The Fat Lady Sings

If It Wasn't Over Before, It's Sure As Hell Over Now: Okay, let's forget that Greg LeMond (beloved enough for dope-slapping Lance Armstrong all over the planet) said that Floyd Landis admitted in a cell phone call last August to doping when pressed to do so by LeMond, particularly since the "admission" apparently consisted of the highly noncommittal and easily-attackable "what good would it do?". Landis is history because LeMond claimed something entirely irrelevant but far more disgusting: that after LeMond confided to Floyd he was sexually abused as a child in the context of the hardship of hiding dark secrets, some utterly foul goon, later identified as Landis' manager (and promptly fired upon said revelation in the courtroom), called LeMond on his cell under the pervish child-molestery ID "Uncle Ron" and made threatening and sexually explicit remarks implying the world would hear all about it if LeMond didn't back off. Still want to claim the mantle of Boy Scout of the Peloton, Floyd?

Jesus, Floyd. Even if you didn't dope, you're ruined anyway--if what LeMond said today is halfway freakin' true, pack up your !@#$ing bags, head for home, and shut the hell up for all eternity. Some guy tells you about the worst possible violation a child could face, and you yap to some @#$hole about it? Let's forget the little bit about "Uncle Ron's" subsequent (and, let's presume on the dearly-held hope that you possess an actual soul, completely unknown to you, or else your damn lawyer should be fired while we're at it for not ferreting this out ahead of time) witness intimidation, blackmail, and generally just about the most repulsive defensive tactic ever played--I repeat, some guy tells you about the worst possible violation a child could face, and you yap to some @#$hole about it? Nothing that was said before in this arbitration is ever really going to be remembered, and nothing you and your team say from this point out is ever really going to be listened to. I don't care if you've got 3 computers up there evaluating the evidence on the actual doping issue--even a few lawyers, I've heard, are human, and it's damn near impossible at this point that the arbitrators up there, particularly the two that were already happily hobnobbing with your pals UCI and WADA before this debacle began, are going to be able to forget LeMond's testimony even if they genuinely try, even though that's not actually the question before the panel. And if they can continue to evaluate your doping arguments objectively, *and* if they come down on your side on this point (two exceedingly big ifs, frankly), what the @#$! sponsor is going to want to hire you with this in print? Either way you look at it, I think you can fairly--unless LeMond's credibility is somehow totally destroyed, and while we're at it I doubt your counsel's bringing up his whining legal battles with Armstrong is going to cut it--call it a career. Is anyone else thinking it's best for all concerned to cut their losses and settle out this circus-sideshow trainwreck for some punishment equally unsatisfactory to both sides whether Landis actually doped during the Tour or not?

Jet-Blue-No-More

He's Baaaaa-aaaaaack!: after yet another fruitless, if valiant, breakaway gets caught virtually within sight of the line, viciously-derided bone-broken has-been Alessandro Petacchi firmly smacked around his many naysayers by--finally--taking a sprint stage in a race that really counts for the first time since his agonizing knee-smash in last year's Giro, even with baby-blue train Milram blowing his lead-out for the second straight day in a row, collapsing sobbing over his handlebars and bawling out his gratitude to his supporters for "the most important win of my career." Allez, Jet--well, that settles *that*, you dope-slapping hacks at Gazzetta dello Sport! Even more satisfying from my end, he took the points jersey off endless annoyance Robbie "the Ego" McEwen, while Gasparotto took pink back from a presumptively-ticked Di Luca and we-love-but-think-he's-cursed-in-this-Giro Thor Hushovd got knocked over into the barriers 600 m from the line, while baby GC threat Damiano Cunego emerged fairly unscathed from his tumble and Simoni managed to stop just short of the general carnage. Vai, Gilberto!

Didn't I Already Weasel Out of this One?: Well, nope, as Caisse d'Epargne finally decides it's got the goods on--or can no longer avoid firing--Alejandro Valverde and is forced to "investigate" his links to Op Puerto after the Italian press complained about him last week. Um, wasn't he actually openly linked to the scandal almost a full *year* ago by the wily code names "Valv" and dog "Piti," and you hypocrites happily kept him on so long as it looked like he was going to snake his way out of this? Speaking of which, the repulsive Johan Bruyneel was on the wah-wahing attack against Basso again yesterday, crying "Ivan deceived me" and "Basso lied to me"--of course he did, you ass, you flat-out wanted him to! You "did all we could to ensure we were signing a rider without legal problems"--yeah, without *legal* problems, not without *doping* problems, you guessed wrong Op Puerto was dead now suck up the consequences of knowingly signing a cheat, you oily disingenuous hypocrite!

The Executioner's Song: Yep, Landis' predestined-outcome kangaroo court is in session, with USADA's expert defending the incompetent French lab chimps and contending that Landis snarfed testosterone from an astonishing array of sources, and Landis' team blasting the lab's, and USADA's, tactics, ability, and bias. Meantime, both sides have lined up cycling legends to explain the benefits, and not, of said testosterone, and at this point I'm personally so irritated by the craptastic legal debacle that is this arbitration that I'm rooting for Landis to take it if he'd whacked himself with drug patches over every damn square inch of his Phonak team kit (and elsewhere). Go Floyd!

Hitting the 'Gas

Feeling the Burn: I hope I'm not the only dense enough to be surprised to see Liquigas of all teams smoke the opening team time trial at the Giro, but I was even more surprised to see the heart-on-his-sleeve Danilo DiLuca, who appeared completely enraged when non-team-leader Gasparotto took the maglia rosa from him by coming in first at the line, later sweetly lie for the cameras that he didn't want to punch his face in and was just so very happy that dear Enrico got to wear it instead of him. That, however, was neatly resolved at the end of stage one, as the race organizers weaselled some inexplicable scam to get DiLuca into the maglia rosa and right in action with the podium babes, and I was forced to endure the highly irritating spectacle of seeing Robbie "the Ego" McEwen take the sprint ahead of Paolo Bettini (forget Petacchi, and the press sure as hell has nastily written him off), while we love Thor Hushovd was spit out the back of the last climb like some unwanted tobacco-juiced loogie. Pull it together Thor!

Bring Out Your Dead: as if the outcome of this week's Floyd Landis hearing hadn't already been decided for all intents and purposes by the leaking skanks at WADA, Tour de France organizers ASO decided nonetheless to get a jump on all the tiresome paperwork his 'possible' guilt might entail with director Christian "Dick" Prudhomme peremptorily ordering all records of the poor boy to be eliminated from the 2006 history books, including, natch, his win. Note to Christian: nice try, but a French rider *still* didn't win it. Keep trying, though!

Il Grande Giro, Baby!

The Hosed: T "Despite the Fact that Our Riders Doctors and DSs All Keep Getting Busted, We're Morally Superior to You" Mobile, as high-GC-placement-hope (though not actually podium contender) Sergeui Gonchar gets pulled for unusual--but clearly not doping-related, avers the team--blood readings at Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Romandie. That sure explains the "bad cold" he's been suffering from the last week! And, as usual perpetual sad-sack wannabes Unibet, whose court challenge to force their participation in the Giro was helpfully met by Milan officials promising they'd issue a ruling 9 days after they miss the start line. If that sort of considered-yet-timely deliberation isn't justice in action, I'm hard pressed to know what is. We'll let you know if you win your death-sentence appeal a week after you fry, we're sure you'll feel posthumously vindicated! Surprisingly, last but not least among the most yanked it's team time trial specialists CSC and Discovery, who freely admit they're scared as hell by today's hilly windy course, as half the teams abandon their time-trial bikes for fear of getting knocked over with the lack of control and the other half, led by predictably unsympathetic (and crap time-trialist) Robbie "the Ego" McEwen, helpfully opining that if you don't suck, it ought not to be a problem, like for him. Anyone else hoping Petacchi and Hushovd absolutely (though honestly are unlikely to) crush his irritating @#$ in every single sprint?

The High: well, still everyone, according to the tirelessly self-promoting incompetents at the French lab eager to do anything to project a positive image ahead of the Landis hearing, noting that due to the mass unwillingness to test for exogenous testosterone (certainly not WADA, UCI, or the teams' fault, natch) half the post-purge peloton is still stoked. And the other half? According to the ever-philosophical Paolo Bettini, with Basso and Scarponi blowing everyone's cover and Fuentes off the market, they're now manipulating their blood at a new bank in Valencia--which makes it even more entertaining that the Italian riders are threatening to boycott the Vuelta as the dirty Spaniards continue to ride and win races with dope-fueled impunity, as the poor and pure Italians muddle along with nothing more powerful at the start gate than a pre-race cappucino. Riiiiiiight!

Where in the World is Iban Mayo?: hooray! still in unpredictable form, but back in action to support Gilberto Simoni in the mountains, and--please, Iban, if for no other reason that it's about time to make the dope-slapping press grovel at your altar--game to try a stage. Vai Iban!

What's the Difference Between a Catfish and a Lawyer?

One's a Bottom-Dwelling Scum-Sucker, and the Other's a Fish: in the wake of the Landis arbitrators' disgusting-but-unsurprising spankin' new 2-1 decision to completely screw Floyd Landis over without actually consulting the third arbitrator on a B-testing challenge, as required, Floyd at his press conference today came out with a true shocker: USADA's lawyer offered him a *month's* suspension in exchange for giving up Lance Armstrong. The problem? Floyd couldn't give Lance up, not only because he's not inclined to be the same total ass!@#$ to Lance that Lance has til recently been to him (that's my comment, not the far-nicer Floyd's), but because he never saw Lance do anything wrong. His reward for his integrity? As noted above, the stacked panel's preexisting Salem witch trial, and the total destruction of his career, his rep, his Tour, and his place in cycling history. Really fair to Floyd either way, guys!

Y'know, my verdict was actually out on Landis til this moment, even after Bobby Julich suggested 'way back that the only way Floyd could've tested poz was if he was slipped something on the sly--after all, how many other heroes have proven themselves corner-cutting drug-scarfing weasels?--but if this is true, Floyd's got even my utter support. Why? Because even though capturing and destroying Lance Armstrong would be a dope-busting prize above any other-- easily including Landis, plus tossing in Ullrich and Riis, plus the rest of the freakin' peloton while we're at it, no offense--any cycling body that (1) truly loved and valued this most agonizing and beautiful sport and (2) truly believed that Landis was actually guilty would never allow a man who stole the monument-of-all-of-cycling Tour de France to get off with a measly month suspension. I mean, he'd be riding the Tour this year, for Christ's sake! And if they *would* whore the Tour de France for a case against Lance Armstrong, and if they *don't* believe Landis is actually or even just arguably culpable, and they're *still* willing to force this farce of a three-ring-circus to its likely and forever tainted rider-crushing conclusion, they goddamn ought to be dissolved.

Go get 'em baby!

Duck, Duck, Doper!

What the @#*$?: Can someone please explain to me how, with over 100 names having been harbored by the Spaniards in total in the Op Puerto affair, and a solid 58 or so perfectly clear to them early last spring, pretty much the only guys publicly identified and written off the Giro start list half a week before it begins--forget even the Tour and Vuelta--are the same handful of late-career downward-spiral dope fiends who were already barred or still serving other suspensions *last* year? What the hell kind of sense does that make, and how the hell is that really gonna clean up the sport? If the smirking hypocrites over at the teams, UCI, and the Tours are randomly gonna pick and choose who gets to ride in some stupid children's game in order to keep a halfway quality peloton in play, isn't it really more fair to just let every Op Puerto (and Quick Step, and T-Mobile, and...) dirtbag in so at least the playing field is technically fairly level for the majority?

Now, now, I'm not advocating doping or even amnesty for dopers, so put down the pitchforks and torches, people. But I am saying that if Pat "Dick" McQuaid, Dick "Dick"Pound, Patrick Lefevere and Johan Bruyneel and all the other oily self-interested doublethinkers are really sincere about not letting dope-implicated riders hit the corsa rosa, then they should be unequivocally willing to keep all 100-odd boys out right from the get-go and let the races take whatever hits they must--up to and including a start list slashed by 2/3 and a handful of gasping domestiques pushing their bikes up the Dolomites by hand--in order to preserve the integrity of the sport. Right? Um...Pat? Johan? Anyone there?

What the !@#$?, Part Due: Correct me if I was completely hallucinating at the Giro podium last year, but I seem to recall that the boys standing there looking all excited and dripping sweat all over the poor podium babes were, in order, Ivan Basso, Jose Enrique Gutierrez, and Gilberto Simoni. So here we are pinning the numbers on this year's racers, and it's not Basso wearing the prized and honorable No. 1--we all know he was totally clean in the Giro but unsuccessfully trying to dope at the Tour, so he can't do it--nor Gutierrez, who rode for Phonak, I mean was implicated in Op Puerto, so he can't do it--so by rights, with no public implication of Gilberto Simoni in anything more scandalous than calling Basso a wuss, fraud, and drug addict, it oughta be Simoni, no? Well, no, because apparently some people have a bee up their @#$ about giving Simoni the credit he deserves and the crown he will likely be given someday anyway, so it's going to current World Champ, rightly adored Jack-of-All-Terrain, and decidedly not third place in GC last year we love Paolo Bettini. Can any of you cowards who profess to be so mightily in favor of rewarding the pure either give up the goods on what you have on Simoni, or give him the damn No. 1 tag for heck's sake?!

Oh, Tyler: Even Tinkoff has it's limits, it seems, whumping you under "suspension" as if the same ancient allegations about your wife faxing Fuentes were miraculously just discovered by
them yesterday. Tyler, it breaks my heart--but it can't take away your palmares, and it's time to give it up. Please, please call it a career before I have to read about you fighting for a spot on some ignominious Team Tricycle or something! On the other hand, Ivan Basso's already got an offer from McDonalds....

You'll Have to Pry My Giro Out of My Cold, Dead Hands

Bite Me, Simoni!: his vaunted 10-page confession to CONI to the contrary, as you've all heard our hero Ivan Basso actually didn't admit to doping, copping merely, in his press conference in Milano today, to "attempted" doping--that is, sure I met with Fuentes, and sure I gave him a bucket o' blood, and sure I gave him more euros in a week than the poor bastard lowly domestiques who serve me earn in a year, and I entirely did intend to plan to dope for the Tour de France, til you career-busting clods at the whining anti-doping agencies wrecked my chances and kept me out of the Tour before I even had the chance to snort all the EPO I paid fair and square for. What's more, I never doped at the Giro either, which as with every other race in my career I won absolutely clean, even though Birillo is in fact my dog and there are all those funny phone calls between Labarta and Fuentes citing stats totally coincidentally identical to the ones I reached in any given Giro stage, so hands off you has-been wannabe Gilberto Simoni, it's still MINE MINE MINE! Oh, and I still feel really, really, really bad. Um, not to malign Basso and his obvious integrity, but is anyone else's bull!@#$ meter going off the charts besides mine?

What's really interesting is the Italian tifosi's response to this whole thing, at least on the comments page on Gazzetta dello Sport. I'm actually quite touched, and even rather swayed by, the commentators who say that Basso is but a man, not a hero, they love him still (and some of them, frankly, seem to love the babelicious attempted-dopester in an "I wonder if I ought to get a restraining order" sort of way), and they will truly welcome his return to the peloton after he has, to his credit, willingly paid his penalty. Then, of course, there's the pro-Gilberto Simoni crowd, who generally seem to support the sort of forgiveness last shown by the righteous warriors of the Inquisition to hapless heretics--hell, you gotta admire their passion, if not their lack of inclination to turn the other cheek! Then again, I can't say I don't admire that too.

And the fallout? Natch, none at all for Team CSC and Discovery, who smoothly reiterated their total genuine ignorance as to their fantastic cash-cow's unforeseeable evil deeds, despite, say, his astonishingly Roberto Heras-like instantaneous improvement in the time-trial under their stellar guidance, since we all know that the teams who profit from these boys never, ever, ever pressure them to actually post results against their equally-doped-up competition. And as to the riders, well, Tyler Hamilton for one won't be at the Giro in the wake of the post-Basso Grand Tour crackdown-on-a-few-selected-riders-who-were-already-named-
last-year-but-certainly-not-everyone-currently-implicated-in-Op-Puerto-so-as-not-to-actually-numerically
-and-talentwise-jack-over-the-TV-ratings, so for my money, he just as well oughta hang up his cleats and call it a career right now. And I'm presuming Michele Scarponi is out, thereby totally jacking poor Stefano Garzelli out of key help, though bizarrely he still keeps turning up on Giro start lists even after the Basso confessional. But the main fallout, I imagine, is going to land squarely on Floyd Landis, who though uninvolved in Op Puerto will likely, particularly given an "independent" (but still hired by people who have expressed a decided anti-Floyd opinion about the case) lab's recent validation of the Landis test results, be the focus of a reinvigorated pack of loathesome self-congratulatory witchhunters eager to add to their own rider-frying palmares. Don't let these goons get to you, Floyd--whatever Basso, "Valv," "No. 1," and the rest of the Puerto cheats are rightfully found to have done, the lab still screwed you over!

St. Ivan of the Dolomites

The Redemption of Ivan Basso: yep, it's not been two seconds since Ivan Basso appeared before CONI and confessed to doping in the Op Puerto affair and already, the PR whoring has begun. No sooner had the news popped than he was already joining erstwhile dopehead David Millar on the path to sainthood, having shown, according to his lawyer Massimo Martelli, "great character" despite "shaking" in fear as he humbly knelt before CONI of his own volition, desperately needing to "lift the weight off his conscience" to confess his soul-scorching misdeeds. And next for Ivan, with his presumptive two-year ban (which L'Equipe muckrakingly speculated was being knocked down in exchange for his admission, which immediately sent Pat "Dick" McQuaid postal) nearly in hand? Why, he's going to "dedicate his life to the fight against doping." Anyone else hearing the blare of heavenly trumpets and mellifluous chorus of white-robed angels singing from on high as the skies open against the clouds in a pool of golden light?

Oh please, spare me the self-congratulatory faux-repentant bull@#$% wah-wah! I'm sure Ivan Basso is a sweet, kind man and true lover of the pain and beauty of cycling who would genuinely rather win clean than win dirty. And I can't begin to imagine the excruciating pressure that The Next Lance Armstrong must have felt from his handlers, teammates, directeur sportifs, family, friends, hero-hungry press, fanatic tifosi and, likely, own self to live up to the monster hype generated by the resultant publicity frenzy generated by his prodigious talent (though frankly, I'm not sure, given his phenomenal ability and his tendency to smoke even the most-likely-equally-hopped-up competition by significant margins, that he even needed to dope). But he clearly decided, like "I'm Saved!" media slut St. David Millar before him, that he'd rather win dirty than lose clean, and hardly expressed remorse when he was actually getting away with doping--he was damn near caught with a needle in his @#$, for God's sake! He lied when the scandal broke in '06, and still had a contract with CSC. He lied when CSC kicked him off the team, and was looking for a new contract. And, he lied when the equally-hypocritical Team Discovery handed him a cool six million euro to win the Tour, and hid behind Lance Armstrong's spandex skirts right up until the moment he "voluntarily" lost his contract. It's only when he's got nowhere else to turn that he finally 'fesses up, and while that's obviously human and even understandable--who hasn't tried to weasel out of some colossal screw-up of their own making?--it's certainly not a reason to claim the moral high ground and profess the right to lead the disgusting dopers he proudly and nobly left behind to his new and purer plane of existence. You want sympathy? Sure. Serve your time, shut your yap, and you'll be back in two years before a thrill-seeking public (me included) all too happy to forgive you, if for no other reason that it's damn sure half the peloton is still tanked on drugs even without your cheating presence, so you're hardly the only one who ought to take the fall. But til then, cut the sanctimonious self-love, and shut the hell up already!

Giro d'Italia 101

Welcome, Giro newbies! So you hung out at the Tours of California or Georgia this year, or you've caught some recent "Cyclysm Sundays" on Vs. and decided, quite rightly, that it's pretty damn entertaining to watch a bike race. Perhaps you're even one of my two faithful readers who's learned the basics via my earlier, general "Cycling 101", but frankly, just don't know much about the Giro itself, one of cycling's 3 Grand Tours and, for my money, one of the most thrilling races on earth. So to get you started, I humbly present this "Giro 101":

The Upshot: 3 weeks of body-breaking riding in Italy, with 8 sprint stages, 5 rolling stages, 5 major mountain stages with 4 mountain-top finishes, two individual time trials and one team time trial. It's all about the mountains, baby, with the brutal Tre Cime di Lavaredo in stage 15 and the fearsome Monte Zoncolan at stage 17. Woo-hoo!

The State of Play: babe-magnet Ivan Basso, just fired, I mean voluntarily resigned, from Discovery Channel in the wake of his ongoing link to the Operacion Puerto doping scandal, won the Giro last year by a bone-crushing 12 minutes with Team CSC, which also kicked him off their team due to Op Puerto, and will not be defending his title. Notable last year: constant verbal abuse of Basso from two-time winner we love Gilberto Simoni, who variously accused him of being "not a man," (cannily counterattacked by Basso by posing for Italian newspaper Gazzetta dello Sport with his shirt off in a he-man pose), an "extraterrestri" (doper, since proven a not-unreasonable suspicion), and a "fraud" who offered to buy Simoni off to let him take a stage. Good sportsmanship all 'round boys!

The Players:
General Classification (overall winner):
(1) Ivan Basso (Discovery/CSC). As noted, he's out this year, but his comely shadow will color the race as this year's contenders lose their natural target, Discovery and CSC lose their leader, and the commentators strive not to talk about him too much.

(2) Gilberto Simoni (Saunier Duval): won the Giro in 2001 and 2003. A brilliant climber but a bit long in the tooth in cyclist years, he has vowed to end his road career after the Giro and head back to his ancestral stomping grounds of mountain biking, where he is reigning Italian champ. I'm assuming he'll take a stage or two, particularly with the smashing help of ascending jailbait protege Riccardo Ricco, but jury is still out on GC; I'm rooting for him though just for his total lack of verbal self-control.

(3) Paolo Savoldelli (Astana): won the Giro in 02 and 05. Nicknamed "Il Falco" for his stunning descents, was ignominiously booted off Discovery and found new home with upstart talent-packed Kazakh squad Astana, started by outraged 2006 Vuelta champ Alexander Vinokorouv in the wake of the Op Puerto scandal. Just won prologue time trial in Tour de Romandie and took second overall, ahead of superdomestique/07 Vuelta stage winner teammate Andrey Kashechkin. Question: will Kashechkin be around to help him, or save himself too much to help Vino in the Tour to be of any use to Savoldelli?

(4) Damiano "Il Piccolo Principe" Cunego (Lampre): golden-coiffed Giro champ at tender age of 22 in 2004. Has been unable to reach those heights since, and Simoni recently bushwhacked him in the press as a soulless unmotivated tool. His form's been good this year though, he's got good boys supporting him, and he's desperate to prove he's not a fluke.

(5) Stefano Garzelli (Acqua e Sapone): took the Giro in 2000. Downgraded this year to a Continental squad, as far as I can tell this year he's utterly !@#$ed because he hasn't got the domestique firepower to back him up.

(6) Danilo "the Killer" DiLuca (Liquigas): a smashing early season, and a man who desperately wants the podium. If Simoni or Cunego cracks, he may well get it.

Sprints:

(1) Alessandro "Ale-Jet" Petacchi (Milram): the highly-pressured successor to former Italian sprint god Mario "the Chest" Cipollini, he's still not fully recovered from cracking his knee-cap in the Tour, was almost back at the Vuelta then broke his hand decking a team bus when he couldn't find the man he was actually looking to hit in dispute over a sprint. Uneven this season, he's come back a bit the last two weeks, and really, really wants to prove to the abusive Italian press that he's capable of reaching his earlier heights.

(2) Robbie "the Ego" McEwen (Predictor-Lotto): more competitive than anyone alive, he's almost guaranteed to make Petacchi look like a wuss in at least one sprint.

(3) we love Thor Hushovd (Credit Agricole): totally underrated, he took the last stage at the Tour de France into Paris last year. Whacked this year by stomach problems, but I'm seriously hoping for a comeback, particularly since McEwen completely gets on my nerves.

Everything Else:

(1) and only Paolo Bettini: World champ/Italian icon/perpetual stage winner, he excels at rolling stages and is a major attack dog, ergo a threat even in a sprint. Vai Paolo!

This ain't all, but it oughta be enough to get you started. Forza!

The Sacred and the Profane

In Order to Form a More Perfect Union: well, the constant backstabbing between UCI, the Grand Tours, and (at least some of) the teams seems to be momentarily on hold, as the "sacred union" of Pat "Dick" McQuaid, Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme, and Quick Step's Patrick "It's Only the Spaniards! I Swear!" Lefevere have now agreed that the teams will "temporarily" (now there's a caveat) bar riders "formally" (there's another sweet one) implicated in Op Puerto. To be sure, not *all* the teams are on board, though interestingly there's no word on which ones are dope-slapping the rest of the rider-barring saps and letting their boys hit the start gate--and of course, there's still 6000 pages of docs yet to go through to find the nefarious new 49, not to mention the original 50-odd riders no-one seems to be able to attach a name to, so so far it looks like no-one except the original poor bastard fall guys from last season, most of whom are already unemployed, retired, or booted down to Continental squads utterly unable to render them GC threats, is actually likely to take the hit. Ah, that's the sort of cavernous bull@#$* loophole even a Phonak could love! Stunning suggestion: did any of you overpaid clowns profiting off the wins of the carcasses you pretend to want dope-free, or any of your incredibly deep-pocketed Moral Majority sponsor-hypocrites, think to cough up a few bucks to hire a pack of half-literate nits with a list of active racers by their sides to skim through the docs for the names? (And while we're at it, no one in Spain thought to jot that info down while they compiled all that crap?) Y'know, I'm starting to think, while we're all on this "honesty in sport" kick, why don't McQuaid Lefevere Prudhomme and all these guys just tattoo "We Don't Really Mean It" on your !@#$# and moon the cameras at your next press conference already!

Dodging the Bullet

Rainbows and Unicorns: so, the campaign to put a happy face on the disgusting injustice and foregone conclusion that is the Floyd Landis investigation is in full swing, with WADA's Dick "Dick" Pound expressing boundless confidence in the sadly misunderstood and truly diligent French lab, which of course has undergone the strictest quality controls in the world (damn, am I the only one thinking they seem to use more rigorous standards in the factories that pour melamine into dog food?) and USADA's lawyer humbly--and hilariously--asking us all to "reserve judgment" until "both sides have been heard." Well, if by "both sides," one means "WADA's, with Landis desperately forced to play catch-up with apparently deliberately limited access to grossly mishandled dubious evidence after he's been completely publicly bushwhacked and presumptively declared totally guilty at every polluted step by the endless leak-happy freaks involved in this hideous travesty," I suppose both sides have been heard...

Whew!: Just when it looked like the Grand Tour organizers would be forced to face the consequences of their ill-considered vow to bar "all Operacion Puerto-implicated riders" from the Giro, the Tour, and the Vuelta--said consequences being 107 cyclists having to be barred from the start lines, not to mention the other crooks-on-wheels implicated in various other on-tap doping hoo-has should the Grand Tours ever grow both a conscience and a spine--UCI's Pat "Dick" McQuaid reassuringly thundered that, due to the large volume of Op Puerto documents still left to review, the implicated riders fortunately--I mean, unfortunately--can't possibly all be IDd in time to bar 'em. The result? Ivan Basso, the retired Jan Ullrich, and a handful of Manolo Saiz' proteges excepted, most every cheating skank in the peloton will get to ride the Tours, and, for a select few, bask in podium glory in Milan, Paris, and Madrid to boot. Well, *that* sure saves the teams' (and frankly, the Grand Tour organizers') @#$es!

Doctor, Doctor, Can't You See I'm Burnin', Burnin': and, in the wake of the accused T-Mobile doctors' rather surprising refusal to sue their accuser/ex-soigneur for defamation over allegations of systemic doping in his spankin' new book, and the busy German prosecutors' recent announcement that they're opening an investigation (as is the docs' hometown university), a perhaps justly suspicious Bob "Everyone But Us is Dirty" Stapleton has suspended the good medics from providing medical care to his squeaky clean band of brothers. Hmmm...where to turn, where to turn...perhaps, say, Quick Step might provide some leads?

Michele, My Belle: so with a cheerful Michele Scarponi offering up his DNA to all comers at his CONI hearing--thereby assuring us all that, at a minimum, he wasn't stupid enough to leave bags of blood lying around Dr. Fuentes' pad, at least--the question remains, what of pretty boy-without-a-country (well, team anyway) Ivan Basso? Two hours into his hearing yesterday, it was adjourned by all parties, with the hope of a new date prior to the Giro, nothing accomplished, and no word on whether Ivan'll yack up a DNA sample. Luckily, it seems that Discovery never planned to have Ivan do the Giro anyway, pinning their hopes on Yaroslav Popovych instead, just as it was always going to be Levi Leipheimer for their Tour. Um, why exactly did they hire him in the first place then?

Gag Me With a Spoon!

Or Rather, Un-Gag Me: capitalizing on the fact that the Floyd Landis investigation has been botched beyond the remotest chance of fairness or legitimacy, the dysfunctional trolls over at WADA have brazenly decided to make things even worse by lifting the USADA "gag order" on yapping unrestrained to the press basically whenever a rider has the temerity to assert his rights or innocence. Why? Of course, it's all Floyd Landis' fault, for publicly questioning USADA's actions for no valid reason whatsoever and thereby leaving the hamstrung innocents helpless to defend themselves against the boy's hideous unprovoked assault. What? Am I absolutely on hallucinogens here, or was any WADA pretense at silence and self-restraint utterly flushed down the toilet before the ink was dry on the mislabeled B samples by leaking the news of Landis' positive tests to the press without even the courtesy of a heads-up phone call, eviscerating Landis in a Sunday New York Times interview for a know-nothing non-cycling-fanatic public utterly unable to put Dick "Dick" Pound's remarks in context, and happily supporting USADA and the disgusting hacks at the French lab while they violated every substantive and procedural rule in the book throughout this entire filthy tainted process? Where exactly does USADA get off as the wronged party in all this?

Wonder of Wonders, Miracle of Miracles: And, in the latest example of team-management smarminess, CSC--the team sponsor itself--has decided it supports Bjarne "Clean Sport" Riis against all allegations of prior career doping, despite his angry but decidedly vague nondenials to the Belgian press on that point, sympathetically demurring that they "understand" Bjarne doesn't want to "talk about old times." That's so sweet, and I can't imagine why something like that would tend to undercut the fans' confidence in the teams' current commitment to purity. Speaking of which, T-Mobile is shocked, shocked! that the doctors they've had under contract for umpteen seasons might have participated in doping--or that if they did, they're sure they had no choice--as if a twentysomething rider with no medical training and a distinct lack of hired goons to back up their requests can really force a couple of physicians to come up with complex doping products and inject it strategically into them in amounts coincidentally undetectable by then-existing testing protocols. Hey, I'm convinced the teams have nothing to do with this!

Il Grande Giro: with ever-tranquillo Ivan Basso professing to have planned not to defend his Giro even before his "mutual agreement" to separate from Discovery (which was somehow "100% [his] choice" yesterday, but I digress), Savoldelli smoking the time trial at the Tour de Romandie, Simoni losing the latest target of his verbal rampage to aim for, Di Luca taking Liege , Tyler in the tank all season and doubtful for the race at all and Cunego still aching to redeem his boy-wonder cred, my thoughts are turning to who is going take the dear Giro in this tumultuous year. First question: if Michele Scarponi goes down at the meeting with CONI tomorrow, who on continental squad Acqua e Sapone can really do Stefano Garzelli any justice up against the ProTour likes of Astana and Saunier Duval?

Cancel the Tour

P.I.M.P.: All right, so Ivan Basso's sudden post-Bruyneel-meeting "resignation" from Discovery pretty well makes him look as guilty as hell, even putting aside that yesterday his most skilled and ardent defender, brilliant lawyer o' the gods Massimo Martelli, while still denying most of the Basso allegations could only manage to gack up an uninspiring "we will see" when it comes to the actual Fuentes blood bags (and I can't imagine how it helps to have hired Jan Ullrich's lawyer over in Spain, as he couldn't keep the boy's blood bags away from the Germans, but one can only do so much). And it's very sweet and diplomatic of Basso, one must concede, to say he was resigning from Discovery totally "voluntarily" and only because "the team's trying to find a new sponsor" and his situation is "a distraction" from that and the fine bike riding they are putting in this year. Indeed, Bruyneel himself maintains that no-one there wanted Basso to leave, though as I recall he'd actually started imprinting his boot on Basso's shapely spandex @#$ the second the CONI investigation reopened.

But all that is total @#$%^&*, kids--you're a spineless sellout wuss, Bruyneel! Why? Because Johan and Discovery wasted no time pimping Basso alone and unprotected to the authorities, and immediately began covering themselves against any forthcoming legal action by anyone in the most weaselly technical lawyer language imaginable--and I say that with a mixture of disgust and respect, seeing it often as one of the loathed profession-- cannily claiming "we did our due diligence," i.e., Basso's a lying SOB we never once suspected ever might've doped, and no-one like us would ever, ever have something to do with anyone like him if we ever, ever had any clue whatsoever he wasn't the shining prince we so genuinely believed him to be.

Are you @#$damned kidding me, Discovery? And don't give that innocent til proven guilty wah-wah--there's an absolute difference between a necessarily careful and thorough adjudication by a neutral body that someone is, and a reasonable suspicion and willful denial from a potential and incredibly self-interested team that he might be. Op Puerto takes down Manolo Saiz, Eufemiano Fuentes, and the entirety of Liberty Seguros, Gilberto Simoni is calling Ivan a fraud and an 'extraterrestri' during the Giro (though I still don't think that's why Basso won by 12 minutes), and when Basso is subsequently implicated as a possible Fuentes patient he's barred along with half the other guys worth watching from riding the Tour. He denies any involvement, as is his right, and gets his lawyer on the case, as any sensible person would do. Meanwhile, though, the teams are freakin' out, then Landis gets busted, everyone goes into paranoid bunker mode as Pat "Dick" McQuaid and Dick "Dick" Pound go on a blood-lust inquisition rampage, Phonak goes down in flames, half of Liberty can't find jobs, Basso's lawyer is reduced to claiming that his dog is being entirely slandered as Birillo isn't even the pup's name, Bjarne Riis throws Basso completely off the bus and works poor Carlos Sastre into an exhausted nub the rest of the season, even the riders start howling for DNA samples for heck's sake, the sponsor-losing teams swear on their gentlemanly honor they won't hire anyone implicated in Op Puerto, Spain indicates that their weak antidoping law unfortunately precludes asking any rider for a blood sample, CONI therefore reluctantly closes up shop on the Basso case, and what do you do? Completely screw Levi Leipheimer and the rest of the teams and immediately sign Basso for a sweet 6 million euros with the smug declaration that Ivan will be "happy" to submit DNA samples to "any future open investigation," which totally coincidentally Op Puerto and the CONI inquiry are not and (you wrongly guessed) won't be. So now that Ivan's busted again, where's your upright moral support for your upright moral rider now, hypocrites?

Take No Prisoners: meantime, Floyd Landis, beset by a seemingly endless parade of monstrous wrongs by the incompetent French lab chimps, is now on the attack for a whole 'nother reason: he claims the lab electronically destroyed original records of his tests and that the remaining data may well have been tampered with. Can this repulsive farce get any worse? Let's leave aside whether we're burning a totally innocent man at the stake, instead of a guilty one--how the hell would I know? But the great tragedy here is that thanks to the gross mismanagement and malfeasance of almost everyone involved--from WADA to USADA to UCI to the lab itself--no-one else will truly know (aside from Landis himself that is), either. A just process conducted openly engenders, if still perhaps a minor assortment of paranoid conspiracy theories on both sides, at least some reasonable level of trust that the truth has been well and fairly determined. But here? Never. As it is, if Landis wins, even if he is graciously given back the Tour victory to which he is entitled, there will still always be doubters who will be convinced that Landis got off on some scumly sort of a technicality and Pereiro got jacked. And if Landis loses, there will always be doubt among anyone with half a conscience as to whether an innocent man's gone down in flames. Either way the sport--let alone the riders, the teams, the tifosi, and Landis--loses. Clean house already, and give us a system and a result we can respect!

He's the One They Call Dr. Feelgood: finally, according to an additional 6000 page Fuentes dossier, another 49 riders in the peloton are now implicated in Op Puerto, making a grand total of 107 riders who, according to ASO director Christian "Oh Man, Should I Really Have Said This?" Prudhomme, shouldn't be at the start line at the Tour de France in July. For that matter, if if Prudhomme isn't a raging hypocrite (which I'm inclined to think he might be if, say, any French squad or riders turn up on the list), he'll also have to kick out the entirety of Quick Step (due to current allegations of systematic doping by their anonymous rider) and T-Mobile (due to an ex-soigneur saying the current team docs engaged in doping as far back as the Telekom days--oops, so much for the team's 2007 UCI Guardian of Purity (tm) Award!). Which, out of 180 riders that annually start the Tour, leaves us, by my reckoning, with a pathetic 55 or so--hardly enough to get us through the prologue, much less 3 weeks in the mountains, no? Take out the truly freakish proportion of the peloton with Therapeutic Use Exemptions for completely coincidentally oxygen-carrying performance-enhancing asthma drugs, and we've got, frankly, virtually no-one left. Hmmmm, maybe set up a bunch of wheezing ex-pro directeur sportifs to pitch in for the ride? Nope, can't do that, either--Quick Step's Lefevere and CSC's Bjarne Riis have also been whacked with career-doping rumors they've barely bothered to dispute. Well, you might find a few unpromising tykes on tricycles who haven't been busted for doping yet....

At Play in the Fields of the Peloton

Burn, Baby, Burn: with Ivan Basso looking increasingly unlikely to be available to slug it out mano-a-mano with Gilberto Simoni again at the Giro, the retiring star's thoughts have lightly turned to voracious personal attacks (however, since we dearly love Gibo, and his nasty remark last year about Basso being an "extraterrestri" or doper--then derided as snarky sour grapes--may well prove prescient, we don't care). Anyhoo, Gibo snorted that Basso "only loves the money," particularly for offering Simoni cash for the stage to Aprica last year and consequently lost all Simoni's respect, in contrast to, say, Fleche-Wallone king Davide Rebellin, who actually loves the bike and doesn't need to "travel to Spain"--nice!--to make things happen. And angelic baby champ Damiano Cunego? Basically, a renegade tool for defying team orders for Simoni to take a stage in '04, and more, a marionette weakling "dependent on the strength of others" to win. Man, tell us how you really feel, at least til someone bushwhacks you off a mountainside in the Dolomites in May!

Piling On: And, in the wake of the contentious riders' association meeting where the Spaniards (we're innocent til proven guilty) and French (we're lighting the funeral pyre under you *now,* which is utterly unrelated to the fact that we've had no results for several years) came rather to loggerheads, retiring Cofidis wallflower Brad "the Executioner" Wiggins sez he's glad Basso and the rest of the filthy bastards are going down in flames where they belong, and that it's all the damn lawyers' fault for obscuring the truth in Madrid and with Floyd anyway. Wrong (at least to the second point, anyway)! One, make no mistake, this is driven by the paranoid guilty clients of the lawyers--the riders--not the pinstriped saps they hire to do their dirty work, and two, poor Floyd Landis for one wouldn't need so much lawyering to fairly defend himself if the vengeful French lab monkeys and bitter emasculated anti-doping officials followed justice-ensuring protocol for two seconds straight. I swear the Millars and Wiggins of this sport irritate me more than the Festinas!

ASO for God's Sake Already!: ASO, while I have mildly taken you to task for your displaced aggression against Unibet, I have been perhaps your strongest apologist (or perhaps just the only cycling fanatic who's also legal wonk enough to care). And I did this despite the fact that innocent riders were suffering, because I felt that your righteous battle with UCI served a greater good--the preservation and self-determination of some of the most beautiful bike races on earth. But now, you're ignoring a *judge's order* to let Unibet play at Liege? I can't condone that crap! Plus, you already crushed UCI on the 'peace deal'--what more do you want than a judge saying the whole promise-nothing emergency agreement was nonbinding? You're on your own ASO--eat the 5 million euro a day fine if it makes you happy!

And on a purely practical note, by Mr. Prudhomme's own rules, you're about to lose about 48 guys who might otherwise start the Tour de France (let's leave aside the fact you apparently don't want to screw with Quick Step, or you'd be taking Tom Boonen and the rest of them out for their own rider's assertion of ongoing systematic doping at the team.) Can you really afford to lose 8 nice guys including Baden Cooke who are about the only Tour-worthy riders *not* embroiled in some grotesque scandal? I'll say it again--it's totally disgusting to ban the Op Puerto riders over others accused of doping on similarly-sketchy allegations unburdened by positive tests or DNA matches. Does anyone really think one evil Spanish doctor is the only dope-dealer working the peloton right this second?

Yes, Virginia, There Are Bike Races: with Gerolsteiner rising handsomely from the ashes after Levi's exile with wins at Amstel and Fleche-Wallone, and Petacchi back on form at the Giro del Trentino, the women took on the fearsome Mur de Huy in the women's Fleche, with world champ Marianne Vos knocking out a killer field including Nicole Cooke and USA's Amber Neben and Kristin Armstrong. With the USA women just having established a new training camp in Europe, can anyone doubt they're ready for the big leagues? And sponsors: sure, the men's race is longer, but doesn't anyone who can attack up the Mur after a hard day's work deserve a raise and a hike in the glam factor? Bring on the moolah, the podium babes and the champagne already!

Money (That's What I Want)

500k Down, 9.5 Mil to Go: well, the 500 grand raised by the Floyd Fairness Fund so far turns out to be a woefully inadequate drop in the bucket, as Floyd Landis claims a combined loss in salary, endorsements, legal fees and assorted suckage of nearly $10 million, leaving him a crappy 9 and a half mil in the hole, and, he claims, near bankruptcy. Now, not to minimize what this hellish witchhunt has cost what is hopefully a wrongfully accused honest sportsman (and certainly, a horridly procedurally abused sportsman, honest or not, which ought to carry its own price for the accusers), both financially and otherwise. But considering that Tyler Hamilton still owes me $15 for the hat I defaced defending his honor (assuming he was guilty, that is), and that I was seriously in danger of having to sell off some fairly dear-to-my-heart organs and/or relatives to fund my last-year's trip to the Giro, I'm afraid he'll have to do without the $2 I've managed to keep clinging to my wallet nonetheless. Anyhow, who was it who said that good wishes are more valuable than gold? I'm really pulling for you Floyd!

Media Monkeys: and, while we're on the subject of Landis, can the cycling know-nothings writing all the stories in the non-biking press please try to learn themselves, before they try to brainlessly explain to the masses, exactly why there's so much suspicion among certain cycling freaks that Landis is being completely railroaded? Let's forget Floyd's personal rep as Boy Scout of the Peloton. And let's even ignore the massive emotional crisis the French lab seems to have whenever the issues of "fair play," "transparency," "due process," and "we never did get to nail Lance Armstrong for anything" come up. And I know I've excessively yapped about this issue in the past, so I apologize for beating a dead horse here. But best as I could tell, the peloton flat !@#$% up in giving Landis an excess of dignity-reclaiming leeway on the road to Morzine after his previous day's humiliating mountainside crack, and didn't realize their mistake til he was already back in GC contention. And he had his team car two inches from his face giving him constant food, drink, encouragement, and advice for about a thousand kilometers--a key luxury the presumptively podium-bound boys back in the group did not enjoy. So before we treat him like some indisputably steroid-stuffed bodybuilder who's visibly gone from 98-pound weakling to linebacker overnight, can we at least point out that drugged to the hilt or not he had other help in winning that day?

Singin' In the Rain: Bjarne Riis, dangerously close to being obliged to watch his ex-beloved ex-moneymaking ex-protege Ivan Basso win the Giro (and likely podium at the Tour) on the amoral watch of Team Discovery, had his near-disastrous decision to ditch him utterly vindicated by Discovery's completely spineless bailout on the boy the second the Italian prosecutors stuck their necks out again. Bjarne, of course, was decidedly smug in victory, admiring Discovery for its suddenly-principled stand but opining he didn't want to be bothered any more by the whole Op Puerto hoo-ha in any case, as pure'n'humble CSC just wants to "ride our bikes." Awwww. And you really didn't want to twist the knife into Johan Bruyneel with your extensive "no comment" comments either, I'm sure! Meantime, Alejandro Valverde, irksomely confronted with the renewed blood-bags fuss at his pre-Fleche-Wallone press conference as the Basso banishment scandal exploded, smoothly deflected any adverse reflection on himself by pointing out that after all, *he's* being allowed to ride it. Sure, he may not have taken the race yesterday, but he certainly wins for press-handling!

Desperate Times/Desperate Measures: and, in a sign that Basso's lawyer Massimo Martelli has about reached the limit of what any counselor can do for a hopeless cause and is set to execute Plan B if he has to, Ivan's hired gun did denounce the latest round of actions against his boy as a "massacre," but, more ominously, went on to say that there are 50 riders implicated in Op Puerto, and that--and this is really quite fair, I think--if Basso's gonna be called on the carpet, every damn one of the other riders is gonna join him there. Hear that, you SOB directeur sportifs? If you're gonna try to let Basso take the fall, your filthy boys are all coming down with him! And, in a sign of even more desperation, the ever-tranquillo Basso even talked to reporters himself, slagging the powers-that-be for dropping a "time-bomb" on him two weeks before the Giro after letting him train all winter, and what's more, he already said anyone who wanted his DNA can have it. Um, leaving aside the totally revisionist history on that latter point, does it occur to anyone else that he could come up clean against the existing Fuentes blood bags, but still have actually doped with Fuentes another way? As always, great job with what you've got, Massimo--we'll see what you can come up with on May 2nd at the meeting with CONI!

Joseba Beloki Contract Watch: Now? And with ex-Liberty Seguros teammate Michele Scarponi getting called up to face the music with Basso? Yeah, right! So explain to me again why precocious baby champs/Saiz-picked Luis Leon Sanchez and Alberto Contador aren't being dragged down by this too? Oh, right, they're *currently* coming up with stellar results....

Floyd Who?

Man Overboard!: Gee, could Discovery have raced away from Ivan Basso any faster if Bruyneel himself were hopped up on the strongest speed-enhancers the dope-dealing doctors had to offer? First, the Tour opines "Op Puerto riders not welcome"--Discovery instantly cries "Levi's been our man for the Tour all along." (Riiiiggggghhhht.) Next, Italy pipes up, "we might be interested in Fuentes' blood bags after all"--Discovery instantly drops Basso from Fleche-Wallone and Liege-Bastogne-Liege. Now, a few more details emerge--a schedule of blood transfusions under "Birillo" (alleged/denied to be Basso's dog) or "No. 2"(perhaps the cruelest allegation, considering Jan Ullrich's code name was allegedly "No. 1"--after all, when was the last time Ullrich took a Grand Tour?), 100k of Basso's euros floating around, a reference in Italian to a Swiss bank account, and oh yeah, the totally innocent reference to "'Birillo' coming in 16 seconds back with Simoni," which Basso totally coincidentally did in a stage of last year's Giro, along with Davide Rebellin and Serguei Gonchar, who apparently have different dogs--and Discovery suspends Basso from competition completely. (Hell, even the Basso-fawning apologists over at the Giro were forced to gack up an admission that his participation there this year will be "difficult.") Anyone else thinking it'll be about 5 more minutes before Johan "Stand By Your Man" Bruyneel unceremoniously sends his photogenic cash cow off to the slaughterhouse entirely? Not bad for 24 hours' work, Johan!

Don't get me wrong, folks. I love Ivan Basso. Watching him ride from a half-meter away is truly a study in grace, efficiency, and skill--doped or not, you can't fake that. And I particularly love Basso's genius lawyer Massimo Martelli (who if he can weasel Ivan out of even this one, by the way, ought to be promoted to King of All the Universe). But I !@#$%! *hate* hypocrisy, and while I certainly can't condemn Basso for being worse'n anybody else in the peloton, it still rather smacked of injustice to see him ostentatiously kissing his bambino for the cameras at the Tour of California while Ullrich staked out his place on the unemployment line. But most disgusting by far in this whole affair: yep, Team Discovery. Bruyneel, you were fairly warned. If you're gonna take advantage of the other teams' squeamishness in signing the boy, you've got to take the bad with the good, and accept the fullness of the pretty-boy burden you were all too willing to profit from. To ditch him so speedily now is the height of cowardice and hypocrisy. Either grow a spine and stick up for your tainted goods, or publicly admit you didn't give a rat's @#$ he might've doped, you babies!

On Basso's end, let's look at options in both guilt and innocence, shall we? As I see it, they are (1) claim sudden lingering injury from early season crashes, retire, return as directeur sportif in a couple of seasons to indignantly defend your new team's riders from doping charges; (2) deny, and ride it out--that's worked great for Roberto Heras and Floyd Landis, right?; or (3) pull a St. David Millar, sob your shame and regret to the press til we all want to punch you, sell incredibly lucrative exclusive tell-all confessional to Gazzetta dello Sport and take all your sanctimonious lying critics in the cycling world down with you. If it weren't for the fact that all these born-again cleansters make me sick with their self-congratulatory media-mugging mea culpas, I'd say his best bet is #3--anybody?

Oh Massimo. You have my sympathy. With a client this allegedly roguish, there's only so much even the finest counsel can do. Best of luck--you'll need it!

Target Practice

L'Equipe's Been Working on the Railroad, All the Livelong Day: yep, as you've no doubt heard, the dreams of every whipped French cycling journalist still smarting from their failure to nail Lance Armstrong have finally come true, as L'Equipe joyously reports that Floyd Landis' B samples--of As from the Tour that tested clean under one method--have fortuitously tested dirty for exogenous testosterone under a different method. Phew! Since the lab utterly denied Landis due process by screwing up the Morzine samples that originally ripped Landis' Tour victory out from under him, it's good they were finally able to peg him for *something*! The catch? Well, according to Landis' exasperated team, in addition to giving the lions a second chance to down the prey they humiliatingly--and publicly--missed the first time, the lab utterly denied Landis due process this time around, too, by failing to allow, as required by the rules, one of Landis' own experts to observe the proceedings. Nice work reaching your foregone conclusion, you apes!

Look, from a legal perspective, I have decidedly mixed feelings about those rare instances where due process concerns trump actual facts. But what's incredibly clear in this case is that none of these idiots should be allowed to judge a kindergarten schoolyard dispute over the rightful ownership of a spit-covered lollipop, much less a complex scientific determination as to whether someone's hard-earned career oughta be blown to bits. Destroy him fairly and honestly--fine, them's the breaks for Floyd, justice is served. But if you can't, suck up the pain of your unjustified suspicions and acknowledge either that he's really not guilty, or you haven't the competence to prove that he is. Y'know, I've got nothing but admiration for France. The food; the wine; the history of brazen imperialism almost as impressive as our own; not to mention the Tour de France organizers satisfyingly smacking around the irksome crybabies over at UCI at every opportunity. But can the yellow journalists (and I say that with the utmost respect, as I can only aspire to be one) over at L'Equipe please get over their grudge about the French losing the Tour every year in recent memory and at least wait til they can nail any American they can find with some halfway credible evidence?

Do You Feel Lucky, Punk? Well, Do Ya?: lest anyone in the peloton implicated in the dead-in-the-water Op Puerto welcome the Landis diversion too happily, UCI's Pat "Dick" McQuaid has now appealed openly to the Spanish sports minister for help, begging him to allow the 100ish blood bags seized in the investigation to be made available for DNA comparison, citing rumors that the wily Dr. Fuentes is at it again (said whisperings xenophobically fueled, apparently, by the Spaniards predictably crushing everyone else in the peloton in their hometown Vuelta a Pais Vasco.) This, one might surmise, is likely to make many of the ProTour teams and their favored riders a bit twitchy, particularly considering their perhaps retrospectively ill-considered promise to make DNA samples available for future scandals--though they could always argue that this old-news witchhunt doesn't count, and I imagine the dozen-odd anonymous riders who refused to sign onto that pledge (now, not to speculate, but anyone else guessing Ivan "Come Within 800 Miles of Me With a Q-Tip and My Lawyer Will Chew Your Face Off" Basso is one of them?) aren't flipping out too badly yet. Hell, there's plenty of time to weasel out of this one til July!

Bruyneel Giveth, and Bruyneel Taketh Away: and, in the wake of the Prudhomme halfhearted "Op Puerto Riders Go Home" hoo-ha, Discovery master Johan Bruyneel remains surprisingly unperturbed by the suggestion of Basso's forced nonparticipation in the Tour, shockingly claiming that we love Levi Leipheimer was "always" to be their leader at the Tour de France, and Basso was ever only really hired to defend his Giro. Really? Am I the only one whose gut response to that announcement is "that's crap!"? Why else would an American team almost exclusively fixated on the Tour, with an American fan base that's barely even heard of the Giro, have handed over 90 gazillion euros to secure Lance protege Basso? Luckily, Levi's smashing recent performances at the Tours of California and Georgia give Johan something halfway plausible to hang one's hat on, at least if one ignores the preening press conferences and uber-gentleman Leipheimer's curiously late and flat response that accompanied Basso's signing. As to Prudhomme's request re: Basso particularly, Bruyneel maintained a stoic "no comment." Man, do we have to go through all this drama at the Tour de France start line *again*?

A Pound of Fleche

The Wild, Wild West(ern Europe): so poor hijacked Unibet, barred from both Liege-Bastogne-Liege and the Fleche-Wallone (neither rejections boding well for the Tour de France, of course) have joined forces with their actual (yet still mysteriously blameless by the team) culprit-pimps UCI to sue ASO over their exclusion from these beloved Classics and force their place at the start-line on Wednesday. Why, oh, why, Unibet, do you continue to fail to see the light over whose fault this problem actually is? The Grand Tour organizers made it clear they loathed anyone else who was gonna even try to grab the last two-ProTour-licenses-too-many, yet you bought one anyway, sweetly trusting UCI to value the obscene wad of cash you paid them and actually fight to protect you. Well, you were right on the first count at least--I'm sure UCI did appreciate the money before they sold you out in Brussels to smooth the road to Paris-Nice! And while ASO's conduct might be, well, more sporting, last I checked petty towel-snapping of an easy target wasn't a clear criminal or civil offense. God, can all these unbearable toddlers just bury the hatchet they keep jamming into each others' backs and let the defenseless pawn riders in red (or question-mark green, whichever) get their bikes out of the garage to liven up the peloton with the rest of 'em?

And Landis Causes Global Warming, Too: wasting no effort to avoid responsibility for their own incompetence, and spinelessly blame a target who's got far more important battles to fight these days, I see that the organizers of the late-season Zuri-Metzgete have now blasted Floyd Landis of all people as the absolute reason for the cancellation of their event for 2007. Why? His nefarious conduct discouraged the shocked sponsor, who had apparently never heard of doping in the peloton before, and if that's really the case, had also apparently never heard of the freakin' peloton before. Since it seems that one or two other races with corporate sponsors are still on for this season despite the boy's dragging the sport into disrepute--say, the Giro, the Tour, the Vuelta, and all the Classics--explain to me again why Landis is the obvious boogeyman in this case?

Jorg of the Jungle: not satisfied with signing with endless-well-o'-funds Team Tinkoff while we love Joseba Beloki's still stuck at home cracking open a cold one in front of the TV, new hire Jorg Jaksche has yet again slammed everyone in his path for the disaster that is the year's worth of failed doping affairs, snarling that "someone has to pay" for what's been done and that cyclists, once revered as honest humble sportsmen (when exactly was that again?) have now been reduced to the status of "beggars." While we're at it, it's clear from rumors in the peloton that Jan Ullrich is totally innocent, and moreover, it's downright unjust to peg Tinkoff as Home of the Dope Fiends just because of him, Hamilton, and Hondo at the start gate, particularly as Gerolsteiner (don't ask me what his grudge is with them, over every other presumptively disingenous team claiming purity) and its riders all have something to be ashamed of, so everyone should just shut their yaps and let him ride in peace. Um, I'm completely sympathetic to the fact that you and everyone else in Liberty Seguros were cement-shoed into a river without concrete evidence against you, but could you kindly not wah-wah about being treated with contempt 10 seconds after you've just signed a pretty handsome contract while some riders with equally admirable palmares in your exact same situation remain unemployed?

Tour de 5 or 6 Guys

Operacion Decimate the Tour: So Mr. Prudhomme, organizer of our beloved (if perhaps recently controversial) Tour de France, has laid down the law, sort of, for the teams, informing them that he doesn't want any of the riders implicated in Op Puerto in the race, especially in light of recent info that some of those ninety-odd blood bags actually belonged to at least one well-known boy just retired from the peloton. Ummm...did Prudhomme think to count how many quality riders were actually implicated in Op Puerto? The way I figure it, if he's really gonna stick to this, that puts Valverde Sastre and Kloden on the podium (not necessarily in that order), depending on whether he considers Vinokorouv as tainted by Op Puerto both by his association with Lord of the Doping Rings Manolo Saiz (*cough* Beloki! *cough*) and his apparent presence in Fuentes' very own wallet, or conveniently decides that doesn't really count. Looking forward to that rationalization, pal!

Now, this is not to say Prudhomme's actually downright forbidden the filthy shameful presence of all these riders--but he did talk to Johan Bruyneel about it, thoughtfully giving him Lance and Ivan plenty of lead time to sue the bike shorts off everybody who tries to bar babelicious pinup talent Basso from the start line. And fortunately, Prudhomme's also still got plenty of time to decide how seriously he Supports Drug-Free Sport, as if he's really gonna ban everyone implicated but not convicted in Op Puerto, in fairness he also oughta take out the Quick Step boys recently busted in the Belgian press for their own escapades, as well as everyone else hit by recent scandal--and while we're at it, exactly what freakish percentage of the peloton has totally necessary Therapeutic Use Exemptions for oxygen-carrying asthma meds?--so by my reckoning we're pretty much going to have our podium finishers and maybe a couple of backup domestiques from Cofidis on hand, which really doesn't seem like a big enough group to get us through the Prologue, much less three leg-crushing weeks in the Alps and Pyrenees. Hell, why not just cancel the whole thing now and go straight to the wrap party in Paris instead?

Everyone Else is a Wuss: Sure, you've blasted up some serious cols with a broken collarbone, bounced back after being hit by a tractor during a training ride, and hopped right back on track after some ditzbag fan's wandering tot has taken you out with a plastic bag entangling your handlebars--but have you ever charged to victory over some of the best riders in the country with the specter and strain of imminent cervical surgery hanging over your head? Not unless you're Erica Allar, you haven't, but if you are, you've beaten the fearsome road warrior Tina Pic in the ride of your life at the Central Georgia Cycle for the Cure. No money, no support, no glory--all guts. Right on sister, and wishing you a speedy recovery!

Shameless Patriotic Rah-Rah Moment: while we're on the Tour de Georgia (or thereabouts), and still reeling from the mortifying 29 minute breakaway the other day (anyone testing these guys?) that took out nearly everyone from GC contention except a couple of guys from Discovery and a passel of Euro-scorned domestic squad riders, I thought I'd mention that we love Levi Leipheimer handsomely won, and we also love back on form Dave Zabriskie very nicely smoked everyone else but him in, the Tour de Georgia time trial above a field of such fine (if irksome) specialists as St. David Millar. Yeeeeeeee-haaaaaaah, watch out Tour de France time trialists!

Recon Missions: hooray! the Giro d'Italia is but weeks away, so soon-to-be-road-retiree Simoni, tow-headed boy wonder Damiano Cunego, and crash-plagued/OP implicated Basso have all been testing out the Zoncolan and Tre Crime di Lavaredo ahead of the race, with generally positive reviews for the climbs they'll be grimacing in misery on, and I imagine a few things yet to settle between Gibo "Basso Non E Uomo" Simoni and Ivan "It's Not My Fault I'm Better Than You" Basso from last year. Since Basso'll still probably shove his way onto the start line at the Tour no matter what Prudhomme throws at him, and Cunego's got about a hundred years left before his career tanks, I'm rooting for Simoni on this one. Vai, Il Trentino!

Call Me Sometime When You Have No Class

Joseba Beloki Contract Watch: No, but !@#$%*! Astana could've said so more nicely, instead thundering that the rumors of his signing were "absolutely false" and, moreover, snarking that all its riders must be an appropriate fit in both "sporting" and "image". Am I on complete crack here, or was Fuentes walking around with a business card with Vinokorouv's name on it, which is a hell of a lot less tenuous an association than Beloki's link to Op Puerto by his mere place on Liberty Seguros? Don't sign him?--no sweat, neither has anyone else after all. But to react with such a nasty attack on a guy who's already down over a simple rumor there's no show he even started is beyond a knife in the back. That's it--Vino's off my list for the Tour just for his team being such a wank. Allez Valverde!

The Real Hell of the North: well, the ink's barely dry on the history books, and every team that didn't win Paris-Roubaix is already eating their own young. Discovery DS Dirk Demol undiplomatically blasted Gusev, Devolder, and Vaitkus; Quick Step's master deflector of blame Patrick Lefevere whomped Van Petegem and Steegmans for their incompetence (Van Petegem) and lack of confidence (Steegmans); and pretty much everyone everywhere is slamming Boonen's pathetic performances all season, though I've heard the boy's actually pretty decent on a bike. That really oughta make your riders want to work for you, management!

Tour de Francs (Well, Euros): Finally, I see Floyd Landis is on a nationwide tour to raise money for his Fairness Fund legal defense by offering photo ops with starstruck fans for $25 a pop. I wonder what...y'know, I was about to ask something so beyond rude even by my standards, but I just couldn't do that to poor Floyd and his nice family, as after all I'm really deep down rooting for him. Forget I suggested anything!

It's All About the Benjamins

Would You Buy a Used Car From This Man?: as if having his reputation sullied, his place in history destroyed, his future in pro cycling management tanked, and his talent, integrity and general worthiness mocked by the German press weren't enough, Jan Ullrich's last hope for making a living, his endorsement gig with X-Bionic, is now in doubt as the company polls its customers to find out whether they still would, or now wouldn't, buy any Jan Ullrich (TM) gear in the wake of his disgrace. Not that they don't genuinely want to project an image of wholesome innocent athletic success and good sportsmanship--but they might be talked out of it if the euros are right. Well, they may be mercenary, but at least they get points for not convicting the boy before a trial! Hear that, UCI?

Redemption Song: Aching to find Floyd Landis guilty of *something*, and thereby redeem their current reputation as the Three Stooges of the scientific world, the hapless techs at the French lab who so skillfully mishandled the Landis Morzine-day samples are now having a go at the different-day B samples whose As tested negative, all at the behest of even-more-eager-to-convict USADA. Now, it seems to me that Landis is in a bit of a Catch-22 here: if the B samples test negative, confirming the results on the A samples--which the Landis team of course would not contest--the lab gets to say, "see, we're both honest and competent after all!" But if the B samples test positive--which the Landis team of course would vigorously contest--the lab gets to say, "see, we told you Landis is a dirty doping lying pig!" So as far as I can tell, either way, they win and Floyd is jacked. Besides polishing these clowns' sterling rep and sinking Landis by implication, can anyone give me a legitimate reason this exercise is taking place?

Can We Pleeeeaaaassseeee Not Talk About Doping At Quick Step?: yep, Patrick "So What If I Did?" Lefevere has joined the chorus demanding that the investigation against Dr. Fuentes be reopened, this time elaborating that he's--horrors! at least in the sense that not everyone in the peloton might have access to it--providing a new alternative to EPO that is not yet detectable. Deflecting attention a bit from your Belgian press humiliation, are we? Meantime, Danilo Hondo's Swiss court date has been put off yet again, leaving in some doubt when the Tinkoff transplant can get back on his bike, which is just as well as it gives Tyler Hamilton some time to get up to speed and prove that he rides just fine when he's tested every two minutes.

Where in the World Is Iban Mayo?: most recently, playing domestique to J.J. Cobo and Koldo Gil at the Vuelta a Pais Vasco in his run-up to supporting Gilberto Simoni at the Giro. Oh, Iban. Is Saunier-Duval ever going to let you out to run in your own right, even outside the pressure-cooker of the Tour?

O ('Grady) My!: Sprinter. Grand Tour GC contender. Classics man. Between catastrophic injuries, it seems Stewie O'Grady's been all 3, until he, and CSC's incredibly wily team tactics, firmly whapped him into the pantheon of timeless classics champions with his truly butt-kicking breakaway victory in Paris-Roubaix. Right on O'Grady! Bonus points: CSC first choice/2006 defending champ Fabian Cancellara disrupting the French press interview to clamber all over O'Grady in congrats; Lars Michaelson's grand farewell performance; and the immediate public smackdown between usually amiable Tom Boonen and the rest of his failed gruppetto over whose fault their chase choke really was. Allez!

The Hell of the West

Live (well, the morning after) From the Sea Otter Classic: so it was a muddy, freezing, pouring wreck of a Sea Otter, with the vendors standing inches-deep in filth and slop dashing to get their merch off the ground, the women's circuit race cancelled midway from the deluge and the men's circuit utterly phoning it on the track with the exception of the two leaders, presumably, or at least hopefully, 'cause the track (usually beseiged by race cars) was still wet oily and treacherous. Celebrity sightings: mountain goddess Shonny Vanlandingham, by whose august presence I was entirely too bamfoozled to go up and speak, and downhill king Brian Lopes, who emerged from slaughtering his competitor looking as refreshed and relaxed as if he'd just gotten up from a nice nap. All in all, a drenched and filthy wallop o' fun--see you next year!

Joseba Beloki Contract Watch: holy crap, he might be signing with Vinokorouv over at Astana for a year and go play at the Vuelta? Take that, Saiz, you wretch! (Oh right, and Tinkoff continues its bid to become the Festina of the New Millenium by taking on alleged dope fiend/recently dumped Jorg Jaksche.) Somebody sign Roberto Heras when his sentence is up in August, and I'm in heaven. Oh, Jan....

The Tour de France (2006): apparently conceding that the French lab monkeys screwed up so irretrievably in both the procedural chain of custody and practical results on the Floyd Landis epi/testosterone ratio that they've completely lost any chance of stripping him of the Tour, and aiming it seems to help the French hand the '06 Tour over to Pereiro before the next one hits the road, USADA of all people is asking to re-test the B samples for the days Landis actually tested clean in in the seeming hope they'll belatedly be able to nail him for something. What unmitigated bull!@##, USADA! First, you're missing the point. The lab @#$!%* up. If you can't nail him and he gets to keep the Tour, too bad. Isn't it consolation enough that even if he's actually innocent, you've completely wrecked his name for all time? (And hopefully for Landis, it's consolation enough that no less a luminary than Paul Sherwen believes you.) Second, even if you *are* able to nail him for these samples, it's meaningless. The A samples already tested clean, and you're gonna look like a pack of lying desperate emasculated weasels if you try to claim the B ones are dirty. God, USADA, have you really no more shame than, say, Pat "Dick" McQuaid from UCI? Anyhow, Landis' teams got right on the problem, demanding that if the testing takes place at all (and that ought to be the first thing they address), they want it done by a smarter US lab, which protests it has the talent to figure things out, but not the equipment. Hmmm...the French have the equipment, but choke on every sample they touch; the US has the ability, but not the means to get it done. Put them together, and I think we've almost got a whole lab here folks!

Carnage Update: with half the peloton taken out at Ghent with broken bones on the Kemmelberg, and the other half a la Thor Hushovd absolutely gobsmacked by the disgusting and long-lived stomach bug plaguing the group, it's unclear who's actually able to get out of bed enough to stagger to the Paris-Roubaix sign-in, but it's not been much different over at Vuelta a Pais Vasco, with a mass tangle taking out a good portion of the Spanish contingent and, collectively, leaving about 2 guys left for the remainder of the pre-Giro, pre-Tour prep. On the other hand, we love ex-Discovery/now Liquigas' Triki Beltran took a stage, so who really cares? Right on Triki!

Turmoil, and Another Proposal

The Hundred Years' War: well, the conflagration between UCI, the Grand Tours, and stomped-on offal Unibet continues, as in a pathetic bit of self-preservation UCI's Pat "Dick" McQuaid is now threatening to sue ASO and RCS for breaking the vaunted pre-Paris-Nice "peace deal" to let Unibet romp in their races, after ASO disses 'em again for Liege and Fleche-Wallone, citing legal barriers. Anyway, in a humble attempt to put this drama to rest once and for all, and let everyone get back to bike racing (remember that, you clowns?), I propose the following:

UCI: in addition to being generally loathesome, you acted like a pack of fascist knee-capping bullies in gratuitously jamming known unwanted additional ProTour licenses down the Grand Tour organizers' throats. So they want to invite Chocolade Jacques to the Tour de France, what's it to you? Apologize to them for your deliberate, petty, power-grabbing provocation, and give them a giant wad of cash to buy Unibet's inclusion in the major races (we know they're already letting in Astana.) Then, cut the ProTour license giveaways next season, and quit whining. While we're at it, shut the hell up with the leak-happy dope-fiend-rider slander til you've got concrete proof to back it up.

Grand Tours: you're entirely in the right to resent and despise the way the 3-year-old jailbait ProTour organization tried to hijack you and yours, the most beautiful bike races on the planet. However, you are entirely wussy for targeting helpless baby pawn Unibet for revenge instead of your true, and more formidable, prey UCI. Either sue UCI for interfering with your gigs, or don't. While we're at it, I know Baden Cooke is no Vinokorouv (not least because their roles are so different), but if your bar-none cutoff is really 18 ProTour squads, if you really respect the efforts of the riders--who after all are totally innocent in this--you'll show both some spine and some fair play and either ban both Astana and Unibet from your races, or concede your juvenile gamesmanship on this point and let 'em both in.

Unibet: face facts. UCI pimped you to ASO in the emergency agreement by knowingly acceding to unenforceable language "promising" to "favorably consider" you for their races, in order to protect older, more powerful teams. ASO/RCS' conduct towards you is certainly unfair, but UCI is the true cause of your misery. If they jacked you making promises they couldn't or just plain wouldn't keep, sue em for every damn cent you paid for that useless ProTour license and every damn cent it's cost you since. And next time--be more careful. You took 2 calculated risks: (1) that France and Belgium would keep not enforcing their gambling-advertising rules as they did before you got your license; and (2) that the race organizers would not only do so, too, but would not target you selectively. You lost. Them's the breaks. You did the right thing with those bitchin'-publicity-stunt question mark jerseys, but if that's not enough, and you have to give up the sponsorship, please do right by your riders, soigneurs, and directeur sportifs, and help them find new gigs for '08--don't disgustingly pull a Phonak and shove 'em all out the airplane without a parachute.

Now, shake hands, and go off to your separate rooms for a time-out until you've learned to control yourselves. I've had it with the lot of you, and anyhow it's time for Paris-Roubaix!

Just Say No, and a Proposal

Jan on the Run: so Jan Ullrich, hurt apparently by the German press' unjustly destroying his reputation over such trivial questions as why a notorious doping provider was seemingly in possession of a bunch of his blood, has decided to limit any future remarks on his situation to the more controlled environment of his personal website, plaintively claiming he's not only innocent, but "blameless," and promising that, while he must unfortunately keep his explanations to himself for now, all will be revealed in due course. (Y'know, if he'd just kept it to the ambiguous "blameless," he could've really sold any or all of his handlers down the river as the "blameful" parties in this matter, and claimed helplessness under the pressure, should he really get busted this time. Not that he oughta do such a lame and cowardly thing. I'm just sayin'.) Anyhoo, his lawyers, by contrast, seem less welded to the idea of his actual purity, speaking hopefully of their "good working contacts in Bonn" amidst rumors they're working on a plea bargain. Jan, you're either a doper or you're not, and your lawyers at least publicly should be toeing the party line--get your message together, people!

Misery Loves Company: on the plus side for scapegoat-o'-the-peloton Ullrich, the ProTour teams' association, in a shocking (and rather suspicious) bit of fair play, is now demanding that the teams make all the Op Puerto-implicated riders turn over their DNA now for comparison to Fuentes' extensive stash, officially closed Spanish investigation or no. Don't worry, IPCT, I'm sure--as I'm sure you genuinely believe--every one of the teams'll eagerly comply. After all, they kept their word on the ultra-successful "gentlemen's agreement" not to hire any of these accused skankbags in the first place, didn't they? Oops, wait a minute...

A Proposition: Tyler. Floyd. Jan. 10 or 12 others I can think of. Now, I know it's all too easy to Monday-morning quarterback here. But still, it seems to me that certain legal and other matters might've occasionally been approached, well, slightly differently to date. So, as a devoted believer in truth, equal application of the rules, and fair sport, and having a vested interested as a fan in not seeing 1/2 the pro peloton banned from racing for life (if only so we needn't all yawn our way through the next few Grand Tours), I'd like to humbly offer my legal services to the various riders clearly unjustly implicated in Operacion Puerto and similar baseless scandals. Qualifications: a genuine love of cycling, a general disgust with hypocritical authorities, a relentless attraction to losing causes, and a nascent-and-growing ability to bellow "slander!" "libel!" and "significant monetary damages!" in several pertinent languages. Alternately, if you're Ivan Basso's genius lawyer Massimo Martelli, I'm actually pretty content to toss years of training in the tank and just do your Xeroxing (TM) or something so I can watch you in action. Free the OP 50!

Leif Blower: well, as both my faithful readers know, my calls on the Tour de Flanders were complete crap, and as absolutely everybody knows by now, upstart 3 Days of De Panne champ Alessandro Ballan unbelievably surged past 3x-a-bridesmaid/certain victor Leif Hoste right on the line, despite a very fine tactic to simply wear the former boy down and out of sprint contention, by half a wheel. While Ballan was kind in victory, poor Hoste was so obviously destroyed by his incredible loss I can't help but root for him desperately next year. That, and on a personal note I was also sad to lose the chance to smack around Discovery for ditching Hoste so ignominiously over to Predictor-Lotto. You can do it, Leif--Predictor, start your planning for next year now! And, amongst all the bodies littering the pave' this year, possibly the most bummin' is vet we love Erik Zabel, whacked out of Ghent-Wevelgem and the Hell of the North with a sorely bruised hip and shredded, if otherwise undamaged, arm and knee. Hold it together Erik--you must go out with at least one last stage in the Tour!

Ronde and Ronde We Go

Pave'-retto: yes fans, it's time for the Tour of Flanders, home to quite a brace of nasty climbs and some truly tire-shredding pave'. Who'll take it? Well, not discombobulated recent flame-out Alessandro Petacchi, cooling his jets after his late debacles and planning a gentler, and perhaps less scrutinized, run-up to the Giro, leaving Erik Zabel as Milram's great baby-blue hope. (Daniele Bennati, I notice, has been hyping his own fabulous form for days, a mosquito in the ear to poor Alessandro.) And not "Pocket Rocket" Robbie McEwen, zapped with a bout of the flu. As for Oscar Friere? Well, the spine of our oft-injured boy in orange emerged surprisingly unscathed from his recent battle with the pave', and he'd sure like to add this baby to his palmares. And CSC? Well, Fabian Cancellara's got some reckoning to do with Boonen for his near-victory at the E3 Prijs, and with clear Grand Tour fave Basso absconded over to Discovery (well, more like shot off a trebouchet by Bjarne Riis, but that's neither here nor there), CSC's got reason to focus on the classics. And the natural faves over at QuickStep? Well, the only problem for hometown hunkmeister/3x winner Tom Boonen is that Paolo Bettini rather seems to want it too, especially after last weekend's infuriating race-busting mechanical in the Prijs, though fortunately he seems to be backing off that a bit by complaining about ongoing rib pain, and along with old hand Peter Van Petegem (and after a few uncharacteristically stern, or perhaps just optimistic, words from Boonen about how he's confident the two will come behind him entirely), appears inclined to help Boonen to his own detriment after all, at least should it come down to the clear big Tom tactical advantage of an impending bunch sprint. Well, my money's on Boonen, but my heart's rather on Oscar or Bettini. Vai Paolo!

That's FrankenSTEEN: So, Patrick "Do As I Say, Not As I Do" Lefevere is hysterically (in both senses of the word) demanding a UCI investigation into the brand-spankin'-new activities of the disgusting Dr. Fuentes, on the grounds that he's heard the disgraced medic is active yet again in the peloton. Even if it's true--and frankly, any rider working with him at this point should be banned from the sport for life for sheer stupidity, forget any actual freakin' doping--can he really be the only physician (or other rogue with a syringe and a dream) on earth servicing the peloton? Or it just that...well, on second thought, I'd better stop right there!

You Can Call Me Al: the kudos: NBC aired same-day coverage of the US Open Cycling Champsionships this weekend with Bob Roll and Frankie Andreu, whose commentary is generally both lively and, a nice bonus for newcomers in particular, enlightening. The dope-slap: NBC also tapped relentless nightmare Al Trautwig for the task. Aiiiiiggggghhh! What *is* the allure of this schmo? Is it the amiable-doofus/deer-in-the-headlights mystique that so incomprehensibly entrances my countrymen (and women)? His familiarity to NBC viewers via his coverage of other sports, which to his credit in those endeavors he seems to have watched at least once before? The mellifluous chime that is the very name "Trautwig"? This is the reverse catastrophe of wasting we love Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen on some nimrod bull-riding competition! Please, please don't do this again to those who know and love, or might someday know and love, this beautiful, intricate sport--why, NBC, why?

Fall Out Boy

Your Nose Is As Long as a Telephone Wire: so, as every other dope-likely prospect from the Op Puerto investigation remains unscathed, the German press, no great friend to Jan since, oh, ever, are natch all over the Ullrich situation, dubbing the fallen hero "unbearable," "embarassing," and a "liar." Sure, probably none of those assessments are entirely unfair, but really, what kind of spine does it take to kick a man when he's down? And, between the doping, the off-season excess poundage, the high-times partying, his prodigious talent, and his legendary, fruitless rivalry with Lance Armstrong, oughtn't you be even a little bit grateful for all the euros you've been making off his notoriety the last 10 years? Meantime, T "Lords of Discipline" Mobile, somewhat out of the press of late for sheer lack of results and still needing something to justify their money-sucking sponsorship, couldn't resist, claiming to be "not surprised." Now, is it me, or were they also "not surprised," but perfectly happy to glom onto him like a leech, by the constant explicit doping allegations that were thwapping him for the many years T-Mobile was joyfully making obscene amounts of money off his dirty legs? Even little Team Volksbank is shedding him from their management team. Perhaps, say, Discovery could use him?

UCI Can See Clearly Now: Predictably, UCI's Pat "Dick" McQuaid crowed about the Ullrich matter, and vowed again that everyone else is still in his sights. Well, that's one out of about 50 you've nailed, Pat...anyone else quaking in his bike shorts yet? And, the entire noble ProTour immediately re-swore to make DNA samples available for testing in actively investigated doping disputes. So they needn't cough it up yet...but they really promise to. Hmmm...could Bruyneel (and the rest) have copped to this sincere effort because Op Puerto--the only real threat to, among others, Ivan Basso--has already precluded that possibility by its closure? Positive publicity and a total lack of accountability--nice work, Discovery!

Basque the Way (Uh Huh, Uh Huh) I Like It: and, it's a mountainous Vuelta a Pais Vasco on tap, with my personal fave for this year's Vuelta a Espana, Euskaltel-Euskadi's Sammy Sanchez, set to hit the slopes with Haimar Zubeldia, last year's taker Gomez Marchante, baby genius/potential spoiler Alberto Contador, and, of course, a Tour-prepping Alejandro Valverde. Fine, spit it out cycling.tv--how much is this one gonna cost me?

Joseba Beloki Contract Watch: like that's gonna happen *now.* Thanks for nuthin', Ullrich!

Fire Your Lawyer

Rudy Project: yes indeed, the German prosecutor's formally announced that DNA conclusively links poor Jan Ullrich to some of the blood bags seized from Dr. Eufemiano "Protector of Health" Fuentes--that, and the wily code names "Hijo de Rudicio" (Son of Rudy, one reasonably surmises Pevenage), and "Jan." !@#$, Fuentes, you couldn't have picked the name of his gerbil or his Ecstasy dealer instead? Anyhoo, it's not clear if the offending blood is actually doped, but on the whole, things have looked better for the boy. Jan, of course, immediately retaliated with the Wussiest Non-Denial in History, desperately suggesting that, with all the irregularities in the Op Puerto investigation "manipulation is possible." WRONG! The correct answer, Jan, is the lab absolutely choked, the prosecutor's absolutely corrupt in his quest for results, and the Spanish investigators are absolute clowns, and if any of you so much as exhale within 1000 feet of me I'll sue your sorry incompetent !#$$# for slander til you cry for mercy. Got it? Y'know, I'm all for truth and beauty and pure sport, but let's get to the real issue here: Jan, what the hell were your lawyers thinking when they let you trot right up to the authorities like an eager puppy and gack up a DNA sample?

Oh Jan. Just like with Heras, we love you anyway!

The Fallout: why, none, if you're Ivan "Prince Charming" Basso, not only an exceedingly comely talent-packed monster revenue-generator at the very peak of his career (unlike, say, aging debutante Ullrich), but also, not coincidentally, protected like the Pope in a raging mob by handy publicity-hound mentor Lance Armstrong and the smashingly amoral attentions of Machiavellian genius Johan Bruyneel, and further, the possessor of the Very Best Lawyer on Earth. DNA my @#$, UCI! As to the rest? I'm sure that even without Jan, and even with Dudley Doo-wrights like St. David Millar, at least one other star in the peloton is both hopped and the forever-anonymous possessor of one of Fuentes' blood bags. Can anyone at all tell me what the hell's been accomplished after all this hoo-ha?

The Final Tally: Op Puerto: 1. Well, not even Op Puerto. It's the German prosecutors. In a freakin' breach of contract case. Careers Destroyed: can one even count that high? Nice job, witchhunters!

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!