of everybody the rest of the ride. No offense to Bettini, but Oscar was in the tank with injuries last season, so go Freire!

The Wounded: My, it's an ugly start to the season for the peloton, with Danilo Di Luca out of Tirreno with the flu, Boonen napped out from a cold, Basso's knee thwapped harder in the Tour of California stage 1 pileup worse'n initially thought, no-luck classics god Hincapie setting his revised sights on the Tour of Georgia while his arm heals, and T-Mobile purged of late by a particularly unappealing stomach virus. On the plus side, young comeback king Saul Raisin continues his astonishing recovery from his near-fatal brain injury, taking to the bike for his "Raisin' Hope" foundation and raising Credit Agricole's hopes that he'll soon be back in their midst. Get well soon, the lot of you!

True Confessions

Gripe of the Week: Forgive me for being a broken record on this point, but can we please all stop the endless media ass-kissing of St. David Millar for admitting he doped (most recently wah-wahing after his Paris-Nice prologue tt win)? Yes, it's very nice that unlike everyone else who's guilty he actually copped to it in a timely manner. Indeed, under other circumstances, and if he weren't so self-congratulatory about it, it'd even be admirable. But it's not as if he admitted it after a positive test, and it's not like some random guy's unidentifiable blood bag was code-named after Lassie and found hundreds of miles away from him for God's sake--he was sitting there in his @#$%% hotel room with it when he was busted! What the hell else could he have done but suck it up? Frankly, it almost makes me want to cheer for some amped-up hoser openly jamming a needle in his rump in front of the cameras instead. You won clean, Boy Scout--we know, you've wept and preened for the press for a hundred hours already--but you're hopefully not the only one, so shut the hell up and ride without asking for a freakin' medal after every race! Y'know, when I was but a tiny tot, I took a few stickers from a store on a dare and immediately felt so horrible I ran back in and put them back. That was the absolute end of my life of crime, and I wasn't even caught. Ya think I ran around crying for a ticker-tape parade over it?

Paris-Nice Job Pellizotti!: After a lively Stage 1 where Jean-Patrick Nazon unexpectedly (though handily) took the sprint, stage two excruciatingly reeled in lone breakaway leftover Thomas Voeckler within a kilometer of the line, Quick Step and Lampre inexplicably began reeling around like drunks tossed onto the pavement after last call, and Pellizotti of all people attacked out of nowhere (and with no discernible reaction from anybody) to coast over the line with buckets of time to showcase his jersey full-on for the cameras. Was I the only one completely taken aback by this? Bennati, if you're gonna talk smack about a guy like Petacchi, explain yourself!

Manolo-no, Not Again: Manolo Saiz, asked about his Op Puerto vindication and unwilling to talk before he consulted with his lawyers until two seconds later when he did anyway, said that unfortunately it wasn't a "personal satisfaction," but that pleasingly, his "family and friends" have been "strengthened." Like Roberto Heras and Joseba Beloki, you goon?! Aaaiiigggghhh!
Meanwhile, in perhaps the most hilarious piece of news to come out in weeks, the teams have begun weighing in on the pointless destruction of Op Puerto and how they would've been glad to help the Spaniards if they'd only been asked--in fact, Bouyges Telecom's general manager asserted that not only was he eager to hand over his boys' DNA samples to the investigators, but he encouraged Johan Bruyneel to come along with him with Basso's sample in hand in order to compare it and clear Prince Charming on the spot--and surprisingly, Johan refused. Hmmmm...on second thought, I better stop right there.

Jan Ullrich Contract Watch: I wish, but Wolfgang Strohband for one seems to think it's possible, claiming today that Jan might come out of retirement. Unfortunately, this looks a little less likely in the face of allegations that Ullrich's lawyers sought a deal in which Jan would pay a fine in exchange for the Germans dropping their investigation--which, as the German prosecutor noted, was rejected because it amounted to a guilty plea, which in turn required some actual evidence. Well, if they don't have any this late in the game, oughtn't they drop it anyway? And, in the last bit of legal drama I can stomach tonight, I see Quick Step manager Patrick "30 YEARS OF DOPING" Lefevre has decided to smoke out the offending in-house rider turncoat who sold him to the press by asking all his boys to sue the newspaper too, and seeing who refuses--so far, with the entire Paris-Nice squad apparently knuckling under to this wily demand, we can rule out Tom Boonen at least. Good work, Nancy Drew!


Olive Branch: On a positive note--and man, it's nice to see one in this sport--the embattled team Unibet has apparently been asked to ride Milano-San Remo. That's really sweet, and bodes quite well for the Giro I hope. ASO, you sure despite the righteousness of your position with regard to the ProTour as a whole you don't want to follow this noble example with regard to this really rather likeable team?

Operacion Pointless

De Nada: Sure they doped. Lots. But suitcases of euros, EPO-boosted blood, mystery race-day skin patches, congratulatory phone calls and medical proceedings so unusual that the patients preferred to be code-named by their family pets weren't enough at the time to get you nailed criminally in Spain so long as the riders' health wasn't actually harmed, so Operacion Puerto, it seems, is closed. Natch, the prosecutors are planning to appeal, and none of this kept Pat "Dick" McQuaid from rushing to reassure the momentarily relieved riders that he's still gonna fry them personally, and there's also nothing stopping the Swiss and Germans, now in possession of the allegedly incriminating documentation, from remaining both irked and litigious. Then again, so are the riders' attorneys, so I see lots of additional futile bloodshed ahead on all sides. Meantime, the 2006 Tour was decimated for no (*&^$#@ reason, and we love Joseba Beloki, Jorg Jaksche, and two entire Spanish squads, not to mention the magnificently flawed Jan Ullrich, were completely destroyed for all history in the process for no reason. Nice work, !@#$%^%$$!

Paris-No-More-Mr.-Nice-Guy: well, a French court has formally rejected Unibet's last-minute bid to force ASO to admit them at the Paris-Nice startline tomorrow, while, in yet another excruciating knee in the nuts to these innocent pawns, their pastel-clad ProTour wildcard compatriots Astana get to gear up for the Prologue and a lively week on the roads. Damn, UCI, I know this one's more on ASO's head, but couldn't you have done better by these guys? Notwithstanding this debacle, I'm dearly hoping more Americans will be seduced into this beautiful sport by the presence of a truly stellar US lineup, including short-stage-race genius Levi Leipheimer, time trial god Dave Zabriskie, everyone's favorite bulldog Chris Horner, and, of course, 2005 champ we love Bobby Julich. Allez Bobby!

Vuelta a Holy Crap It's Windy!: After a wind-whipped smackdown of Euskaltel-Euskadi mountain munchkins at the Vuelta a Murcia also took poor we love Carlos Sastre out of the race entirely with a twisted back and bashed-up hip, Thursday's stage was wisely cancelled because the wind at the top of the day's Cat 1 climb was presumably going to twirl the lighter boys off the mountain like so many Wicked Witches on their bikes in a cyclone. Luckily, the festivities resumed Friday, with Graeme Brown, who's really on quite a tear this season already, taking the sprint over Unibet's Baden Cooke (like the poor bastards over there really need any more bad luck), and jack-of-all-races/Caisse d'Epargne king Alejandro Valverde taking the stage, and the leader's jersey, ahead of tomorrow's finale. Venga Valverde!

Paris-Not-So-Nice

Race to the Sue: Yep, the padded gloves are off, as in the wake of ASO's promising, well, promise to consider Unibet favorably for wildcards--and subsequent re-rejection for the Paris-Nice startline anyway--Unibet seeks the French equivalent of a temporary injunction to force ASO to let 'em start on Sunday. More, they blasted all the Grand Tour organizers, demanding an end to the 'cartel' that so unjustly keeps them from competing. Y'know, I'm not without sympathy for Unibet, who was apparently completely pimped by the ProTour as its sacrificial lamb to the Grand Tours and Classics in its desperation to broker an emergency agreement ahead of Paris-Nice and Tirreno. But really, isn't that UCI's fault? The GT organizers have been, if nothing else, relentlessly honest from day one about their hatred of the entire useless corporate ProTour system being rammed down their throats. And what does UCI do when they reach detente, and the GTs agree to suck up 18 teams at every start line stealing spots from their sentimental, if irrational, hometown-favorite Continental squads? Why, they helpfully jam two more unwanted ProTour licenses up the GT's @#$$@ in a move utterly guaranteed to piss them off. Okay, Astana the GTs have to cave to, if only because it would be an outrage to any true lover of the sport--as I genuinely believe the organizers are-- to deny the start line of every--or any--race to Alexander Vinokorouv. But Unibet? Them they can target, if quite cruelly (and to Unibet's credit, they graciously agreed to wear those ridiculous question-mark jerseys whenever asked)--no offense to the truly fine Jose Rujano and Baden Cooke, but they're not yet in Vino's league. And sure, Unibet is in fact suing the pants off UCI for breach of contract, which should be resolved sometime around the time their team leaders fossilize. But is it even one iota ASO's fault these guys paid UCI eight gazillion euros for benefits they chose not to deliver by selling 'em out to keep the peace in Brussels? Take out your wrath on UCI solely, Unibet, and leave the GTs alone!

Boonen et Aequm: before we head into the joys of the Vuelta a Murcia, permit me a belated nod to the Belgian races--after a disappointing (for him, though I imagine Filippo Pozzato's quite happy) Het Volk, Tom Boonen handily redeemed himself, or more accurately was redeemed, in the next day's Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, with a smashing chase by a beautifully unified QuickStep overcoming a heroic, and nearly successful, breakaway with upstart--and perhaps underrated--wildcard reject Unibet well in the mix. Should it really have been Boonen's race though--or ought he and the QS leadership have let Gert Steegmans take it? After all, it's one thing for your lead-out to completely exhaust himself and have to peel away well ahead of the sprinter before the finish line; but Steegmans had to sit up in a victory cheer for his leader for quite a handful of seconds to avoid taking Boonen out well ahead of the line. Either way, cheers to excellent sport Steegmans for doing his job without whining, and for Boonen's typical grace in giving everyone else the credit, and to Boonen's 7th win so early in the season--deserved, if not necessarily quite earned. And I see the battle of the egos heating up (among sprinters? the shock!) with Daniele Bennati, who smacked Petacchi all over Algarve, noting that poor sap Ale-Jet, and Robbie McEwen while we're at it, can't help but fade into the sunset against him and Boonen as the geriatric sods are already over 30, with no future but decay. Remember you said that in 4 years when some next-generation jailbait sings your decrepitude, Benna!

All Together Now

Magna Carta: well, the meeting's been held, the season's been saved, and everyone reserves the right to hate each other's guts for all eternity. The upshot: this is an interim agreement, so don't get your hopes up, because everyone reserves the right to sue later if they don't hammer out a final resolution by the end of the season; the 18 'accepted' ProTour teams get to ride all the Grand Tour/associated races; Unibet and Astana get to wildcard in, with the caveat that Unibet may still need to wear those random question-mark jerseys in France, and the Grand Tours still don't like 'em; and finally, the Grand Tours won't be involved in any way in letting the winner of the ProTour white leader's jersey be awarded it within a thousand miles of one of their podiums. Not bad, IPCT--on to Paris-Nice!

Jaksche All, Folks: in the wake of the Deutschland Tour brazenly tanking ex-Liberty Seguros refugee/OP nonconvict Jorg Jaksche's deal with Volksbank by threatening to kick them out if they brought to the boy to the start line, or even simply aboard, poor Jorg has become the latest OP victim whose career has been destroyed on pure speculation--yep, he's officially retired. Now, no doubt Jaksche's ex-boss Manolo Saiz seems rather, well, compromised from all anecdotal reports. And with the Germans in receipt of buckets of OP documents they have yet to translate into Spanish, it's quite conceivable that some, well, unflattering revelations against one or more riders may someday be forthcoming. But Beloki, Jaksche, and Ullrich are all in the land of the departed now, while Mancebo, Sevilla, Scarponi, Prince Ivan and pretty much the rest of Liberty Seguros, totally coincidentally the promising youngsters I'm sure, all quite similarly situated, remain riding. And as far as I can tell, it's largely UCI and WADA, with their career-death-by-innuendo bull!@#$ leakmaster rampages, who are to blame for this. This is manifestly unjust--an arbitrary witchhunt, I would argue, is far worse than a slash-and-burn all-or-nothing slimefest, as bias, passion, favoritisim and ego dictate the victims--who have, after all, tested positive for nothing--with unchecked impunity. Free Joseba Beloki dammit--aaarrrrrgggghhhh!

Paul, Who Should I Vote For?

Pacifist No More: Y'know, I generally think of myself as a gentle, peaceable person, and indeed I've never laid a hand on anyone in anger in my life, but I'm starting to think that someone ought to thwap Al Trautwig upside the head with a stick. I'm very sure he means well. I can even stomach him covering a sport like, say, gymnastics, in part because it's barely crossed my radar screen since the '76 Olympics. But this guy's already subjected us to his coverage of this gorgeous sport for a whole year now, and nonetheless, this week's edition of Cyclysm Sundays shows that his idiot quotient remains beyond the pale. Bad enough that he can't think of a single rider besides Basso or Vinokorouv who might be interesting to watch in the Tour de France this year, after a solid hour of coverage on the subject by people with actual knowledge of the sport. More irritating yet is his declaration that CSC is "rudderless" for the Grand Tours two seconds after Bjarne Riis reaffirms multiple 2006 podium finisher we love Carlos Sastre's leadership in '07, dissing the man who saved CSC's @#$ from the Basso debacle with both humility and grace by his ignorance. But he honest to God could not get through 60 consecutive seconds without saying something beyond moronic. I mean, you've got cue cards to help you! You're sitting next to Paul Sherwen and the deceptively knowledgeable Bob Roll for heck's sake, I'm sure they can give you some tips at commercial! Americans by and large have enough to learn about this sport as it is--give it to someone who cares, why dontcha?

The Floyd Landis Propaganda Hour: on the plus side, it was really interesting and sort of heartening to see Cyclysm's shameless bias in favor of Floyd Landis, particularly in the face of we love Phil Liggett's recent declaration that Landis is being shafted--Paul's understanding being that the process is grossly flawed, and Bob outright asserting that Landis wouldn't dope, though I suppose with Landis' personal coach right there the whole time to give his input one really mightn't want to say otherwise out of sheer kindness if nothing else. In that context, it was particularly gag-inducing to see Pat "Dick" McQuaid weighing in on the importance of due process and fair play to the sport, pretty impressive from someone who spent the last 8 months destroying the careers some of the best riders of the current and coming generations on crap unsupported speculation and the last 2 months trying to get the Classics to either bow to his petty whining will or shut down and decimate cycling entirely to serve his ego.

Gripe of the Day: Speaking of Op Puerto, and with all due respect to Ivan Basso, for whom I cheered wildly in the Giro I must confess, seeing him riding in Discovery team kit and being butt-kissed by every swooning cameraman lighting his lovely cheekbones with unending care while Jan Ullrich is sitting somewhere scarfing beer and schnitzel as his bike gathers dust is setting me into an absolute rage. Whether they're both innocent, both guilty, or one and the other, Ullrich is getting positively !@#$%^ relative to Prince Charming, and someone from Jan's legal team ought to be making someone pay. You suck, UCI!

Last Tango in Brussels

Countdown to Paris: With Patrice Clerc's nasty threat to the teams that if you don't show up for Paris-Nice, don't even bother trying to show up for the Tour de France, UCI's persistent brass-knuckling of any ProTour team who grumbles about riding any race that matters, the riders utterly flummoxed not knowing what the hell they're supposed to ride and how the hell to plan their form for the season, and Paris-Nice but 10 days away and counting, the ProTour teams association hastily met in Brussels and frantically, and quite diplomatically, urged the Grand Tour organizers and UCI to attend a "last-chance" meeting on Monday to save pro cycling, without even formally taking a position as to who they're going to blame if the whole thing falls apart and the livelihoods of their soigneurs, mechanics, masseuses, doctors, management, and riders are blown to bits by the gross stupidity and narcissistic testosterone-studded blustering of Pat "Dick" McQuaid, I mean, by the confluence of many different factors all of which are equally responsible for this disaster. Now, I gotta say I am almost entirely on the side of the Grand Tour organizers here, if only because I have a deep-seated problem with the most beautiful and historic races on the planet being held hostage by a passel of transient petty dictatorial bureaucrats. But really, motivation-by-fat-paycheck aside, these boys do like to race--can anyone watching Jens Voigt spring off the front of the main field the second Bjarne snaps the chain off his collar really doubt it?--so can any of these raging egomaniacs please cut the strutting long enough to free the poor riders from their ridiculous limbo?!

Benna-Jet: In actual racing, the Volta a Comunidad Valenciana is smokin' along, with Daniele Bennati taking 2 sprints even over a resurgent Alessandro Petacchi (and proving that his one-stage triumph-by-mechanical-problem was no aberration), with one more showdown to go. More, ex-Liberty Seguros jailbait Alberto Contador took a giant climbing stage over Alejandro Valverde, leaving Valverde the leader's jersey ahead of the last sprint stage tomorrow but showing himself as the serious future threat he seems to be. Y'know, one can say a lot of unflattering things about Manolo Saiz, and given my complete if not entirely rational bias towards we love Roberto Heras I certainly have and absolutely will, but between snagging and molding both Contador and Luis Leon Sanchez, I must concede he's got a hell of an eye for, and way with, incipient talent. Right on Alberto!

The French Revolution

Mon Dieu!: Irked by the natural decision of French teams Bouyges-Telecom, Cofidis & Francaise de Jeux to ignore the UCI's idiot demand that they boycott their hometown ride Paris-Nice, UCI has now stooped from mere strong encouragement to active threats, blustering that they'll whack the teams with "severe sanctions" if they fail to fall into line with the rest of the ProTour squads--who, if my understanding is right, didn't actually promise Pat "Dick" McQuaid anything with regard to Paris-Nice when they met with him last week at the Tour de California anyway. The renegades, however, remain unimpressed, politely accusing McQuaid of being "totalitarian," and reasonably noting that their ProTour contracts in fact require them to attend it and other ASO events as well, so what is a poor team to do? Unibet, meantime, which has a lot more to lose in biting the hand that just fed it a license, wisely targeted an impassioned plea solely to the race organizers to, for the love of cycling, treat them with the respect they were due and the races they were promised, and, in a more likely effective tactic, playing the classic schoolyard "wuss card" by taunting the Grand Tours for presumably being afraid of Jose Rujano taking another King of the Mountains jersey or GT podium spot away from one of their talentless pampered lily-livered Continental also-rans who couldn't possibly earn it otherwise. When in doubt, emasculate!

The Spanish Civil War: I see that the generally innocous decision of Illes Balears to bail on team sponsorship, apparently on the dual grounds of crap TV coverage of Spanish races and thus their jerseys, and the whole doping thing being a less than attractive image for a tourist destination to project, has turned into a bit of a political hoo-ha, with a home party objecting that the whole thing bit anyway from the start because it was cheating domestic talent by blowing 3x the entire sports budget for local athletes on some team from Pamplona. Now, though the end of the sponsorship would therefore seem to be a good thing to these guys, for me, it's a freakin' disaster--for the life of me, while I had a reasonably competent handle on "Illes Balears," I have no idea how to pronounce "Caisse d'Epargne," particularly "Caisse." Anyone?

The Wounded: Well, we love George Hincapie is fortunately recovering nicely from plate-and-screw-inserting surgery to stabilize his nasty broken wrist from the Tour of California--and an unsurprisingly amazing job from Hincapie riding on that thing and in fact leading the charge for Levi the rest of that stage, by the way--but Johan Bruyneel has all but confirmed that George won't be riding his beloved Paris-Roubaix, as the cobbles would take him out even if he could already pull off an ordinary road ride by race day. Poor George--Basso, you know he'll similarly work his heart out for you in July, you'd better let him take a stage in the Tour de France! Meantime, big Maggy Backstedt, who just had his shoulder plate and screw removed from his track smack in October, still has an outside shot at making it to the Hell of the North. And, in yet another tale of cyclist masochism, Karsten Kroon didn't even realize he'd snapped a rib at the Tour of California Stage 1 pileup til this week, well after he'd finished the whole Tour anyway. Hamilton buzzing along with a busted collarbone, these guys toughing it out with useful upper body parts in disarray--these boys make the rest of the planet's injured athletes look like a pack of toddlers whining over boo-boos!

Baby, It's Ull Right Now: so with Jan gone, the accolades are pouring in, and though the press seems unapologetic for hounding him out of the sport, he's at least got Miguel Indurain and Eddy Merkcx on his side, admiring his tremendous and long-running career and lamenting the brutal psychological pressure he unfairly faced over his compatriots. So in the spirit of similar sensitivity, is there any particular reason the press felt compelled to publish approximately 1500 interviews this week with every single other Op Puerto implicated-and-dumped rider--some with reps as bad as Jan's, or worse--who signed a contract with another team this
year? Give him a day, for goodness' sakes, before rubbing his nose in it again!

Ull Over!

Rich-o, Suave: well, he's out--despite a hope-inducing recent training, or I guess pleasure, ride in Mallorca with ex-teammates Kloden and Kessler, Jan Ullrich is off the bike for good, and into a presumably lucrative "consulting" role (I imagine on the nutritional end) for upstart Austrians Volksbank. Jan, though, was adamant that this is a joyous, fully voluntary move, insisting he had 7 offers to ride including several from ProTour teams, but, one Tour de France (and pretty much everything else as well) win later, he was just plain satisfied with his career. As any cyclist should be, with his stellar palmares--but I call bull@#$% at least on the ProTour teams, Jan! You didn't want to defend last year's victories? You didn't want to pound out one more winning time trial, one more stage or podium finish at the Tour? My !@#!

Now, I've heard suggestions that poor Jan is just plain tired out by all the doping hoo-ha, and just too depressed by all the accusations to continue. But hell, if that's the case, couldn't he have just pigged out on schnitzel and Ecstasy like he always did in the off-seasons to soothe his soul? It's called displacement, people! Regardless, this really bites, and I'm truly sorry to see him go. Yap, yap, yap, he's a filthy convicted Armstrong also-ran who never valued the inestimable power of his natural machine--but still he triumphed over similarly tanked-up counterparts who even so couldn't match his record. Yap, yap, yap, he never fully realized the promise of a beautiful early career--well, read it and weep, he never really went downhill despite the constant unwarranted press slaughter and persistent (and, given his interest in winning races throughout the season, pointless) comparison with brilliant freakishly focused one-trick pony (and I say that in the most complimentary way) perpetual icon Lance Armstrong. Pudged out early in the season to a monstrously bloated 2 or 5 kilos over his race weight, unmotivated by internal team backbiting, injured, too lazy to take the initiative up the mountainside, or just plain whining, Jan even at his worst was a force to overwhelm 99% of the rest of the peloton throughout his career. And does anyone really believe that the fallout from Op Puerto truly fell fairly on the shoulders of all his peers, including the others who haven't tested positive for anything this round? Real and imagined doping aside, he was a pretty good sport too (if no Jens Voigt perhaps) as these boys go, certainly not unconfident but largely gracious in winning and in defeat despite the plague of egomaniacal grandstanding that seems almost a prerequisite for a rider at his level. Condemn Ullrich if you will--and man, will folks ever--hell, I sure have--but I, for one, feel the loss and, on the doping end, can't abide the foul stench of hypocrisy. We'll miss you Jan!

ProTour, ShmoTour

Paris-Nice Try, UCI: well, the gloves are fully off in the ever-evolving war between UCI and Tour de France organizers ASO, the latter of whom announced that the venerable Paris-Nice will take place under the auspices of the French national cycling federation, not the UCI rules. UCI, of course, immediately went over the edge, strongly nudging and then outright barring the ProTour teams from participating. And the teams? Well, perhaps not so in love with the ProTour management scheme as, to their credit, Paris-Nice itself--Cofidis, F. de Jeux, and Bouyges-Telekom, at least, have already told Pat "Dick" McQuaid and UCI to blow, with conflicting reports that Rabobank, T-Mobile and Gerolsteiner may be doing the same. (Only one team either ProTour or continental, incidentally, has had the guts to stick up for poor casualty/ProTour newbie Unibet in this whole disgusting affair, and surprisingly, it's Tinkoff, home of the finest collection of ex-and-alleged-ex-dopers in cycling this side of the late Phonak squad. Ah, the freedom of sponsorship-by-oligarch!) And the riders? Well, not that they're worth consulting on this, but the rider's association CPA issued a nasty press release not unfairly slagging ASO for its stubbornness, but, far better, blasting UCI and you-know-who for putting their battle for "prestige or personal pride" above cycling itself, noting, in perhaps the least of UCI's obnoxious moves, that the Grand Tour organizers had pretty well conceded defeat and okayed co-existence 18 ProTour teams, when UCI just couldn't help itself and tried to jam two more ProTour licenses down the GT organizers throats anyway, setting off the conflagration at hand. Allez, CPA! Meantime, Alessandro Petacchi is just plain ticked, arguing that if the teams bail, the riders are going to rebel, especially since anyone with half an eye on Flanders or Roubaix needs either Paris-Nice or Tirreno for training rides even if they don't, as they all do, value them for their own sakes. Let's see...Paris-Nice: the beloved "Race to the Sun," 80 years old, fondly held in the hearts of thousands as the hallowed home of legends like Sean Kelly and Miguel Indurain, purpose: the beauty of pure sport. ProTour: the beloved nothin', 3 years old, fondly held in the hearts of...oops! no saving that one, purpose: the ugly of pure corporate administrative convenience. Is anyone else thinking it's obvious who should win this one?

California Dreamin': and, it's been a heck of a lively Amgen Tour of California, with the domestic squads surprising the hell out of everyone with their high GC and stage placings, perpetual attack hound we love Jens Voigt taking a stage and very nearly the yellow jersey off Levi Leipheimer, Leipheimer solving that threat by absolutely smoking Jens--his nearest rival, no less, over guys like Fabian Cancellara--by 18 seconds in the second time trial, JJHaedo and Jason McCartney proving exceedingly worthy new additions to the rival teams, master tactician Paolo Bettini trying out his legs to great effect for an earlier win and then nearly taking the sprint today, and Stewie O'Grady nearly blowing apart Levi's near-insurmountable lead over him by taking advantage of a 9 man breakaway that just got disorganized and snatched up at the line. Even better, actual Americans have shown up in droves to watch the race, a promising sign for a Lanceless USA. Vai Levi!

Gripe of the Day (well, week): He's a brilliant rider, and along with Alexander Vinokorouv the most likely winner of the 2007 Tour de France. He's Discovery's new star and Lance's spoonfed handpicked protege, and he flat-out nailed his early-stage photo op ostentatiously stopping his bike to kiss his wife and bambina. And indeed, he's uncommonly, uncommonly pretty. But Levi Leipheimer is Discovery's leader for the Tour of California, so while I understand "Cyclysm Sundays" has to pimp their new camera-grabbing man-candy poster boy to ensure decent ratings for the season, can we please, please cut the "Ivan Basso Leads Discovery" lead-in crap after the commercials and give Levi, who's been dope-slapped enough by the team's late signing and uncommonly gracious to boot, fair credit for his status in this one race?

Jan Ullrich Contract Watch: like it matters, even if Volksbank wants him, with the Swiss vowing to continue their relentless pursuit of him even if he tries to snake out of it by retiring, the Spaniards ignoring his lawyers' pleas not to turn over the Op Puerto blood bags to the Germans, and pretty well everyone else claiming to have personally reviewed unreleased documents that will link him to Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes in irrefutable proof of his culpability. Man, let him get through the Monday press conference before lighting the torch on the bonfire, why dontcha?

Amgen EPO Tour of California

Kings of All Marketing: Y'know, it was funny enough last year when pro "doping bad!" cycling allowed Amgen, manufacturer of legitimate lifesaving blood booster/nefarious banned cyclist's-best-friend EPO (yep, what stripped we still Roberto Heras of his last Vuelta) to freakin' sponsor a major bike race. I mean, what better way to accidentally target a select yet lucrative group of consumers, and their pro-athlete wannabe fans, than to plaster your logo over every surface they pass for 6 days straight? But it's just downright hilarious that--oops!--everybody forgot to test the riders at last year's Amgen Tour for EPO. Of course, the sponsor's indignant and the teams shocked and horrified at the oversight, just as the riders surely are when they learn they've totally inadvertently scarfed someone else's, say, asthma meds. Me, I'm looking forward to the 2007 Bob's Exogenous Testosterone (TM) Deutschland Tour. You go, Amgen!

Talking Heads: Well, talks between Tour de France organizers ASO and UCI appear to be on the fritz again, not that Patrice Clerc's "drop dead" blowoff was any indication of impending obstacles, so the fate of Unibet, the ProTour, the Classics, and the cosmos remains unknown. On the plus side, ASO stands firm that Paris-Nice will go forward, so if UCI wants to call their bluff and crush the dreams of their own cyclists to participate in a storied race with more--and more beautiful--history than soulless doomed corporate stooges like UCI will ever achieve, there'll be just that much more room at the start line. By contrast, WADA's "Dick" Pound and Floyd Landis have been nothing but amiably chatty, with Pound continuing to slag doping-scum Landis and Landis continuing to smack Pound for his slimemaster character assassination and brutal preemptive leaks that sunk Landis before he was even on personal notice that the ship had left the dock. Anyone else starting to wish for a nice hostile silence from all parties at this point?

Jan Ullrich Contract Watch: who the hell knows? Well, Jan apparently does at last, and his camp is coyly hyping his upcoming press conference Monday, at which the "good news" about Jan's "professional future" will be revealed. Professional what future--rider? Tell-all author? Ongoing sportsgear endorsement studmuffin? Freelance team management doping, I mean antidoping, consultant? If it were a team that got him, wouldn't they have coughed up the word and gotten a cyclist that seriously expensive into spandex and earning his keep by this point? And while we're at it, Michele Scarponi for heck's sake just got a gig with Acqua e Sapone and Stefano Garzelli. Free Joseba Beloki dammit---aiiiigggghhhh!

Total Carnage!--and A Controversy

The Carnage: Well, after a peaceful yet shocking start to the Amgen Tour of California, with Leipheimer taking the prologue time trial and who-the-hell-is-Slipstream's Jason Donald!? taking 2nd over world tt champ Fabian Cancellara, American wunderkind Dave Zabriskie and everyone else, a not-unusual rolling Stage 1 with a bunch sprint finish descended into total chaos and controversy in a flash two 3-mile circuit laps from the finish line, when apparently very fine youngster Gerold Ciolek, about 6 boys back, hit a traffic spot marking the road and shot sideways, taking down 50 riders including most of the leaders and sprint contenders and, by the rules, blowing not only Leipheimer's chance to keep the yellow leader's jersey on the day, but as far as I'm concerned, with the minute they lost, his chance to win the whole show.

What's so surprising about this, to any newcomers to the sport who may be joining us, is everyone was doing everything right here. While we're at it, although it's the start of the season, most of the European riders have already got their racing legs back under 'em at Challenge Mallorca or the Tour of Qatar, so they should've gotten most of the usual post-rest awkwardness kinked out of them already. Anyhow, T-Mobile's sprint lead-out is on the front left (facing the finish line), controlling the pace. All other the sprint contenders--Quick Step, Ag2R, Predictor/Lotto--are on the front or near to it to set up their boys. And Discovery is exactly where they should have been, up front on the right wrapped around Levi Leipheimer like a blanket. This is the safest place, though frenetic, to be--when a crash happens, it's generally smack in the middle of peloton hell, with about 40 km/hour and 2 inches separating everyone's wheel with no room to swerve to ensure maximum numerical and bodily damage. Ciolek losing it at the front is a freak of the sport. Anyhow, the overall leaders are knocked out of contention in a split-second, half the sprinters are gone, Levi's bloody (and sore today I'm sure) but okay with his left short, calf, and forearm shredded, and the only sprinters left in one piece are Graeme Brown, American Fast Freddy Rodriguez and Thor Hushovd and T-Mobile's Greg Henderson. So Brown takes it, but who cares? Dave Zabriskie already crashed and abandoned earlier, but is luckily fairly unscathed, after banging his head on the tarmac, so so much for his Stage 5 time trial and shot at the overall. Basso's whacked his knee in a lousy start to his season. The rest of the GC is decimated. Which brings us to...

The Controversy: The crash happened in the second-to-last lap--waaaaay back. If you're close enough to the line, generally 3 km I think, the race organizers will often "comp" the field some time in the event of a crash order to keep the general classification playing field even by not punishing the main contenders with the actual amount of time they lost so that a lesser rider will inevitably take the overall a few days (or seconds, if we're just talking a one-day race) from now. No excuse this far back--in what the European teams must be seeing as colossal home-town coddling for the second-rate Americans, the organizers comp everyone anyway, ironically taking the rightful lead from a boy on a US team, but giving every other American in the race a colossal bull@#$% advantage and Levi Leipheimer the unearned gift of wearing the yellow jersey. I love Levi--but this is total crap. The rules are what they are for a reason--a recognition of the leader's talents close to the line, but an acceptance of the dangers of cycling for even them farther back. And like the Europeans need another reason to think of US cycling as the fruitless training camp for perpetual talentless neo-pros wishing they had the ability to race with the big boys overseas? I call bull@#$% Amgen Tour of California!

Cycling 101

Welcome, Cycling Newbies!: So, Versus is miraculously showing a bike race on actual American TV, you've set out some chips and beer and are ready to watch, and yet all you know about cycling is that American Lance Armstrong kicked limp French @#$ 7 straight times after battling back from cancer and inspiring a generation of young athletes to want to grow up and date rock stars, and oh yeah, some Mennonite guy made us look like a bunch of dirtbags and worse, morons, for taking drugs then winning a race right in front of everybody the very next year. Well, there's so more more to know and love about this sport, and frankly, it helps if you understand exactly why it's interesting for the 6 hours before the winner even crosses the finish line. So to help you on your way to enlightenment, I humbly present this highly incomplete Cycling Dictionary:

Allez, Allez!: What you yell at the Tour de France at the riders as they pass you by, unless you're American, in which case you wear huge cowboy hats or paint your beer gut with the American flag and scream in English, humiliating us all.

Autobus: the @#$-end of the *peloton*. This is where the guys who can't keep up in any particular stage grind along in misery with some jerkface on a scooter ramming a camera up their sweating miserable nose for the sole purpose of abusing them on the news that night. On a mountain stage, it's generally the *sprinters*, who have a lot of heavy carcass to schlep up an Alp; in the flats, it's the tiny little *climbers*, who get whacked around by the wind like raindrops in a nor'easter.

Breakaway: When an individual or small group takes off on their own ahead of the main group, in the unlikely event that they'll be allowed to stay away and take the win. Great chance for the camera to focus on the garish logo on your butt, to the delight of your check-writing sponsor. If you're a threat on the day to a big name or in a long stage race to an overall contender, you'll get chased down by the group, sometimes within moments of the line. If you're not, and you don't *crack*, congratulations! You just took a win.

Classics: some of the oldest, most beautiful, and most prestigious races on earth. Some races to know: Paris-Nice (Race to the Sun), Paris-Roubaix (the Hell of the North). Many of the best of these riders are superdomestiques or stage winners in the *Grand Tours*.

Climbers: twee little mountain goats who can climb six Alps in a day and get there first. Sometimes bigger, but generally only if they're *Grand Tour* contenders for the overall. Notable: We love Roberto Heras; Michael "the Chicken" Rasmussen; everyone from Euskaltel-Euskadi.

Crack: I've been lauded in the press for weeks as a threat for the win. This stage is the key to my success on this earth. But oh crap! I'm exhausted and can barely turn over the pedals at this point--I'm straggling off the back end of even the autobus--I've cracked. Don't, for the love of God, read the sports pages tomorrow, especially if you're Belgian and at the top of your game every other day this season.

Continental teams: the second tier of bike teams, behind the *ProTour*. More likely factors in their own countries' races, you're probably here on your way up, or on your way out, until this year, when you've been blacklisted by the big teams over doping, and hired by one of the newer Continental squads who want your tainted carcass anyway.

Crash: yep, the cringe-inducing clips you see again and again. Causes: melting tar; misjudged turns; touch of the wheels in the peloton; some clown interfering with your line in the last few yards of a sprint. Recent of note that isn't too tragic to mention here: poor George Hincapie, headed for the win at Paris-Roubaix until his steerer tube snapped going over the cobbles in a disastrous mechanical.

the Devil: yes, yes, the Prince of Darkness; also, I swear, an elderly gent who dresses like him, running beside the riders at every single European race and shaking his trident and yelling. Apparently, he's got sponsors now, and has a nice new van with logos all over it.

Directeur Sportif: basically, your non-rider team leader, who sets the strategy and can make or break your career at least on that team. Often brilliant ex-racers themselves, they will throw you under the bus in two seconds if you test positive for dope no matter who told you to take it.

Domestique: helper riders, sort of like drones, except they can completely crush every single other athlete on earth except maybe the guy they're helping out, and probably then in other races anyway. Common duties: killing themselves setting a blistering pace to tire out other threats to their *team leader*; going back to the *team car* for food and drinks for their teammates; riding in front of their team leader to take the brunt of the wind so he can sit on their wheel in the slipstream and conserve energy.

Doping: more on this in other posts, but if you're a naive purist, you think this is the aberrational amorality of a select few mercenaries who are ruining the sport with their selfishness; if you're a paranoid conspiracy theorist, you think everyone's taking everything and the riders are but pawns in a chess game played from on high; and if you're a typical European fan, you don't see the fuss, and my it's hot waiting for the peloton on the mountainside today, is there any more wine back there in the cooler?

Feed zone: lunchtime! It's on the fly. *Soigneurs* stand by and hand out *musettes* and you eat as you ride. Occasionally, a minor snafu will occur, and an errant mobile lunch bag will tangle in someone's bike, setting them into a rage.

General Classification: The overall lead. There are individual stages within longer races, and you technically needn't even win one to take the GC, so long as you place well consistently, though usually this is not the case.

Grand Tour: there are three, and you haven't heard of two of 'em: the Giro d'Italia in May; the Tour de France in July; and the Vuelta a Espana in August. Their organizers, and those of the *classics* are currently in a nasty battle over which *ProTour* teams get to ride them when. Names to know: comely Discovery pinup/'06 Giro winner Ivan Basso; endless Lance nemesis Jan Ullrich; '06 Vuelta champ/blowing it off for the Tour this year Alexander Vinokorouv; Alejandro Valverde; Gilberto Simoni. Allez allez!

Jersey: in the Grand Tours, different ones denote King of the Mountains, Points leader (determined by your placing at little sprints at various points in the course), Young Rider, *General Classification* (the overall leader). Overall is Maglia Rosa (pink) for the Giro, Maillot Jaune (yellow) for the Tour; Maillot d'Oro (gold) for the Vuelta.

Lead-Out: the set up by a group of racers ahead of a sprint for their team leader. It's all about the last two k, baby. They set the pace for the final run to the line, keep their boy enough in front to have a chance but not so much in front that he tires too early, get him in position on the road, then get the hell out of the way.

Mechanic: be nice to him, especially because your bloated salary is the reason he's not paid nearly enough. These guys are geniuses, and a mechanical or flat at the wrong time can absolutely lose you the race. No podium babes, no champagne, no glory, but hopefully the satisfaction of a job well done.

Musette: the little cloth lunch bags that sling over your shoulder like messenger bags that riders get in the *feed zone*, typically filled with real food like little pastries, fruit, and sandwiches instead of the disgusting gels and other energy crap you'd expect. Discarded by the side of the road, these are highly prized souvenirs by those of us who think a sweat-stained bag filled with half-eaten food from a top rider is really, truly a gift tossed by the gods.

Operacion Puerto: the preeminent doping scandal of 2006, and not the one that tripped up Floyd Landis. Liberty Seguros, how could you?

Peloton: the main body of riders and the most dangerous spot in the race; also called the "main field". These guys are riding inches apart, and frequently crash with disastrous and occasionally career-ending results. Watch for a team to literally surround their leader like a cocoon to protect him from jostling by other teams, and keep him towards the front out of the way.

Podium Babes: if you're a guy and you win, you get a photo op with two models, champagne you can spray, and your trophy. You can't fraternize with the racers, even if you wanted to with a guy who's just sweated in spandex for six hours, though George Hincapie recently married an ex one. If you're a woman racer, you don't get Podium Babes of any gender, but then, you barely get paid either so it's the least of your troubles.

ProTour: a nascent organization of top teams that pretty much everyone hates, but the upshot is it's the best teams and the best riders, with the biggest sponsors and the deepest pockets.
Premier US team: Discovery, Lance's team, which just pulled its sponsorship. Others we love: CSC, Euskaltel-Euskadi.

Soigneur: manservant to the best riders on earth. Fill bottles, pack/hand out food, do everything else.

Sponsors: the corporation that pays your bills and makes you wear garish spandex. You have to remember to zip up your jersey as you cross the line if you win, which is quite a trick in a hotly-disputed sprint, or else your sponsor will go postal that you've blown the publicity that justifies your inconsequential billboard existence.

Sprinter: just what he sounds like. Sprints are generally flat stages. Guys to know: Milram's Alessandro Petacchi and we love Erik Zabel; Ag2R's Thor Hushovd; Quick Step's babelicious Tom Boonen.

Stage Races: often 5 to 7 days, there are lots of these. Nice to win: Deutschland Tour; Tour de Suisse; US's spankin' new Amgen Tour of California. If you're a pig like Lance Armstrong, you'll basically flip off your ex-superdomestique Floyd Landis when you pass him on a stage. Watch for: we love Discovery's Levi Leipheimer, Jan Ullrich.

Superdomestique: No man is an island. This guy will win or lose you the big races; the man who would be a team leader anywhere else. Examples: former Lance lieutenant big George Hincapie; we love CSC's Jens Voigt.

Team Car: You've got a mic to it. It has your team manager for strategy and encouragement, a doctor who will patch you up after a fall while you're riding, a mechanic to change your wheel in 5 seconds or give you a new bike; and a guy who will hand you food and drinks. Can ride right next to the stage leader; otherwise, you've got to schlep to the end of the peloton to get back to them.

Team Doctor: well, there's the team doctor, and there's the nonteam doctor you see on the sly. Neither are in great repute at the moment.

Tifosi: Italian for fans. You paint your favorite's name on the road; hold up banners lauding riders both dead and alive; give a discreet push to a zonked-out rider as he slogs uphill; throw water over them to cool them at your own risk; hand out newspaper at the top of the mountain to protect the boys from the wind on the downhill, which they cram in their jerseys; and stick your digital camera out blindly into the course, taking out an occasional rider with a busted nose to the distinct displeasure of both the rider and the *directeur sportif*. Fans to love: Belgians, who have perhaps the proudest history of cycling on earth; Euskaltel-Euskadi's band of orange-clad Basque fanatics.

Time Trial: a race against the clock in an excruciating position on a hard-to-control bike. Getting to the point where if you can't master this, you're off the podium at the Grand Tours. Of note: we love CSC's Dave Zabriskie; Floyd Landis but not this year; Levi Leipheimer; current world champ Fabian Cancellara.

World Championships: separate disciplines for road and time trial. All year, you get to wear the World Champion jersey for races in that field. Names to know: we love current road world champ/winner in every terrain Paolo Bettini; Tom Boonen again; Oscar Freire.

All right, there's lots more, but I'm watching the Tour of California. Allez!

? and the Mysterians

Unibet Your !@# They're Ticked: AFter being first forced to wear anonymous, if fortunately media-grabbing, question-mark jerseys on French soil due to weird and apparently inconsistently applied rules on advertising gaming (correct me if I'm wrong here, but Predictor-LOTTO, anyone?), then officially barred from the Giro, and now finally cut from beloved classics Paris-Nice and Paris-Roubaix, all as pointless hostage/collateral damage in the ongoing war between protectors-of-the-faith Grand Tour organizers and egomaniacal power-grabbing upstarts UCI/ProTour, the Unibet.com sponsors are finally starting to get twitchy, not unreasonably wondering if despite their early-season results it's worth it to pay the substantial salaries of guys like Jose Rujano and Baden Cooke if they're not gonna be able to get camera time with their de rigeur garish jerseys at any rides more publicized than a race by a couple of kids to the end of their own driveways. Now, I understand entirely why the oldest and most beautiful races on earth don't want a pack of self-interested corporate stooges in a jailbait system pretty near everyone concedes is deeply flawed making the rules for them, but Unibet didn't form the ProTour for Christ's sake--it just wanted to enjoy its benefits. Bad enough these poor s.o.b.'s had to pay out the hoo-ha and still almost lose their slot to Manolo Saiz and Active Bay's desperate fruitless deathgrip. But, really, why them? I mean, are they actually less deserving of a spot at the Giro (or Milano-Sanremo, or Tirreno, or...) than, say, Tinkoff or freakin' Agritubel? Y'know, I love you, Grand Tours. But it doesn't take much guts or muscle to slap around the newest, weakest link in the arrogant impotent ProTour chain. Pick on somebody your own size, instead of the defenseless little brother of the big kid on the block!

Meanwhile, the teams, who really could put their foot down on this one so to speak, don't feel attached enough apparently to Unibet to take the risk of getting their own boys kicked out of the big ones beyond a vague and almost certainly bull@#$$ threat to boycott Paris-Nice or something, particularly since ASO is also going utterly ballistic over inconsequential details like Gerolsteiner screwing up its paperwork, though Discovery for example has taken the opportunity given to weigh in on the Unibet situtation by bravely snarking at the Tour de France with their predictable annual wank about favoritism towards lesser French teams, instead of anything that's actually relevant. Meantime, this whole situation may be resolved by reports that the ASO and UCI have reached out to each other for sincere talks about their differences, which seems to mean that Pat "Dick" McQuaid assures ASO that he really, really likes the ProTour but is willing to talk, and Patrice Clerc assures Pat that the entire ProTour is "illicit" and McQuaid and Co. can bite him. Sounds like a promising start, boys!

Actual Racers Actually Racing: Well, it's another fine start to another season, and a heck of a way to thank his new team, for unusually fine jailbait Liberty Seguros refugee Luis Leon Sanchez, who took the overall at Challenge Mallorca over a host of stage wins by guys like Oscar Freire. Speaking of Iles Balears, Valverde and Pereiro have seemingly met at a happy understanding regarding the Tour de France, with Valverde warmly continuing to proclaim co-leadership and Pereiro conceding he's not gonna be in the top tier of podium candidates barring some unforeseen circumstance at the start (and really, what could happen?), and that he's looking forward to helping Alejandro as Alejandro will, as co-leader, generously help him. Anyone thinking that, say, T-"Eat Our Own Young"Mobile could learn a little bit about PR from these guys?

Trashy Gossip, and a Mea Culpa Sorta

Jan Ullrich Contract Watch: Hmmm...now rumored to be in "serious talks" with a couple of teams (assuming that's not just more desperate propaganda from interested parties); may imminently get a new Swiss racing license; successfully court-thumped Werner Franke today on his appeal of his injunction against yapping about Jan allegedly paying Dr. Fuentes 35k euro a year for dope; and just back from over a week of training with unjust-T-Mobile-throwaways/primo Astana catches/old pals Andreas Kloden and Matthias Kessler, neither of whom should be screwing around at this point in the season. It can't be Astana though, even aside from the obscene amount of money they'd suddenly have to find in an already (worthily) overstuffed budget. I mean, Vinokorouv would have to personally gack up an apology to Manolo Saiz for all his high-horse Bible-thumping if he was gonna take on that big an alleged career felon, right?

Beach Blanket Blitzkreig: In his latest assault against tyranny, Floyd Landis is apparently set to publish his new book "Positively False" over the summer. Oh, Floyd. Must we go through this *again*? Play your cards right, get over your martyr complex (fairly earned, as I hope it is, or not), ditch responsiblity for everything onto your lawyers like Basso, and exonerated or not in the worst case scenario you can be back riding the Grand Tours in two years a la Tyler Hamilton, only at a much better age. So stop it!--just stop it!

The Tifosi's Lament: It has come to my attention that the more sensitive among us, far from furtively enjoying the ongoing National Enquireresque three-ring sleazefest that is the latest round of doping allegations to discredit this beautiful sport, are genuinely in mourning over the whole thing, and actually would prefer to hear about, you know, actual riders actually riding their bikes. In deference to such delicate sensibilities, and to the fact that I swear it's the reason I started following cycling in the first place, I hereby swear I will devote my next post (for the two or so faithful readers who might care) to the noble endeavor of racing itself. So please, no disgusting revelations from the peloton for at least the next five minutes, all right, boys? Much appreciated!

Disco is Dead

Ivana New Sponsor: in the wake of a corporate shakeup, Discovery's announced it's gonna bail on sponsoring Lance's home team as of the end of '07, and the rumor mill's already a'turnin' with speculation that years of doping allegations are making the sponsor pull out. Umm...did anyone notice how much doping (and allegations) it took for say, Phonak to implode? More likely, I imagine, is that US cycling currently lacks both a media-friendly money-magnet back-from-tragedy national icon (not even Saul Raisin yet--he's got a miraculous story, but given his extreme youth needs more time to rack up results) and any damn jersey-showing TV coverage--much less enough of a general US cycling public to justify sinking the dough into Ivan Basso's monster (if quite deserved) deep well of a salary. Which, if they can't come up with a new US sponsor, leaves American cycling even more in the tank among sports fans than it already is. Crap! Even if Berry Floor should go in whole hog, we seems to be looking then (at least from the handy corporate website) at a Belgian squad. Not to diss the Belgians, to whom we owe a major proportion of the greatest cyclists and races ever, but you've already got cycling coming out the hoo-ha, unlike us lonely fans in the US, and we need the exposure dammit to free us from the scourge of constant televised wrestling and bull-riding binges. Again, I say, crap!

Ale, Ale!: It's a sweet end to a long drought for Alessandro Petacchi, who took his first win in about 9 months at the GP Etruschi over Daniele Bennati despite some ongoing tweaks to his revised blue train. Now, if he can only stay out of the way of daredevil sprinters and losing battles with hefty inanimate objects, we might again see some truly satisfying sprints knowing that everyone who ought to be there, is there. On a similar note, we love Oscar Friere, still neck-kinked but indomitable, took his first race of the season at the Challenge Mallorca, taking out Erik Zabel and Tom Boonen, reasonably good indicators of early-season form indeed.
Welcome back boys!

A Good Pounding: In an entirely satisfying development, the International Olympic Committee discreetly lammed into WADA king "Dick" Pound, urging him to apologize to Lance Armstrong like a man for his relentless campaign of unsubstantiated filthy-skankball dope-snarfer innuendo and to kindly shut his yap til he's got some backup. Y'know, if, say, dignity, respect, and sportsmanship aren't gonna make you aim at a target you can actually hit, wouldn't at least Lance's fearsome bottomless litigation machine do the trick?

Uniallbets are Off: days after Unibet proves its worth and takes its first two wins of its nascent ProTour career, the Grand Tour organizers continue to punish them for UCI's admittedly despicable existence and ridiculous claims to supremacy over the most beautiful and prestigious races in the world by nonetheless continuing to refuse to allow the team to participate in a damn one, wanky upstart ProTour rules or not. This time, Unibet's out of the Giro, not even a wildcard. Who beats 'em in? Well, Astana for one, who though the subject of ASO contempt and denial of elite status still slips in for some reason as they certainly should on the merits, but even better, Team Tinkoff, home of busted-but-still-innocent Tyler Hamilton and Danilo Hondo for God's sakes. Way to stick to those "no suspected dopers allowed" proclamations, Grand Tours! Now, while I'm almost always going to side with the GT organizers over any organization voluntarily on purpose even tangentially associated with Pat "Dick" McQuaid, is this really fair to poor little Baden Cooke & Co.?

Landis of the Lost

Tick, Tock: Right on the heels of the predictably contemptuous change-of-heart French response to the Landis team's forlorn and well-reasoned pleas (backed by the rider-crushing justice-bashing goons at WADA, no less) to hold off on his pro forma banning, I mean totally unbiased hearing, until after Landis is done dealing with the USADA appeal going on on another continent entirely, Landis agreed not to race on French soil in 2007 in exchange for the AFLD French antidoping honchos' promise not to inevitably light his death pyre under him til after USADA's done with his carcass some time in May. Of course, the whole thing's rather a moot point anyway, since even Manolo Saiz wouldn't sign this bundle o'tainted goods at this point I suspect, but like the French wouldn't be kid-gloving one of their own who was on a similar hot seat in the name of chivalry and fair play? Please! Still and all, the French made clear they're determined to get this mess out of the way in time for the pre-Tour press blitz, sure to prominently feature the inevitably-anointed-06-winner/Therapeutic Use Exemption giftee Oscar Pereiro and lots of smug "we couldn't get Lance, but we sure got you" smiles and couture-draped handshakes all round. Meantime, Landis' group scrounged for what little leverage they have left, telling USADA to forget running exogenous testosterone tests on samples that already tested within acceptable testosterone/epitestosterone limits. More, poor Landis is so ticked and demoralized at this point that, even though a two-year ban would still leave him well within reach of future podiums in cyclist years given his tender age of 30, he's vowed to hang up his bike for good if he's stripped of his Tour title and winnings. Now, let's leave aside the question of Landis' actual guilt here. But given the likely state of most of the rest of the peloton he was up against in the 06 Tour, the monstrously incompetent bungling by the lab monkeys at every stage of the process, and the disgusting conduct of UCI and WADA during this whole affair, is anyone else thinking the whole thing should just be shelved at this point? Ugh!

Jan Ullrich Contract Watch: Sigh. Mancebo. Sevilla. Perez. Let's not even think about the grossly disproportionate fate of Basso, the mother of all babelicious camera-friendly talent-packed cash cows. But Ullrich? Nope. Oh, Jan. If even Relax-Gam won't take you, when they've apparently managed to hire those other boys with a clear conscience and a sincere belief in their wild-card chances nonetheless, I'm afraid you're well and truly sunk for this season. Even your rah-rah manager Wolfgang seemed to concede as much, noting that the Giro is out of the question this late in the training season, and you can maybe still shoot for the Worlds. Hmmm, who else might take you? Well, Tinkoff's full. Too bad Phonak's still not around...

The Gloves Are Off

Bull In a China Shop: Add Jorg Jaksche to the Op Puerto victims--and presumably to the 7-still-unemployed-riders' Liberty Seguros suit, including we love Joseba Beloki and the Osa boys, against maestro of misery Manolo Saiz for refusing to paying off their contracts (you wrecked their careers, now cough up the dough you cheapskate!)--as Volksbank, despite some protestations to the contrary from all parties, bailed out on their deal with Jaksche under apparent pressure from the Deutschland Tour, which told Volksbank to stay home if they had filthy dope fiend Jaksche under contract despite the fact that they said no problem if Jaksche voluntarily took himself off the start line as he allegedly did. Jaksche, then, immediately went on a complete rampage, snarling that Volksbank was "blackmailed" into not taking him by the Deutschland tour, and while we're at it, he offered to give UCI prez Pat "Dick" McQuaid his DNA, despite the fact that it's not even a doping control and that if he had given up blood to Fuentes all it shows is that he gave blood not that he doped, and while we're still at it, Jens Voigt is a complete hypocrite for sucking millions of euros off his association with Ivan Basso then throwing him off the mountainside after the scandal without even having the guts to give the tainted Basso windfall back. Man, tell us how you really feel Jorg!

Duck Season, Landis Season: on a similar note, just after Landis finally gets some good news from the French who agreed to hold off on their witchhunt til after USADA's done with him (which'll give him more time presumably to hike up the sad $150k he's raised so far for his Fairness Fund), he gets whacked in the jaw again, this time by Cofidis' Brad Wiggins, who sez it's up to someone to have the cojones to tell it like it is, and Landis "sickens" him for testing poz and then denying it, taking all the riders for fools in the process. Give me a !@@#$ing break! I am indeed very sorry for everything that happens to the many, or at least several, guys in the peloton who aren't actively trying to evade the doping controls for a damn good reason. And not to imply anything against Brad Wiggins, who I presume is racing clean as a whistle. But don't you want the OK to challenge a positive test under crap lab controls without being smacked as a disgusting cheat if *you* get busted, not that you have any reason to worry? And I may be the only one amused here, but someone from freakin' *Cofidis* is whining all holier-than-thou about doping?

Jan Ullrich Contract Watch: oh, almost! The day after Jan is rumored to be Relax-Gam's next signing/team leader, quite a suitable place I imagine along with Francisco Mancebo and Santi Perez (freshly returned from his 2-year Phonak doping ban), Relax held its Jan-less team presentation, with Mancebo Perez and Sevilla its team heads. It's not they're afraid of tainted goods Jan--you've still got a chance to convince 'em! Is anyone else impressed with how Relax-Gam has had the initiative to come from fruitless no-name breakaway sponsor-appeasors to potentially major players this season (if they can get any of the GTs to let them in after these signings) by the way? Anyhoo, in a rare bit of good news for Ullrich, he's managed to get a new clothing contract as the studly face of X-Bionic performance sportswear, which if nothing else gives him a little bit of cash for his inevitable ongoing legal hijinks. Right on Jan!

Janked

Jan Ullrich Contract Watch: Ha! But he'll either get one or not soon now that, days after telling the Swiss antidoping investigators to buzz off, he amiably gave up a DNA sample to the Germans, who are merely investigating him for contract fraud. Its destiny? Comparison with the frozen blood bags seized from every cyclist's friend Dr. Eufemiano Frankenstein in the Op Puerto affair. Which to me says one of two things: either Jan actually didn't do it (or at least wasn't stupid enough to let Fuentes keep his stash in his fridge), and he's gonna turn around and sue everyone on earth for blowing his rep, his contract, and his endorsement deals; or he did do it, and he's already started writing a monstrously lucrative tell-all that'll bring most of the teams and management and half the peloton down with him. Either way, way to go Jan! (yes, yes, "doping bad," but for me anyway, "selective enforcement worse".)

You Take the High Road: Notwithstanding the skid marks Bjarne Riis left on Ivan Basso's Giro-winning carcass after he threw him off the speeding team bus as he peeled out of the parking lot in July, Basso in a recent interview spoke far more warmly than necessary of his athletic growth and general tenure under his old boss, which perhaps, I imagine, has no small thing to do with the fact that Riis' grievous miscalculation in assuming the teams actually meant all that crap about not signing accused dopers who would increase the bottom line resulted in a ginormous contract as Discovery's latest iron-man pinup boy. Basso did, however, seem to take a bit of a swipe at Gilberto "Basso Non E Uomo" Simoni, noting he doesn't think it's necessary to be 'cattivo' or nasty as a cyclist, which is funny as hell if he actually did break a promise to Simoni to have the latter take the stage win if Gibo wouldn't leave him completely in the dust in the Dolomites, and either way not quite unfair given that he was 'accidentally' accused of offering to pay Simoni tens of thousands of euros to give him the stage. Simoni, meanwhile, professed that the Basso affair in the Giro left him "nauseated" and unmotivated, which love of the bike he fortunately recovered by taking the Italian mountain bike championships, and he'll be back in form and absolutely in motivation for the Giro this year. Hear that Basso? Don't @#$$ with me!