Devil With the Blue Kit, Blue Kit, Blue Kit

Devil With the Blue Kit On: yes, as you've no doubt heard, Alexander "I Heart Homologous Blood Doping" Vinokourov has announced his intention to get back to the peloton next season, specifically with Team Astana and at the Tour de France, which while it might distinctly displease Mr. Clean Lance Armstrong, ought to (1) be pretty much up to the Kazakhs who still treat the boy like a rock star, gave him a wholly wussmeister one-year ban in the first place, and, as Vino modestly pointed out, created the entire team for him, and (2) give Vino and his old Liberty Seguros teammate Alberto Contador a good chance to discuss how the hell Alberto...um, won the Tour de France last year, that's it! UCI, of course, has voiced some opposition to the idea, with Pat "Dick" McQuaid threatening to extend his ban a full additional year, which would get our decaying thirtysomething back on the bike just in time, natch, for the 2009 Vuelta. Can we all *please* just stop !@#$ing with my beautiful Vuelta and let the filth-packed Grand Boucle wallow in its own swill for once?

Let's Talk About Schlecks!: meantime, the freak show that is the I'm-still-in-mourning-so-stuff-it-buddy Frank Schleck debacle continues apace, with Bjarne "Oh, Baby, Is That !@#$ Good!" Riis expressing his surprise and disappointment at Frank's wholly believable excuse that he thought he was wiring 7000 euro to a pack of mystery do-gooder physiotherapists who planned to advise him on nice routes for training rides by telephone, though how you can cram all that plastic tubing an IV port and a bucket o' platelets, I mean a paper map, through even an old-fashioned land line truly eludes me. Um, not to point out that Riis' boys are starting to get busted more often than Tom Boonen gets caught with a straw in his nose, or to suspect that Bjarne is less than sincere about his commitment to anyone but him blowing the sponsor's budget on unauthorized substances, but with first Basso, now Frank, is anyone else starting to getting a distinctly T-Mobilian vibe from this squad?

Nacho Libre: and, with only our beloved dexters over at trustbutverify able to coherently summarize what the hell is actually happening, I see poor Floyd Landis is taking on the forces of evil at the CAS in federal district court this time, and not to be a downer here or anything, but jeez, Floyd, haven't you been reading the news lately?--under the new WADA rules this sort of outrageous protestation of innocence could get you rolled in nacho chips melted cheez-wiz jalapenos and chili, topped with sour cream, smothered in loathesome American lite beer and served to a couch full of ravenous rabid football fans during the Superbowl halftime show! Honor, shmonor--save yourself, man!

I'm Not Dead Yet!: Finally, for those of you who still care about the sport for the actual racing, and as everyone from Aussie badass Oeneone Wood to Erik Zabel crosses their last finish line, we love tenacious trash-talker Gilberto Simoni still stomps onwards, this time riding in not only the Giri d' Emilia, Piemonte and Lombardia in the coming weeks, but also more mountain bike races as well, tho' how he's going to keep up when Team Diquigiovanni's bike budget has been slashed and the boys all have to share one bike per race is beyond me:



And remember, it's only because I love you both that I didn't post that photo of him with his !@# hangin' out wearing nothin' but bike shoes again!

And, a Newsflash: yep, at least two of the doping cheating amped-up CERA-fueled dirt-weasels from the Tour de France negatives retests are busted: Riccardo Ricco's filthy little mentor Pieopoli (no surprise) and none other than winner of this year's two Tour time trials Stefan Schumacher, late of Gerolsteiner, and, since one imagines the team he just signed on with for a grotesque windfall of euros for the next two years is gonna toss him off the nearest precipice, late of Quick Step as well. Schumi, you twit--if you'd just stuck to the party drugs like the charming Boonen, you'd still be employed come January!

His Name Was Ricco'/He Wore A Diamond

He Was Escorted to His Chair/He Saw His IV Hangin' There: yep, after even the narcs only asked for a 20-month ban, CONI has whacked our little twerp Riccardo with a full 2 years, valuing the doping violation at a mere 18 months but adding on another 6 for Ricco's use of Danilo DiLuca's childhood (and unusually recent) doc Carlos "Oil for Drugs" Santuccione--and this *after* the boy sang and gave the feds his dealer. Ricco', needless to say, is pissed that he 'fessed up for nothing, leading his lawyers to scream their heads off about an imminent appeal to CAS (good luck with that!) to reverse this cruel injustice, tho' even Ricco', perhaps tired of being told he should be glad he's not in prison by the same morally outraged tifosi who're swooning over Ivan "I Smoked, But I Didn't Inhale" Basso's return this month because he's just so very, very pretty, concedes that it's "fair" he does *some* time. This 2 year ban, of course, is particularly ironic, given WADA's new flexy rules saying if you play the ratfink, you'll get mercy, and if you don't, or if you god forbid get one of the highly statistically likely false positives and have the gall to object to it, you'll be roasted like a weiner at a Boy Scout campfire. Yeah, lookin' at how Riccardo got rewarded--and how for depriving his compatriots of a useful dope source he'll be even more loathed in the peloton than he already was, which is frankly tough to beat--I can see that's one hell of a payoff! Maybe you can keep yourself occupied suing Santuccione for !@#$ing up your microdosing, Ricco', 'til your ban is up? Anyhow, see you at the Vuelta in 2010!



The Gift That Keeps on Giving: meantime, the ever-generous French antidoping authorities have offered Lance Armstrong a lovely gift: let the same incompetent lab chimps that !@#$ed over Floyd Landis and couldn't find a lab short of Mars to come up with a poz on Iban Mayo's umpteenth sample retest your urine samples from the 1999 Tour de France, prove L'Equipe wrong once and for all, and we'll welcome you back to the Tour with open arms. Heck, we'll even allow you to test it at a different lab run by higher-order primates if you want! This way, as Pierre Bordry so kindly promises, you can smack down your naysayers once and for all and prove you've never cheated during your brilliant career. Even better, Lance, the statute of limitations has long since passed, so even if you do come out looking like the cheating lying drugsucking skankbag we all know and dearly hope you are because we're still mortified a French rider hasn't won the Tour since about 1915, you can't actually get punished for it anyway--so what's a little potential public humiliation and a total destruction of your legacy, you scaredy-cat? Sadly, Lance has put a kibosh on the idea, tanking Bordry's humble hopes of open redemption but still fortunately guaranteeing he remains in the constant spotlight his astonishing ego demands while everyone makes a gratifying fuss over him in the headlines.Damn Lance, you shoulda gone with Viagra instead of that EPO !@#$--after all, as one commenter here has helpfully noted, it does really help mountain climbers, and coincidentally could also help you keep up with all those rock stars actresses and socialites you keep snackin' on!

He Walked In Through the Out Door/Out Door: speaking of the spandex spawn o' satan, I see Johan Bruyneel is opining that not only will Contador and Armstrong get along famously at the 2009 Tour (at least if you consider "getting along" to mean not personally impaling each other with broadswords), but that Lance--always known for his generosity to his teammates and subservience to their ambitions--will of course be delighted to work for Alberto should our neophyte prove the strongest rider next year. *Where* can you get the happy pills that Bruyneel is on again? Anyway, lest stardust assurances of blissful team-bus communes don't convince the boy to shave his head don saffron robes and start handing out daisies to strangers in airports, Johan cheerfully reminded the press corps that Contador's got a two-year contract with no out clause, and no matter what the hell anyone wants to pay him, he'll goddamn yank his scrawny little kneecaps off at the socket if he even *thinks* about screwing Johan over. *Now* we're talking motivation, Mr. Sunshine!

Wire, Wire, Pants on Fire: and, a short hop away by train, Frank Schleck faced his own inquisitors today, earnestly denying doping but apparently still not coming up with a coherent reason for why he wired Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes a modest, if still sweet, 7000 euros in 2006. Don't worry CSC, as the alleged "Friend of Birillo," I'm sure he was just fronting a little cash to help stoke up Ivan Basso's dog for those exhausting frisbee sessions in the local park...please Frank, convince me the cops are wrong on this and leave me *one* freakin' rider I don't have to roll my eyes at!

Enter Sandman: finally, Op Puerto was finally put to sleep last night without a single conviction, thanks to exuberantly lax pre-2006 Spanish doping laws that allowed riders to, well, I won't say Valverde themselves as the boy can still probably pay for a pretty good attorney and all, but at least Heras themselves into speeding bullets so long as it didn't actually kill or noticeably maim 'em at the time. Sure, someone can still try to reopen the thing, but is anyone else thinking that somehow the notoriously transparent Spanish cycling authorities are gonna manage to crush anyone who tries to bring it back up? Lookin' forward to the carnage to come!

Aw, DAMN!

Vola, Vola, Vola Paolo!: Okay, it had to happen sooner or later, but if Patrick "30 YEARS OF DOPING" Lefevere hadn't been such a soulless europinching miserable tool, we love and will sorely, sorely miss Paolo Bettini wouldn't be saying that tomorrow is his last race on earth--yes, the peerless master of tactics, capturer of Classics and endless Grand Tour stages, and generous supporter of wholly lesser creatures than himself has decided to retire. Dammit--right when I was ready to start selling off lesser organs on the black market to finance one last view of him at the Giro next year! Needless to say, the tifosi over at gazzetta dello sport have erupted into all-caps trauma and fury, and not a few indications of general malevolence to every stupid inscrutable team that failed to hire their (our) hero. Grazie, grazie mille, il nostro Grillo, per la sua forza di volonta' e' corpo per molti anni--and you *suck* you greedy miserly selfish unappreciative dirtbag Lefevere!

Young Frankenschleck: yes, as a German newspaper reported 'way back in July (and then linking him with Bjarne "Doping Bad (Except for Me)" Riis on a little field trip to a medical team)Frank Schleck has indeed been nailed by the narcs, this time with the specific allegation that the boy wired a tidy 7,000 euro from a Swiss bank account to Gyno-to-the-Male-Stars Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes. Still and all, a glum Pat "Dick" McQuaid has conceded he's got to let Frank start tomorrow, managing to toss another bitter whining slap to endlessly wily quarry "Piti" Valverde since he can't get who he's actually after at the moment. Leaving aside the fact that at Fuentes' reputed rates 7,000 euro isn't enough to buy you propulsion up a mildly steep driveway much less a freakin' mountaintop, Frank, and as such seems an awfully trivial thing for which to tank your career and bitchin' Tour legacy, and also ignoring my own personal aggravation at my repeat stupidity that someone I admired was apparently on the juice *again*, I could've *told* you not to take financial advice from Jan Ullrich!

Not So Fast, Sucker: so as Armstrong gets ready to jack over we love Levi Leipheimer at the Amgen EPO Tour of California, and even makes some noise about checkin' out the Giro, which I imagine can only be because Contador sez he's not gonna take any crap at the Tour and in which I hope the Italians viciously take him out because he doesn't deserve to even survive a glorious race which he so obviously considers an also-ran, our fine friends at UCI have now stepped in with a big caveat: if Armstrong thinks he's gonna bedazzle the Aussies at the Tour Down Under, he's gonna have to wait to find out, as UCI's now desperately trying to knock him out on a time-limit technicality for participating in pre-race anti-doping protocols. Y'know, Pat "Dick" McQuaid, you *just* managed to make yourselves look slightly less obnoxious by calling detente with the Grand Tours; given that the mainstream sports press is all set to personally cast Lance in bronze and park him on the steps of the Capitol, do you *really* want to look like more of a petty pack of whining toddlers by tormenting him that way? Have some dignity for once, and revel in the impotence that is yours!

Understatement of the Year Award: y'know, as Contador reiterates his readiness to bail should Johan Bruyneel renege on his promise to let baby Contador ride in the front seat at next year's Tour, you gotta give our wee rising-overlord-o'-the-peloton some credit for having a sense of humor, as in pondering the dynamics of a possible (tho' highly unlikely) joint Contador-Armstrong Astana run at the Tour, Alberto surmises, "I don't see him as doing well in the role of domestique." So *that's* how you say "Lance is a monstrous raging black hole of a life-sucking ego utterly incapable of ceding power to anyone"--give that boy a gold star for diplomacy!

Just Another Manic Monday: and, it's gonna be a nervous few days for at least a small percentage of the doping saps at the Tour who breathed a sigh of relief watching that twerp Ricco' get busted instead of them, as on Monday the vampires start testing blood samples for CERA whose riders, naturally, had come up clean on the urine tests. Round up the usual suspects, boys--you already know who's left that you wanna fry, so why bother with any pretense of objectivity and test 'em at all?

Emergency!: closer to home, heartfelt wishes for a speedy recovery to TBV over at Landis-source-o'-the'gods trustbutverify, whacked quite hard by some inattentive clueless cyclist-crushin' assclown of a car while on a training ride, hospitalized with a bucket o'fractures and, fortunately, reporting this morning that despite being seriously dented he's gonna be okay. Get well and back on the bike where you belong soon, TBV, and let me know if you need a hand suing that hoser's !@#!

Erik the Hot Pink (and Baby Blue): 12 stages in the Grand Boucle. Valiant 6x green jersey champ. Smoked Milano-Sanremo 4 times. Three badass 2006 & 2007 victories in the Vuelta a Espana, and, even more remarkably, 3 wins this year even as he was kept busy as a humble lead-out for the designated lords of his squad. And only once in 1996, in one of the filthiest, darkest eras of this sewerdwelling spectacular sport, did our boy use EPO to try to get there. Yes, as if Paolo Bettini's horrid retirement weren't enough for one week, indefatigable sprint king Erik Zabel's finally calling it quits. Ergo, in tribute, I humbly mooch the following off someone(s) else:





Sorry folks, I looked for slinkmeister photos of these boys, but neither one of 'em saw fit to pose in a gladiator outfit or for a soft-porn calendar. Thanks for the memories Paolo and Erik!

The First Wives' Club

Tried and True: wow, is Johan Bruyneel quite the trendsetter, as he officially ditches his flashy young mistress Contador for his wrinkly ol' bag first wife Armstrong, despite his bull!@#$ promises to his naive protege to the contrary and the fact that Armstrong's value as an actual cyclist is only going to decrease while Alberto's is on the upswing. One might question the wisdom of presiding over the festivities as Lance's ravenous narcissistic adoration cravings train-wreck his sporting legacy, but big points to Johan for loyalty! I wouldn't worry about our pretty new spandex king-o'-the-world too much though--aside from the fact that he's apparently rethinking yesterday's vow to head for the hills if Armstrong tries to muscle in, he'll inevitably move on to even more besotted, deep-pocketed squads, who'll no doubt lavish him with gifts so generous it'll make Tom Boonen's Ferrari collection look like a rustpit full o' Pintos in exchange for the not-overly-onerous duties of establishing himself as a legend in the sport with his next half-dozen Grand Tour wins and only a minimum of tedious love-ins with the sponsor high honchos. If Contador does leave, though, it's hard to imagine who he's going to get to domestique for him next year, after he nastily threw his selfless nursemaid Leipheimer under the team bus by denying that Levi ever helped him win the Vuelta in the first place and--horrors!--charging that Levi might even have won the whole thing in his own right if the time trial had been 20 kilometers longer, the treacherous servant bastard. Damn, Levi, at least if you stick around Astana to be dope-slapped by Lance next season, you only gotta put up with this prima-donna crap for one more year! Can we all just cut the Teen Beat heartthrob !@#$ now on how sweet and dreamy and gentle and generous and fairy-princess rainbow-sparkly Alberto is, and concede that--once-in-a-generation brilliant or not, and he's certainly that--he's clearly been learning a lot more from Lance "the Ego" Armstrong's example than just race tactics of late? Get *out* of there Levi and Klodi, Bruyneel can't pay you enough to deal with *either* of these soul-sucking remoras!

The Fourth Estate: meantime, from CNN to the New York Times, the non-cycling American sports press is simply rapturous over Lance's return, particularly, one imagines, since with the Great American Hero and his Great American Story (and I don't demean either one) to glom on again, they're now utterly free to cover cycling with a guaranteed cash-cow in hand without having to trouble themselves to learn (much less explain) such arcane and inscrutable terms as "sprint," "seat post," and "time trial." Don't let these nits dumb you down, dear newbies (leave that to the rest of us)--there is so much more to know and love even about this tainted filthy debacle of a sport than this one famous socialite-slurpin' camera ho!

Faster Than a Speeding Bullet: finally, in actual race news, the dandy Worlds is underway, with Amber Neben scorching the field in the time trial and Judith Arndt--who I'm presuming, despite the fact that the Italians are apparently favored, is gonna lead the badass German squad to a gold in the road race--snagging the bronze. As for the gentlemen? Dropping like flies before they even get their boarding passes, sadly, as now we love Stuey O'Grady becomes the latest to bail out from fatigue, tho' the Spaniards remain largely intact even without the presence of Sastre to challenge (if fruitlessly) the smashing squadra azzurra. So you got four boys for the price of one to replace Bettini, Lefevere?--enjoy, as (win or lose the podium) your reject gets ready to kick Belgian !@#!

The Tour That Wouldn't Die

It's a New Anti-Doping Protocol, Baby!: so if you thought a *positive* test at the Tour de France was gonna get you in trouble with the narcs, wait'll you see what happens to you when you come up *negative*: yep, in a move that makes even the hypocrite tools at UCI and WADA look good by comparison, the paranoid French conspiracy theorists are gonna naturally assume that means you're a filthy cheating dirt-weasel, unearth a passel of half-forgotten blood samples from the AFLD office beer cooler, and make those incompetent lab chimps at Chatenay-Malabry test that !@#$ til the results come up *right*. Y'know, so long as we're utterly throwing due process, common sense, and objective analysis out the window, let's just cut to the chase, shall we? The only way to truly kill doping in cycling is to rip it out from the roots. Let's arrest Lance and Eddy and Bernard and Miguel, and we'll hang 'em upside down from racks by their ankles and squeeze 'em like toothpaste tubes til we can figure out once and for all what those cheating bastards were winning on. Hell, why don't we just dig up Anquetil? *That* oughta teach 'em to !@#$ with you!

Last Meal My !@#: what's more, according to the new WADA rules just announced, antidoping penalties for the boys and girls in all the races become more "flexible" in 2009, ditching the two-year one-size-fits-all time-out, and allowing for milder penalties for inadvertent or non-performance-enhancing use, and up to four years for such aggravated first-time offenses such systemic doping, multiple product use, and--here's the kicker--"deceptive or obstructing conduct," which I'll damn near guarantee means not only actual lying, but also such heinous defense tactics as demanding a hearing expressly guaranteed by WADA procedural rules or, even worse, protesting one's actual innocence. So don't even think of suggesting that the same testing protocols which have been proven to pop up with an occasional (or more than) false positive didn't work perfectly on you, you worthless dissembling scumsucker--you can ask for your last cigarette if you want to, but we're still gonna shoot you first! Can you imagine what they'd've done to Floyd Landis if he came up poz this coming season instead of when he did? Yeesh...

All About Alberto: yep, on the eve of his historic victory in the noble Vuelta, Contador's really done now with that starry-eyed ingenue bull!@#$, as he tells gazzetta dello sport in no uncertain terms that if Armstrong comes home to big daddy Bruyneel, he's *still* riding the Tour de France for himself alone to win it, so any old-bag interloper who wants it is gonna have get it without him. Boy, Lance, have things changed since you were head Moonie over at PostalDiscovery--even Ivan Basso would've wiped your rump for you if he'd managed to stick around long enough! Needless to say, the press is rapturous (as am I, slimily) over the possibility of such outright warfare, and with Columbia flat-out nixing the idea of Armstrong coming in to boss around his ol' pal Hincapie, looks like Lance is gonna have to pay up hard to steal the few loyal minions still left in the peloton. I *told* you that spun-sugar kid wasn't gonna take any crap if you pushed him!

Cape Fear: so Paolo Bettini's talking Worlds, and this is what he thinks: the Spaniards should be afraid, very afraid, because if he can't take 'em out, he'll make sure Davide Rebellin will. Who's keeping Il Grillo up nights? Mainly, Oscar Freire (as he should be), Valverde's coming in tired but you still can't take your eyes off him, he ain't so impressed with his imminent replacement at Quick Step Schumi, and, while he's pretty sure this isn't the corsa for big Tom Boonen, he just hasn't seen enough of the Schlecks of late to know if they're gonna crush him or not. (It's a pretty bitchin' interview actually in terms of discussing his past career, so if anyone wants more details and is willing to take my craptastic Italian on faith, let me know and I'll happily, if inaccurately, oblige). Y'know, I gotta say I'm caught here on which losing underdog cause to root for--Paolo, so he can dope-slap that bastard Lefevere for jacking him, or Freire, who inevitably loses 3/4 of every season to freak injuries like bowling-ball-sized saddlesores. Oh heck, no one's ever pulled a 3-fer--forza Paolo, and stuff it Quick Step!

Let's Play Dodgeball!: after Euskaltel's brutal humiliation at the Vuelta via poor Igor's embarrassing sunny-day dry-descent crashout, and the horrible defection of Haimar Zubeldia to be Contador *and* Levi *and* Lance *and* for God's sake lowest-rung-on-the-ladder Andreas Kloden's subservient !@#, the team's finally got some good news: Olympic gold medalist (woo-hoo!)/future Vuelta champ Samuel Sanchez *is* gonna stay with the team, as even the flush folks at Cervelo aren't gonna pony up the 900,000 euro to buy him out of the last two years of his contract. Still, those oligarchs over at Tinkoff/Katusha remain perhaps a dark horse, so I ain't gonna believe it til he turns up in team kit next season--please Samu, please, for the sake of all that is pure in this repulsive sport--and I've gotta believe *something* is--stay with the humble but glorious Basques. Aupa Sanchez--can anyone but their fanatic orange army award you so well in sheer adoration?

Viva, Viva, Viagra!: finally, what's the latest word on the war against drugs after Andrea Molletta was unceremoniously yanked by Team Gerolsteiner from this year's Giro after his dad was oddly busted with a bucket o' mystery syringes a freelance DS and a truckload of Viagra tablets, in theory advantageous for their blood-flow-enhancing properties? Well, the peloton studmuffins have both dodged a bullet and gotten some help making up to their significant others in the off-season for all those long, lonely spring-and-summer nights on the road, as thankfully, according to the UCI's medical commission, Viagra doesn't count as doping. Um, anyone else thinking that whatever the actual scientific merits of this finding, the elder statesmen at the antidoping agencies just can't bear the thought of making such a handy substance contraband?

Bang, Bang!/I Am the Warrior

So Who's It Going To Be, Johan?: he's got the face of an angel, the self-effacement of a saint, the gentility of a prince, and the generosity of a good Samaritan. What else has he got? Let's face it, the raw self-centered hunger for victory at any cost of a young you-know-who--and if Johan Bruyneel and Lance "Be My !@#$%, !@#$%" Armstrong don't think that darling child Contador means exactly what it looks like when he thumps his chest like an amped-up chimp and fires his imaginary gun as he crosses the line, they're freakin' nuts. Why in hell would this surging creature want to domestique for yesterday's news? In short, one of 'em's clearly gonna have to switch teams, since Lance in particular can only tolerate total unquestioning servitude from everyone he rides with. So which is it, Johan: is your loyalty to the king you made back then, or the one you're making now? Y'know, Lance'd look awfully pretty in Columbia baby blue...

Of course, either way this turns out, Andreas Kloden and Levi Leipheimer are screwed *again*, though, given that Contador never begrudged anyone a stage win or a split-second's attention from the press, they're probably better off as it stands now--which still, frankly, sucks. But if it's Lance, they'll only be allowed to race for themselves if and when Lance thinks it'll help him at the Tour, and even if they are allowed to ride for themselves at all anytime anywhere ever, Lance (1) is hardly gonna ride for 'em in return or (2) let anyone else on the squad do so if it conflicts with any of Lance's immediate needs. So you want the Giro or the Vuelta boys, or even say the Deutschland Tour, under the new Armstrong regime? If you don't mind your team car being staffed solely by a waterboy, your massages done by a mechanic with a wooden mallet, and your support riders being a middle-school development squad, have at! Oh, poor little Klodi...

Rosy-Pink Floyd: in happier (or crappier, depending on how you feel about him; I profess the former) news, trustbutverify's boy Floyd Landis--who still owes them a wallowing obeisance of gratitude and a good half of his Floyd Fairness Fund stash for their indefatigable efforts on his behalf--confirms he's going to be back racing next year, aiming at the Amgen EPO Tour of California, so I guess it's time to book tix now. Allez Floyd!

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: so the verdict's in for 2005 Tour (and 2001 Giro--damn, they should just prosecute this guy for stupidity) doper Dario Frigo, last busted for a wad of EPO found in his wife's car, and it's six months in the clink suspended plus a hefty fine if he holds it together and doesn't do anything else moronic, though having been long since ignominiously ejected from the peloton I imagine he doesn't exactly need to stoke up for a meandering Sunday ride with the bambini. Then again, no doubt those tots can really put on the pressure...

A Gentle Plea to Cycling.tv: okay, as a no-coverage hellbound American, I admit I'm abjectly grateful to be permitted to pay cycling.tv out the hoo-ha for the pathetic privilege of receiving two-inch-square streaming web coverage of my grossly underrated Vuelta, particularly when all I'm catching on Vs.' "Cyclysm Sundays" is twelve straight hours of Bambi-shootin' and about 10 minutes of old-news national championship bike racing, but jeez, for what I'm payin', *must* there be such an egregious delay in posting any given day's "As Live" footage when it's inevitable one's gonna hear the stage results before the entire three week race is over? I mean, this ain't the Superbowl in this country--it's not like my lame boss'll let me watch 5 hours of live coverage while I'm on the clock! Please, please, dear cycling.tv, put my money where your mouth is...after all, don't I get points for asking you so nicely (if primarily because you hold my Vuelta-lovin' fate in your hands) *and* promoting you so relentlessly to both my faithful readers?

Paolo Bettini Contract Watch: nothin'. Dammit! But I think anonymous is right on Cervelo'. Hell, they must've ponied up some pretty serious dough for the reigning Tour de France champ and a solid sprinter/prologuer/green jersey winner like Thor Hushovd--surely they can find a few (million) extra euros for the giant hole in their squad where a Classics/Grand Tour stage winner/world champ oughta be, right? You better not have blown the budget stealing Samuel Sanchez from my Euskaltel you twits!

The British Invasion: finally, congrats to our beloved (if slightly delusional as to his hero) Shameless St. Millar Defender for his countryman Mark Cavendish's completely stomping the US-heavy field at our own Toura Missoura for 3 mortifying stages. If the American Revolution had been fought out on the roads on bikes right now, we'd clearly all be Brits, I must concede!

What the Hell Are You Thinking, Quick Step?

Stick a Fork in 'Im, He's Done: multiple road champ of Italy. 2-time winner of the venerable Liege-Bastogne-Liege. Former Olympic gold medalist (woo-hoo, Samu!). One of the most beloved--and rightfully so--riders in the peloton. More Grand Tour stages than anyone can count, and world road champ the last two years running. And now Bettini's such a decrepit over-the-hill yesterday's-news money-sucking drain that Patrick "30 YEARS OF DOPING" Lefevere has tossed his tiny !@# out in the street in favor of the (very fine, but much cheaper) Schumi so late in the damn season there's barely any place for a boy with his wholly justifiable price tag to go? I call bull!@#$ Lefevere! So he suffered under the Curse of the Rainbow Jersey the first half of the year? Big deal, you baby! After all, it's not like you couldn't find money in the budget for Tom Boonen's Ferrari-and-blow habit when--even aside from snorting his way out of the Tour de France like an idiot--he's been getting his butt kicked all season by Mark Cavendish, so WTF Quick Step? Needless to say, the Bettini tifosi contingent over at gazzetta dello sport is going absolutely wingnut over the vicious diss to their hero, encouraging Paolo to take the anger he openly claims and channel it into crushing the Belgians in Varese, and while we're at it, Alejandro Valverde is a cheating skank (no, it's not relevant to the discussion; but what's a discussion about cycling without insulting the Spaniards?). Hire back Bettini Lefevere, and pay that boy what's he's worth you low-rent cheapskate!

A Fine French Whine: meantime, the reaction to the Armstrong comeback continues to roll in, with the French--having thought they were done being roundly humiliated by foreigners at the Tour only to have an American (yeah, you heard me) and two Spaniards take it the next 3 years in a row--predictably ratcheting into full crybaby mode with the at least polite exception of a surprised but gentlemanly Bernard Hinault. Yes, as Marc Madiot mentioned, Lance'll totally jack his own legacy if he loses the 2009 Tour--and the French would object to his embarrassment why exactly? Embrace your fears, France--it's not like one of your boys is gonna be in the maillot jaune in Paris anytime soon anyway!

A Knee In the She-Nuts: speaking of tiresome publicity-ho whatsisface, his return has led to speculation about who else may be on the way back, with Michael Boogerd pondering, Jan Ullrich denying, and, toughest of all, we-love-and-sorely-miss-and-so-what-if-he-was-on-Liberty-Seguros-you-soulless-miserable-cynics Joseba Beloki still deeply lamenting his absence from his beloved peloton training faithfully and wishing fruitlessly for even a domestique-level comeback at a halfway passable squad. You *suck*, Saiz, you slime-dwelling career-tanking Heras-pimping weasel!

Arf!: yep, as the peloton enjoys the last few hours of its rest day before its near-vertical hike up the terrible Angliru, one fact stands out: Alejandro Valverde, for some cause surely completely unrelated to the post-'06 lack of access to drug-stuffed blood bags with his dog's name plastered on 'em for no reason, is gonna blow his Next Great Grand Tour Winner hype for about the fifth year running. Sure, Astana and Euskaltel (look who's in the maillot d'oro--right on Euskaltel!) were more'n happy to pile on the hurt when you gave 'em the chance Thursday, but you couldn't've sent some Caisse d'Epargne minion back for your freakin' raincoat instead?--what the tactical !@#$, Valverde, you're not some stupid kid! Which still won't give you the legs you need on Saturday if tactics ain't your only problem...
Update: I stand corrected and duly chastened on Valverde, who rode bravely and exceedingly well today. You still ain't gonna take the Vuelta, but you *are* a great one-day rider, Alejandro, however any of us may think you get there--take your place with peace in your heart already!

Sink or Swim: I see that testosterone poz/rat-fink Patrik Sinkewitz, off easy on his own drug bust for tattling on his T-Mobile teammates for systemic university-clinic blood-doping during the '06 Tour de France--not that those allegations actually kept any of 'em out of the peloton the last 2 years, so a hell of a lot of good that did--is ready to return to his rightful place in the still-filthy field, reportedly in talks with a couple of ProContinental and even a ProTour squad. I don't know Patrik--it's gettin' on in the season and Liquigas has already snagged ludicrous anti-doping poster boy Ivan Basso, St. David Millar's found himself a secure nest, god knows Rock Racing can't fit any more dopers'n it already has, you've also got Bjorn "Love Machine" Leukemans coming off his ban and looking for work..you better start kissing babies for charity, pronto!

Basta Already!: finally, in a sign of just how far the grossly underpaid women's peloton has come in meeting the disgustingly low standards of its male counterpart, the antidoping narcs are recommending a two-year ban for reigning (if about to be ex-) world road champ Marta Bastianelli, nailed for taking banned weight-loss drugs though not, she claims, in an effort to enhance her performance. Right, because it's far more important to a cyclist to look hot in her bikini than to get down to a fighting weight to improve her chances of winning...will this gross farce of a sport *never* clean up its act?

Trouble in Paradise

I'm Not Your !@#$%^, !@#$%!: so, Lance, think charmingly self-deprecating angel Alberto Contador--best known for professing no professional ambitions whatsoever for the Giro then totally coincidentally showing up on a dime in full pink team kit mani-pedi underwear lip gloss and handpainted bike the actual clinical second he snagged the maglia rosa--is still ready to welcome you to Team Astana with open arms now that the rumors are done and you really are back for the Tour in 2009? Well, think again pal, because Contador's already gone from a joyous unconditional welcome, to the thoughtful desire to "reflect on everything once we have time to study all the facts in detail," to a testy "if I go to the Tour next year it's to win, what problem would we have?" Y'know, not to speculate here, but it seems to me the "problem" is that Lance is a raging self-involved egomaniac hypercompetitive control freak with a total inability to tolerate not being the center of the universe for a nanosecond--and yap, yap, I know he's sincere about the cancer stuff, but like he couldn't've gotten even more publicity for the cause going for eight straight before taking three years off to play tonsil hockey with an endless string of nubile starlets for the paparazzi's delectation?--and Alberto is a baby savant star-ascendant who, despite being sweet and cuddly as a My Little Pony, apparently has the unspoken desire to throw your aged carcass and its old-news legacy off a cliff and take over the Tour and (unlike you) every other race he can find 'til he's bodily restrained from doing so. Lookin' forward to next July's Celebrity Death Match, gentlemen!

The Sounds of Silence: so who's *not* talking, amidst the clamor of ex-teammates, DSes, cooing anti-doping honchos and, for heck's sake, even the French welcoming him back (if only in the futile furtive hope he'll finally test positive)? Yep, Levi Leipheimer and Andreas Kloden, whose personal websites are fully updated with the latest news that...well, Levi was really happy to be in the maglia d'oro a few days back, and Klodi, though cheerful, is pretty darn tired. Damn, have you boys no spine? I *told* you during the Basso and Contador debacles to stay away from that treacherous pimp Bruyneel if you didn't want to end up being some dirt-low water-carrying chamois-scrubbing donkey for his latest anointed golden god!

So Close, Cadel, But Yet So Far: meanwhile, this could not have come at a worse time for sober steady Aussie Cadel Evans, who finally got some help in the mountains with the surprisingly formidable Bernhard Kohl, only to be preemptively smacked around by not only the return of St. Ivan of Varese at Liquigas but now by that darned Armstrong as well. Things are looking up, though, for we love Carlos Sastre, whose new gig's oomph quotient has been significantly stoked by the arrival of we equally love the ever-underrated prologue king Thor Hushovd. Okay, we've got the boy from Credit Agricole a job--now let's hire him a good solid lead-out!

Back in Black: finally, many thanks to the fine folks over at trustbutverify for announcing the likely post-ban return of kangaroo-courted lab-chimp victim Floyd Landis with American squad HealthNet Maxxis, while, if not quite his old gig at Phonak, sure gives us broke-!@# US-bound saps a chance to see some riders worth watching. Now somebody hire Iban Mayo, dammit!

Yep, He's Back All Right

"I Want an Eighth Tour": yes folks, it's official, Lance is back in 2009 to ride the Tour and thereby take the fight against cancer to a global level and, totally coincidentally I'm sure, stuff his monstrous bottomless appetite for adulation with an unprecedented blitz of fawning press coverage, adoring retrospectives, and assorted swooning starlets'n'socialites. And while he won't yet announce what team it's with, can there be any real doubt where the Cult of Personality is gonna reign and Levi (as annie so rightly points out), Klodi, and I assume even little protege Alberto Contador are completely !@##ed? Hope you're enjoying your Vuelta, Alberto--ya ain't gonna be allowed to see the top of the podium at next year's Tour!

Y'know, he's the greatest Tour rider ever, yap, yap, yap (no doubt in part because, unlike, say, Hinault and Indurain, he basically never trained for anything else.) And he's truly got an compellingly inspirational story of triumph over adversity, yap, yap, yap. And if he really decides he wants to win the Tour, I suppose he will, yap. But let's be honest here--if we're gonna raise the dead in this sport, wouldn't it just plain be a *lot* more fun to bring back the irresistible careening Ecstasy-scarfing donut-downing IV-lovin' car-wreck that is the incomparable Jan Ullrich?

Nooooooooooooooo!

Thanks for !@#$ing Julich Out of the Last Two Tours, Bjarne!: so as my adopted hometown collectively croaks over the totally unimportant season-ending knee injury of some supermodel-sucking GQ prettyboy pigskin jock, comes yet another reason to hate Bjarne Riis besides his complete whining farewell diss of Carlos Sastre: yep, we love Bobby Julich, who's been relentlessly relegated to meaningless monkeydom by our drug-snarfing lord of CSC the last two seasons, has decided to retire, citing a "lack of motivation" to compete at the top levels of the sport anymore. Ya think kneeing Bobby in the works after years of faithful service and smashing results and shoving him into such prestigious races as the Tour of !@#$$%$#$, Iowa has anything to do with it Bjarne? Of course, Julich, having class, speaks warmly of his years at CSC and his continued desire to continue in a management capacity with the squad, but fortunately I, lacking any, can stick by my assertion that it's entirely the fault of that blustering Napoleon-complex DS of Doom. Dammit!

All Right, Spit It Out, Who Wants 'Im Back?: speaking of directeurs sportif on my loathe list, the ever-hungry Narcissus that is Lance Armstrong has apparently decided to return to the road and his old haunt PostalAstanaDiscovery in 2009, defiling such beautiful races as Paris-Nice, the Dauphine, and even--and I can't imagine why he'd want to bother with this one unless he's certain he can wear the maillot jaune with cameras blazing at the end of the road in Paris--the Tour de France. Lance, you were a marvel to watch, if equally a marvel of naked, wholly self-centered ambition. And to be fair (for once), you make a wonderful legend, and a genuinely impressive marathoner to boot. But are you really gonna act like a spin at any of these races, while the real players that year get shoved aside like manure at a racetrack, is anything but an excuse to stuff your voracious ego?

Man. Can poor Andreas Kloden *get* any more jacked?

Alejandro Valverde is Toast: so watching Perpetual Next Tour de France Winner "Piti" Valverde latch onto Contador's wheel like a leech yesterday--to the protests of Alberto that he didn't share the work and Valverde's cowed response that he hadn't the legs to--one conclusion is inescapable: Valverde's just plain hosed. There's simply no way Contador--even playing the high passes conservatively as he did in the Giro--isn't gonna drop him like a Fuentes blood bag when the race turns to the really steep stuff at the end of the week. Look, no matter what he is or has been stoked on, Valverde, great as he is, is just not this generation's Lance. Can we cut the hype already, give credit where credit *is* due, and just let him learn to content himself with being a fearsome Classics and one-day Grand Tour stage rival?

Eat Our Dust Caisse d'Epargne!: that's right baby, the orange army is back, with someone completely inconsequential taking the stage win at the Vuelta today but, more importantly, Euskaltel-Euskadi's Egoi Martinez taking the gold leader's jersey. Aupa Egoi--and it's only a matter of time before the squad leaves the rest of the climbers in the dust in the Basque country!

Tremors: speaking of misclassified Classics men, salacious rumors are circulating over at gazzetta dello sport (well, one guy's saying it) that Damiano Cunego, having abandoned his own Giro to bonk in two consecutive Grand Tours, may be bailing from (or ditched by) Lampre to head over to, of all filthy squads, the IV-jabbing Bjarne's CSC, leading to the gorgeous irony of the Italians slagging anyone else (with the possible exception of the even worse Spaniards) for their dirty doping lack of ethics. Apropos of nothing, meantime, a returned and refreshed Alessandro Petacchi, "liberated" from his demons at LPR, has taken his first sprint of the Tour of Great Britain, even without the immortal Zabel one-man leadout train, while, unsurprisingly, Cavendish has already smacked around the field at the Toura Missoura. There, Shameless, don't you feel a bit better now?

Finally, to dilute my venom and peacefully recall the fabulousness that was Bobby Julich's road career, I tried to find some video of him winning Paris-Nice, but that being impossible in the lame footage available, I did manage to locate about a minute and thirty seconds' worth of the endless-loop punk-!@# cheap-shot replay of Jeroen Blijleven, having just woofed a sprint, taking issue with our hero like it was his fault:



Thanks anyway Bobby for so many great years!

It's the Mountains, Baby!

Supa Dupa Fly/I Can't Stand The Rain: sure, it was freezing pouring and zip for visibility in today's queen stage of the Vuelta, but happily for us at home it only gets nastier from here, as tomorrow the boys grind up four leg-mangling climbs including the highest point in the race at Puerto de la Bonaigua and the legendary Pla de Beret, and, after a workweek of nerve-wracking anticipation, next Saturday's fearsome Angliru. If the frustratingly erratic Valverde thought today was a bad 'un (and don't give me that crap that he doesn't want the podium), he better hold it halfway together tomorrow--the bike gloves are gonna come off now baby, so aupa Euskaltel-Euskadi!

Go Gently Into That Good 2009 Tour: so with Carlos Sastre having formally announced his new gig with Team Cervelo to the envy of a hundred thousand gearheads going nuts these guys are building a team basically to conduct test-runs of their nifty new components, Bjarne Riis, who last week came out swinging at the decaying old bag, has apparently decided to be civilized, complimenting Carlos on his great achievements and wishing him and his fellow defecting DS well, particularly, one imagines, since Cervelo's gonna have to come up with some serious dough if it hopes to get Sastre enough backup not to be completely Cadel Evansed compared to CSC next season. Okay, Bjarne, you've got some fine prospects for next year, just try not to be an !@#$!@#$ to the Schlecks...

Tour de Where?: okay, I pettily ignored the noble Tour of Germany once it became obvious we love Jens wasn't gonna take it (and also out of annoyance that perpetually-jacked Andreas Kloden was too preoccupied completely woofing at the Vuelta to be there) but there is some pretty sweet stuff even beyond the far superior Vuelta to keep an eye on: the Tour of Great Britain and the Toura Missoura start this week, and to the Brits' loss and our gain as Shameless St. Millar Defender kindly pointed out, Mark Cavendish (recently tagged by none other than Mario "the Chest" Cipollini as the new him) is gonna be burning up the tarmac on our side of the pond along with Mick Rogers Hincapie Van de Velde and Zabriskie, as LPR's Alessandro "Wheezy" Petacchi and Danilo "Hey, At Least My Dope Doc's Not a Freakin' Gynecologist" DiLuca (but not next year's Tour de France's mountains king Mauricio Soler, just !@#$%$ by bureaucratic snafu) take to the roads over on the other. Go big George--after all, it might be some comfort to Lance for losing at Leadville if his ol' lieutenant takes another one!

Big Wheel Keep on Turnin'/Proud Ricco' Keep on Burnin': so after seemingly being told by a wily publicist that being a complete crybaby twerp isn't good for either the ol' rep or the ol' post-ban bank account, Riccardo Ricco's of all people's been engaging in some pretty intensive image rehab, and while he just can't be as pretty as Ivan Basso unfortunately, he's not only learned to profess his gratitude for the support of his many fans and his ardent desire to prove himself dope-free and worthy again one day, the boy's even got himself a new day job: yep, he's teaching a spinning class. Now *his* class' energy drinks oughta be something worth imbibing!

I Spy: more on-line coverage of the Vuelta, as the Italian tifosi go into riot mode over the fact that they've now not been able to see any of the Italian triumphs on their own TV sets, and someone handily posts this link on gazzetta in response: try rojadirecta.org, and though I didn't bother to try downloading it, click on "English help" on the top right of the screen for instructions and on the date at the bottom of the screen for the schedule. Good luck, and Jesus H. Christ Vs., can we not be bothered to run an hour a week of this smashing race in between the scintillating bloated-beer-swillers-waiting-for-a-bass-to-bite coverage you're subjecting me to?

Tribute to Il Falco: finally, as quiet two-time Lord of the Giro Paolo Savoldelli hangs it up, I bring you--instead of, you'll be relieved to learn, the photographic homage I was gonna post because of its bitchin' Duran Duran soundtrack--a goodbye showing Il Falco doing what Il Falco does best, slaughtering the field on an ugly descent even as he shepherds that laggard Di Luca along:

Mille grazie Paolo--so what if you never posed in your satin netherwear and press-pimped yourself like the sprinters?--you'll be missed!

*Now* What're They Gonna Do With Him?

We Are the Champions: so after a crappy season, Dave Zabriskie's finally back on form and takes the US national time trial championship again, but for my money, with Levi bagging the defense of his title in favor of settling for being Contador's high-end minion, the more interesting win is that of Tyler "I Ate My Twin" (and "I Still Owe Racejunkie 15 Bucks for Her Defacing Her Tyler Hamilton Foundation Hat Pointlessly Defending My Innocence", while we're at it) Hamilton, our new national road race champ. So there he oughta be all next season, enjoying the fruits of his labors and his spiffy red-white-and-blue stripes in the European peloton along with the other lords-o'-their-nations at the Grand Tours and the classics, and what's he got instead? Well, besides the Tour of Great Britain, which miraculously he's being allowed to race, a bunch of race organizers that won't touch him *or* his ex-doper teammates *or* his egomaniacal master Michael Ball for any money, and just a really, really fashionable team kit for a consolation prize. Hope you enjoy wearing your national championship stripes at the Tour of the Ass-end of Nowhere next year, Tyler! So here's my question: do we all really mean this crap about serving your time, or is only when you serve your time admit the irrefutable rub hot peppers into your eyes fake like you feel bad about doping not about getting caught and wah your repentance like a colicky two-month-old for every camera you can find?

Babe in Arms: and, a big congrats to a thoroughly humbled and greatly motivated Ale-Jet Petacchi, whose idiot ban for an extra post-race snort of salbutamol is over and will be returning to the peloton at the Tour of Great Britain with his new gig, fellow (alleged!) dope-head Danilo DiLuca's LPR. I don't know, Shameless St. Millar Defender, if your boy's gonna ride at your home tour maybe he might want to reconsider his position on squeaky-cleanliness given how the start list's shaping up...

He's Like the Wind: well, I see the constitutionally wanky and perhaps-just-slightly-past-his-prime Robbie McEwen's been seduced away from second-class citizenship at Silence-Lotto to Russian oligarch Oleg Tinkov's reincarnated team Katusha, along with the golden-locked Filippo Pozzato, surprise Champs-Elysees winner Gert Steegmans and Vladimir Karpets, which really is starting to make the squad look formidable for next season, though how long Steegmans is going to be content playing leadout monkey for McEwen after finally bringing it on in his own right remains to be seen. Still, Robbie sounds uncharacteristically happy about the change--perhaps that'll pull him out of the doldrums for one last stellar season?

Here I Am!/Rock You Like a Hurricane!: after the dual thrills of Liquigas taking the team time trial and really-quite-an-amazing-one-day-rider-no-matter-how-you-think-he-got-there Alejandro Valverde taking the stage and briefly the maillot d'oro, I'd like to congratulate Tom Boonen on his post-image-rehab return to his Grand Tour-winning ways by nailing today's sprint at the Vuelta over new golden jersey Daniele Bennati by bringing you two reminders of just how babelicious our Tommeke really is:





Sigh. Aren't you glad he's back?

How Not To Ride: finally, in the noble interests of public service and helpful hints from heloise that I hold dear, I bring you a handy 1963 bike-safety video and a wish for safe and happy trails (and if those freakin' monkey masks give you the same shrieking nightmares I'm gonna experience tonight , my bad!):

*This* Is How You Say "Good Job!"?

Didja Ever Hear of "Thank You Notes?": yes, as you might surmise, on the eve of the spectacular Vuelta, a spectacularly ungrateful Bjarne "Thank God No-One's Pursuing Those Allegations About Me and Fuentes" Riis has generously informed the press that Carlos Sastre "doesn't represent the future of our team" like Cancellara big and baby Schlecks and Sorensen, and we just don't have space for the boy anymore, though we're really, really gonna support him at the Vuelta, the poor old useless hag. Um, last I noticed, Bjarne, he just a few short weeks back won you the same Tour de France you admitted you doped through, so while I'm certainly no Miss Manners, it does seem to me that, however decrepit his aging bod, perhaps the boy is owed some faux good will at least through the end of this season, no? What, he just told you he's taking off for Cervelo's new Pro Continental gig or something? Suck it up and show some class, you bitter nasty clod!

Pass the Deutschie: so as Andreas "Thank You Sir May I Have Another" Kloden, already smacked by his country leaving him off the Worlds team, skips the race and as usual tanks his own superior prospects to wipe Contador's butt at the Vuelta (thanks PJ and Anon for the sympathy!), the 2008 Jens Voigt's Just Gonna Win It Again Deutschland Tour is underway, and while he's certainly got a hell of a road ahead of him with boys like the Fothens Kohl Burghardt and Grabsch to put on the hurt, one other boy on the start list oddly stands out: the smashing Haimar "Contador's Future !@#$$" Zubeldia, bagging the last chance he'll ever have for himself at the Vuelta to prostrate himself at the service of you-know-who next season. Look, I don't begrudge the boy's phenomenal talent--if you gotta work for someone, he's more than worthy. But must some of the best riders on the planet always find themselves playing dope-slapped spit-on second banana to Johan's latest object of adoration? If you can't give 'em any dignity, Bruyneel, you at least better be paying Klodi and (next season) Zubeldia some serious dough!

The Sounds of Silence: yep, it's contract season folks, and for my money, one of the biggest surprises isn't that Milram's just offered to snap up half the jobless Gerolsteiner boys, but that Cadel Evans, whose team's complete inability to support him in the high passes likely cost 'im the Tour de France (or at least a closer second place finish--woo-hoo Sastre!), has signed on with the ineffectual Silence-Lotto for another two seasons (so likely the end of his career), which begs the obvious question: what, you couldn't for any humiliating pay cut convince someone like Bjarne to back off the Schlecks he's grooming now that he's tossed Carlos off the team bus? I hope you at least persuaded Silence management to pony up for a better climber than Robbie McEwen...

White Ponies on Dope (Redux): and, in non-cycling doping news (since frankly it's no-one I care about who just made cyclists look like selfish stupid reckless !@#es, *again*), the fallout from the notorious Olympic busts of 2008 continue to shake the coke-snorting denizens of the stables to their very cores as yet another front on the drug war opens up, this time, following the fine example of the sincere zero-tolerance anti-doping maestros over at UCI, from the law'n'order Kentucky racing authorities: no anabolic steroids for you! Unless, of course, you require one of the race organizers' handy new Therapeutic Use Exemptions, so long as you flush it all out 60 days before race day, which oughta make early-season form enhancement a prancing breeze. Okay Mr. Ed, the choice is clear: admit you don't have any health problems and lose, or emulate the 90% of pro cyclists who totally coincidentally desperately need meds that totally coincidentally happen to increase their ability to win. Take the latter, and I guarantee the 2009 Triple Crown is yours!

Gripe o' the Week (Surprise! There is One): now, Velonews is a very fine publication, I enjoy the website, and the whole operation I gotta say is overall bitchin'. But imagine my surprise and total ballistic rage when I received the August 25, 2008 issue--5 measly days before the start of the you-know-what--and discover *zero* mention of the season's third Grand Tour on the cover, in the table of contents--anywhere! And *this* with everybody's darling Contador as the favorite! Oh, fine, you've alluded to it in past issues, I'll erect you a freakin' statute in Madrid for that-- but WTF, dear Velonews?

Stand and Deliver: finally, as said peerless Vuelta heads out today, a nationalist shout-out to Caisse d'Epargne's Jose Ivan Gutierrez, who avoided impaling himself on the Carbon Fiber Pike of Imminent Castration by the riding the last k of the Eneco Tour standing above the jarred-off remnants of his saddle-less seatpost and, even more unlikely, winning the thing for the second year in a row. Y'know, I get that these are professionals and all whose phenomenal technical skills allow 'em to strip off raingear on a roaring switchbacked descent without catapulting into a crevasse or to throw a half-empty musette into a hated rival's wheel at 50k an hour with surgical precision, but coming from the perspective of someone who can't peek under her shoulder to see who's behind her without actually ramming into a building, I gotta say--even acknowledging the enormo motivation and adrenalin rush Gutierrez must've had to not let himself be transformed into a soprano--I'm impressed. Give that boy (and his surely relieved significant other, if he's got one) a bottle of champagne!

All right, we all know there's only one thing that matters the next three weeks anyway. On to the fabulous Vuelta!

It's the Vuelta a Espana 101, Baby!

Okay, class, you've seen the hype and pageantry that is the Tour de France (woo-hoo Sastre!), the last BMXer's gotten down 'n' dirty in Beijing, you're waiting for some badass Worlds in Varese, and now it's time for the most spectacularly bitchin' race you've barely heard of and even worse barely gotten the chance to watch: that's right, Spain's brutal and beautiful Grand Tour, the Vuelta baby! Here's what you need to know:

Who: out: undeserving defending champ and complete Heras inferior Denis "Crybaby" Menchov; injured stalwart Cadel Evans, who at least has an excuse; Samu "Holy Crap He's the Olympic Gold Medalist!" (and ergo forgiven) Sanchez; pretty much all the Italian climbers, as they've all been DQd in disgrace. In: inevitable winner/baby savant Alberto "Screw You ASO!" Contador; podium-shot-even-with-his-domestique- servitude Levi Leipheimer; we love the ever-jacked far-too-good-for-this-!@#$ Andreas "Contador's !@#$%" Kloden; Valverde; Igor Anton and Mikel Astarloza for the orange army; and of course, dear little Sastre. Venga Klodi--make that bastard Bruyneel *have* to give you a raise and some dignity!

What: 3 weeks of pain glory rabid Basque nationalism and vicious heatstroke in the monstrous Spanish mountains, with a coupla bones tossed to the sprinters so Boonen can soothe those wounds after his ignominious Tour de France bar-from. Kick back and enjoy the agony--sangria all 'round for us spectators!

When: Saturday morning August 30th we get rolling folks, with a seductively brief time trial to tickle the senses and fool the unprepared; excruciating mountain playgrounds on stages 7, 8, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, and 19; flatter if still sun-beaten hell on the rest. 5 summit finishes, 13 cat ones, & 3 hors categorie climbs. Feel the burn, baby!

Where: the only real coverage you'll be able to access in this crappy bass-fishing-obsessed bull-riding effete-golf-strolling armpit of a real sports backwater at cycling.tv for damn near anything they want to charge; a wholly inadequate if still Phil-and-Paul-blessed 10 minutes on Vs.; the Vuelta home page at lavuelta.com (translates to English); the fabulous Magnus over at ibanmayo.blogspot.com for the latest in Euskaltel-specific intrigue; and, if I may humbly suggest, here for the latest news sleaze and grossly unsubstantiated rumormongering. Between 'em all, you needn't miss a minute!

Why: why should the !@#$in' Tour get all the glory? Gaze upon the beauty and misery of the mountains, and tell me it don't beat the French all to hell!

And finally, my loser pick o' the race: I'm so irked that (the seemingly quite nice and certainly enormously talented, to be fair) Contador's going to get it at poor Klodi's expense I think I'm actually gonna root for Valverde. Damn Piti, live up to your hype already why dontcha!

What Is This, National !@#$ Over the Vuelta Month?

Gone, Baby, Gone: so the list of boys bailing from the venerable Vuelta over their failed pursuit of the overrated Tour continues to mount, with not only new Olympic road race champ Samuel Sanchez out to prep for backing Freire and Valverde in Varese, but also Cadel (who at least has an excuse) and, as expected, Denis "I Hated You for Heras, But I Now I Hate You Fair and Square" Menchov, still just too darn tired from a race he lost in July to be bothered with defending a Grand Tour title he's actually won in September. !@@#$%, why don't we just ride one stage in the mountains for Euskaltel to take, hold a big !@#$ing party for Contador and hand over the maillot d'oro a magnum of champagne and a pack of cooing podium babes on day 2, and freakin' save everybody 3 weeks if no-one but the Basques gives a rat's !@#? Free the Vuelta dammit!

The Silence of the Lamb: speaking of our beloved Euskaltel, it's been a good (well, deeply crappy) two weeks since Iban Mayo was officially screwed by the fine dissemblers over at CAS, and, unlike say Ricco's immediate crybaby PR offensive by his sap mom, fiancee, and sis, there's been not a peep from our delicate hero, not even on his personal website, which does, incongruously, post the news of his hosing right on the homepage. Okay, Iban, we know the drill: (1) 'fess up and become an ostentatiously faux-humble apologetic irksomely self-righteous hypocrite publicity whore (not that I have anyone particular in mind here); (2) deny it again in typical Spanish fashion and vow to return to conquer the Alpe d'Huez again in vengeance; (3) hide behind the skirts of your lawyer like a simp; or (4) spiral into a drug-and-booze-stoked pit o'misery and self-destruction to the relieved sighs of your even more culpable filthy skank compatriots that it's all happening to you not them. Say it ain't #4 Iban--we believe, or at least believe you're the least of this disgusting sport's problems!

My Boyfriend's Back: and, it's a delirious return for a thoroughly chastened Tom "Sniffy" Boonen as the sorely-missed boy returns triumphant at the Eneco Tour, snagging the first stage sprint to the sure delight of swooning teenyboppers everywhere all a-dreamy at the prospect of being his next underage girlfriend, and to the certain relief of our Tommeke's Ferrari fund. Leaving aside the total stupidity of busting Boonen for a little evening fun when half the riders're stuffed with enough drugs to OD, well, the Spaniards, isn't it nice to have him back since every sprint without him's just been one big ol' "what if"? Welcome back Tom--and keep your nose clean from here on out!

White Ponies On Dope: so the latest Olympic doping scandal is out, and for once it's *not* a cyclist: yep, 4 horses have been busted for unauthorized ingestion of painkillers, including ones from Norway, Ireland, Brazil, and Germany, none of whom apparently consulted with better-microdosing athletes in other disciplines before hitting the local corner dope-dealer. See, the narcs are closing in, boys--it's only a matter of time before that unnatural speedster Cancellara's Cervelo gets sent to prison for excessive lube...

Back to Business: meantime, the Italians, enjoying their Olympic road medals, pretty well dismissive of the Vuelta, and basically working on their tans 'til Ivan Basso gets an early out to crash the Worlds in Varese, have turned their attention to far more important matters: yep, our reigning world champ Paolo Bettini has recently crowned (not *been* crowned, you wiseacres) the new Miss Bibbona, now in the running for Miss Toscana, then all-out Miss Italia. Ah, the perks of being a national icon! Next up: the comely Basso, Cunego, golden-coiffed Pellizotti, and pin-up calendar silk-kimono-clad icon Alessandro Petacchi face off in a spandex man-candy battle-o'-the-fiercest for the coveted title of Mr. Squadra Azzura. Get thee some manscaping gentlemen--like any of you could beat our dewy-eyed Basso in that war anyway!

Gran Bretagna: last but not least, a belated shout out to Shameless St. Millar Defender, whose smashing countrymen and women beat the crap out of absolutely everyone in the velodrome in every single race by humiliatingly ginormous margins at this year's Olympics with the freak exceptions of wonderjailbait Marianne Vos' points win and the touching final-farewell gold of Joan Llaneras, former race partner of the late track star Isaac Galvez. Congrats to the Brits for rebuilding the Empire, and long live the Queen!

(Cycling) Stuff I Like

So having finally begun to recover from my black crevasse-o'-melancholy over we-still-love-so-bite-me Iban Mayo's royal relentless hosing by the desperate image-conscious incompetence-coddling protocol-screwers over at CAS--and just jarred back into reality by the horrid news that Haimar Zubeldia has signed with Astana for two years, which presumably means that this venerable Euskaltel star is gonna be !@#$ed to truly Klodenesque proportions--I've been pondering, of late, whether the sleaze of the peloton and its repulsive governing bodies has actually begun to outweigh the inherent beauty and glory of the sport that hooked me like a naive trusting sap in the first place. Therefore, while such cheerfulness goes against my very nature, I've managed to come up, for those of you similarly thwapped into cynical loathing, with a few things genuinely left to like about this sport:

1. The Giro. The nationalism. The macho preening. The perfectly elegant smack-talk and timeless climber whining (hi Simoni!). The endless irrelevant tifosi paeans to Marco Pantani, even when we're just talking about the latest SRAM components. Most of all, the prosciutto. Sigh. Is there anything *not* to love about this race?

2. The Vuelta. Heat to kill a scorpion, climbs to knock out a mountain goat, and best of all, Euskaltel-Euskadi's band of orange-draped screaming mouth-foaming fanatics. Viva la Vuelta!

3. Paris-Roubaix. If there's anything more lively to watch (if not to personally experience I suppose) than George Hincapie's bike shearing apart and frame-bashed bikes and frozen-wet bods generally careening over cobbles as treacherous in the dry as they are in the wet, I've yet to see it. Welcome to Hell!

4. Trust But Verify. The gold standard. Love Landis or hate him, this blog is the definitive source for all things Floyd, written by folks waaaaaaaaaaay too smart for me to halfway follow, much less successfully comprehend. All this, and bitchin' supporters too. Free Floyd!

5. The gone-but-not-forgotten Jan Ullrich. Sure, he's an X-snarfing off-season-bloating over-the-hill drug-stuffed erratic perpetual ne'er-do-well train wreck--that's his charm. Like you don't miss watching him too, you hypocrites!

6. Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen. Do you remember what vintage Chateneuf-du-Pape you enjoyed with a fine local goat cheese and handcrafted crackers on the 17th stage of the 1968 Tour at the very spot where an obscure French monk did some obscure historical deed in 1256? Phil and Paul do--and they also remember every single damn boy who rode that day, who designed their team kit, what brand of shoes they were wearing, and what order and in what precise time they arrived that day. Allez allez to the greatest sportscasters on earth!

7. Time trials. Unbefreakinlievable. Is there anything cooler or more nail-biting to watch?

8. Bjarne Riis. His transformation from Tour-doping lying skank to moral guardian of peloton purity has got to be one of the greatest snowjobs of all time.

9. Podium babes. Anyone who can park themselves directly beneath the armpit of a boy who's just been racing for six hours and keep smiling, and even actively buss the creature without noticeably dry-heaving, deserves even more ludicrous paychecks and accolades than they already get. Buy those fine lasses some nose clips, and give them a round of applause!

10. Garmin-Slipstream-Chipotle-whoever the hell's dandy blue and orange argyle team kit. Next up: Milram goes flowered chintz. Oh, laugh if you want to...at least they don't look like those cotton-candy princesses at Lampre!

11. The Spanish antidoping authorities. Never has anyone investigated so thoroughly, busted so many, leaked so much, and punished so few. Now that's justice, baby!

12. Marianne Vos. This smashing jailbait's won damn near everything in her brief career, and what she already hasn't, she certainly will. Right on sister!

13. Thor Hushovd. Okay, he's not explosive as Cavendish, eternal as Zabel, suave as Petacchi, or wanky as McEwen, but he's a class act and just plain untouchable in a prologue. Woo-hoo Thor!

14. My black-and-copper Ross Apollo 3-speed stick shift. When those black leather streamers finally come in the mail, I am gonna look *so* Batman. Eat my dust you wannabes!

15. Last but not least, dear little Carlos Sastre. Yeeeee-haaaaaaaaaah!

All right, that's it, all this perkiness is making me sick--I feel like !@#$ing Hannah Montana on a Sweet-Tart high. Read trustbut or burn in eternal flames, I say!

You *Suck*, CAS!

How Many Tries Do You Get to Come Up With a Valid "B" Sample?: oh, dozens apparently, as the incredible garbage-validating dissembling !@#$-up lab apologists over at the Court of Arbitration for Sport rules that it's fine to send a rider's umpteenth negative sample to Mars and finally back to a lab you like again so long as you ultimately come up with a bull!@#$ Z sample positive that puts the stamp of approval on your initial incompetent lab-chimp monkey work, as long as it's Iban's, or justify any other ludicrous miscreant screw-ups that'd be tossed out of any other forum (as long as it's Landis'). Dammit! If Iban Mayo--who frankly is fragile enough psychologically when he's *winning* races, much less when he's just been totally !@#$ed and his career has ended--doesn't go into a total downward-spiral drug-fueled Pantani over this I'll be shocked. And before I get any crap from anybody again about how I'm a soulless pro-doping tool-o'-cycling-destruction (though it might be nice to have the power), these are the narcs' own freakin' rules, and if they don't like 'em, they're perfectly free to demand a firing squad for the first A sample poz they get, but somehow even these vicious clowns thought it might be fair to confirm an initial positive result before they sent the offending rider down the 8th circle of hell to cavort with similarly heinous criminals like serial killers dog-abusers and Dick "Dick" Pound. And let's face it, if Iban walked right up to the start line at the bottom of the Alpe d'Huez, jammed an IV into his arm with a bag clearly labeled "MY PACKET O' DRUG-PUMPED HOMOLOGOUS BLOOD DOPING", and proceeded to leave the rest of the field in the dust, he'd *still* be least of this disgusting sport's problems. Free Iban dammit--particularly when you're letting the *rest* of the Spanish peloton zip around scot-free!

Oh For !@#$%'s Sake, Not *Again*: as the gleam has barely faded from Samu Sanchez' bitchin' gold medal in the road race--and to the sure delight of embittered tifosi everywhere still hyperfocused on the injustices of Italian drug busts--Spain once again claims its true place in cycling: yep, the Olympics' first doping poz, by hometown nimrod road-rat Maria Isabel Moreno. Y'know, let's leave aside the morality bull!@#$ and how you're probably gonna turn into a man someday like that German shot-putter from all the crap you're taking and how you're setting a pathetic example for all the eager admiring little girls pounding along on their sweet pink Treks with images their Olympic heroine on their walls: the more salient point, to my mind, is, you're a freakin' Spaniard with freakin' Spanish access to the phenomenally sophisticated best-in-the-world Spanish doping infrastructure and you *still* couldn't get it right? What kind of ludicrous amateur-hour shenanigans are they paying you for, Maria? Um, not to suggest there's anyone among your countrymen you might want to call for some good pointers, but...

Loser Pick o' the Games: okay, it's clearly gonna Fabian, Fabian, Fabian, or Fabian for the time trial, but with Schumi completely stoned from the heat, Cancellara having wiped himself out a bit with a bronze he never anticipated, and the Americans humiliated back at the ol' team car grabbing a Twinkie while the rest of the peloton made its decisive mood in the road race, I'm gonna pick Levi, with Zabriskie in the top five, and for my Aussie posse, I'll put even our damaged cranky but so very darn earnest Cadel right in there. As for the women, I may actually get it right for once with Armstrong, but then again, having picked her, you may reliably (and profitably) place your bets elsewhere. Break a leg (not literally if you please) Levi!

Me And You and a Girl Named Blue: meantime, as the Italian team continues to celebrate its silver (Rebellin) and bronze (Guderzo), congrats to mamma Daniela and the whole Lampre family as yet another little shining star is brought into the world: Alessandro Ballan's spankin' new baby girl, named, quite perfectly, Azzura. Any bets on what year our twee little hell-on-wheels'll take her first national championships? Forza (Squadra) Azzura!

Better Red Than Dead: finally, in a non-cycling development that may yet have profound implications for our beloved if mildly tainted sport, researchers have found that refs go easier on red-clad athletes than on other ones. Just think of the handy and glorious implications should current rogues like Petacchi Boonen and Di Luca head for such fashion-forward teams as Cofidis and Barloworld! "Better take another hit, Alessandro--you're breathing pretty hard with 50 m to go!" "Another line, Tom?" "Is that an IV in your arm, Danilo?--I'm sure that crimson stuff is just saline!"--the possibilities are endless! And do I ever know this great source for nutritional supplements off the internet...

Casper the Friendly Ghost

At Least Since His Team's Suspended His !@#: so, in a shrug of relief that at least it's not Sastre (nice work today Carlos!), skank no. 5 at the Tour turns out to be the harmless Jimmy Casper, whose personal website, surprisingly, doesn't as yet mention his current little entanglement with the fine folks over at ASO and UCI, though you can still join his fan club and, if you're a real wisenheimer, leave him a message. But wait! He's *not* a skank! He's one of the pro peloton's thousand chronic wheezing asthmatics, and it's sure to be only a matter of moments before the little snafu of his idiot team doctor in not getting his latest meds recorded properly is neatly resolved. Well, thank heavens for Therapeutic Use Exemptions and the astonishingly bull!@#$ standards required to obtain one...anyone else feeling short of breath right at the top of this next climb?

Aw, crap! Woo-hoo!: yep, bad news for a dejected Paolo Bettini, dropping his shoulders at the line and admitting fault in watching Valverde instead of wily teammate Samuel Sanchez, who damn well better ride the Vuelta now since otherwise it'll just be a total snooze watching Contador take it out from under the two minor Spanish domestiques remaining who actually give a rat's !@# about their own gorgeous hometown Grand Tour this year. Allez allez Samu--forget this lame "vacation" excuse, come back to us in September dammit!

I'm Queen of the World! (Spoiler Alert!): and, huge kudos to queen-of-near-misses Nicole Cooke, taking the Brits' first gold of the Games in a brutally soaked road race and canny breakaway with Italy's Tatiana Guderzo in bronze as such notables as Amber Neben, Kristin Armstrong, Oneone Wood and Judith Arndt straggled in well behind. Right on Nicole--now let's get it on for the time trial Kristin!

Punk-!@# Whine of the Olympics: finally, sad to say this one's to Chris "I'm Not Bitter" Horner, who recently took the opportunity not only to proclaim how great he'd have been in Beijing given his proven ability to keep up with the best in the world, which was fine, but also had the utter lack of class to blast Jason McCartney for just plain sucking relative to his lordly greatness. Man, Chris, not to remind you how *your* first foray into international competition left you crawling back home with your tail between your legs like a yapper-dog Chihuahua who's just been chomped back into his place by a Doberman, you're usually a breath of fresh air and your straight-talk-express act is appreciated and all--but did you have to go all Riccardo Ricco' on a boy who really didn't deserve to get pounded on for being a pathetic domestic-class weakling when such stars as Levi and George shouldn't've been snoozing back at the team car and missed the day's decisive move?

Who Iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis It?

Knock, Knock: well, it's bad news for some other s.o.b., as the Tour announces a fifth (unauthorized, of course, as the 3/4 of the peloton with Therapeutic Use Exemptions to scarf banned substances like Boonen snarfs nose candy still gets off the hook) doping poz at this year's Grand Boucle, perp as yet unnamed, which seems to make it rather likely it's a big one, and frankly, if it's dear Carlos Sastre, I'm setting myself adrift on a ice floe to congeal slowly into a racejunkiesicle in the Arctic because I'll really have had it with this septic tank of a sport. So glad to see you've managed to fix cycling since the dark days of Op Puerto and 2007, ASO--I'm sure you haven't missed anyone else who tried it!

Like Lambs to the Slaughter/They're Drinking the Water/And Breathing the Air: as the bewildered US trackies get unfairly dope-slapped for publicly wearing the antipollution masks the US training staff told 'em to wear and the USOC bought for 'em to wear, Alejandro Valverde has weighed in what he thinks is gonna decide the road race: yep, in addition to the heat, which oughta help the Vuelta-lovin' Spaniards, it's gonna be who can tolerate the pollution best. For my money, considering the dubious crap most of the cyclists have pumped into their systems, toxin-choked smog oughta be the least of their long-term health concerns, but with that said I'm reluctantly tagging our "Piti" for the road race but rooting, natch, for we love Paolo Bettini--still either glum or wily in his pronouncements of weak form, depending--to beat him down. Vai Paolo!

Sorta Like Those "World's Dumbest Thieves" Who Call 911 to Complain Someone Ripped Off Their Stash: so in a move guaranteed to spook Danilo Di Luca, a bitter Riccardo Ricco', determined not to go down alone with the ship and unerringly wrong in thinking that breaking omerta will make him as heartbreakingly pretty and easily forgivable as Ivan Basso, has now pegged Il Killer's lifelong pediatrician (who's at least not masquerading as gyno-to-the-male-stars like Dr. Fuentes) Dr. Carlos Santuccione as his supplier, whining he paid him 700 euros for a bunch of slop that wasn't even undetectable as promised. Wah, wah, you little twerp, get a job at an autogrille to pay your rent like a real man--do you realize how much more poor Jan Ullrich spent on the !@#$ that took *him* down?

What the !@#$ CAS?!: so, not to bother the tender sleepyheads over at the Court of Arbitration for Sport--no doubt still behind on their beauty rest after so exhaustively covering their !@#es as they hosed Floyd Landis--but you think, now that you've finished jacking him over, you might get around to making a decision (and I'm pretty sure we're all pretty sure what *that's* gonna be) about we love Iban Mayo before the !@@#$%in' Vuelta? After all, let's face it, with Ricco and Piepoli in the tank, it's not like Saunier Duval doesn't have another opening for our fragile superhero...

In Bocca Al Lupo, Baby!: finally, good luck to Emanuele "Gilberto Simoni Ought to Beat the Total Living !@#$ Out of Me" Sella as he faces the Italian narcs head-on Friday, which oughta go real well as the authorities, finally irked after the 800th Italian poz in two weeks and the giant consulting fees they're gonna have to pay the Spaniards to find out what the hell their boys are actually doing right, have already kicked half the national peloton out of the ranks for the next two seasons and show no sign of being reluctant to take out the rest. Oh dirty little Giro mountains king, so close to a multiyear multimillioneuro contract, yet now so far...

Sella-Out

Give Simoni His Giro Stage Back, Sella You Wank!: and that includes his throngs of cheering fans, masses of media, champagne and podium babes, as in further testament to the fact that doping is a thing of the dust-to-dust-ashes-to-ashes generation, 27 year old 3-fer Giro stage winner/Giro mountain goat Emanuele Sella, who dropped we love Gibo on the vicious heights of Aprica on Stage 20 of the Italian Grand Tour, tests poz for the latest EPO in a July out of competition doping test after Il Trentino, of all people, warmly complimented him on the win. Y'know, I usually deride (but also adore) Simoni for being a smack-talking crybaby, but at least he's too smart to (1) dope or (2) get caught! Man, first Ricco' (who said he "feels for" Sella, by the way), now this--what the !@#$ is this, National Screw Over Gilberto Simoni Month?

The Tifosi React: natch, regardless of the truly impressive rack-up in Italian test pozes the last few days, enraged that it's the goddamn Spaniards who get away with it every time while their poor oppressed Italian brethren hit the skids, though they do have the pride to declare themselves "nauseous," "vomiting," and "disgusted." Why don't yer boys give Valverde a call and get some pointers before they make their next hot date with an IV drip? Oh, bad racejunkie to suggest such treachery!

The Narcs Move In: ironically, the IOC, clearly a pack of cycling fanatics intimately familiar with the scandals of the last few years, has moved in on the only two Spaniards *not* linked to Operacion Puerto or any other scumsuckery: yep, 2008 Tour champ (woo hoo!) Carlos Sastre and green jersey king Oscar Freire. Um, not to suggest there's anyone else you'd be better off going after, but...

Thor-ture: so, as Team Tinkoff/whateverthehellitsgonnabecallednow proceeds to sign some of the biggest and most costly names in cycling (a far better way to "raise the profile of Russian cycling" than, say, UCI's vaunted Tour of the Communist Gulag), and the dissolving Credit Agricole's minor players already start to sign on with such outfits as Cofidis and Bouyges Telecom (big points to the first loyal, or even merely opportunistic, reader who can sincerely tell me how to properly pronounce "Bouyges"), and a certain someone significantly reduces his marketability by bailing on Beijing due to illness, a key question arises: what the hell *is* gonna happen with Thor Hushovd? With Gert Steegmans wrapping up the final day on the Champs Elysees as Boonen blows into his Kleenex at home, Quick Step with its superstar and new back-up boy seems booked; you know Lotto's gonna hose you next year with their last frantic effort to pull off a Tour win with Cadel so they're out; Columbia'd have to be freakin' insane to do anything to irk a present and future cash-cow like Cavendish; but perhaps with Petacchi off to LPR with fellow embarrassment Danilo Di Luca and even Erik Zabel's battered ol' skeleton bound to spontaneously turn to dust sometime, there's room at Milram? Whatever you do, Thor, just don't pull a Robbie McEwen and jack yourself out of the lead-out you deserve next year!

Going to the Chapel and We're/Gonna Get Ma-aa-aaried (Well, Some of Us): finally, as Lance "Hollywood" Armstrong gets ready to ride the Leadville 100 with a completely pimped mountain machine as we sorely miss Floyd Landis sits disconsolately at home, even more important news whacks the cycling world right in the works: our golden 7-time Tour winner has broken up (sob!) with celebrity lovemuffin Kate Hudson. But the real rumor of the day: Tuttobici's reporting (tantalizingly if unsurprisingly) that we still dearly miss Floyd Landis is walking down the aisle with Rock Racing for next season. Don't worry Floyd, I'm sure you can overcome even Michael Ball's boundless demands for constant worship to thrill the fans again at Rock, and Lance, no doubt there's comfort to be found in the food-deprived arms of whatever Olsen twin you've yet to snog, if being the hero of millions ain't enough for you!

Pollution, Pollution, Wear a Gas Mask and a Veil/

Then You Can Breathe/'Long as You Don't Inhale: so I see the Olympic track stars are started to get a wee bit concerned about sucking in solid black clouds o' smog as they run about (tho' visually it might have a sort of cool smoke-machine heavy-metal-concert effect for those of us at home), which begs the obvious question for a much more bitchin' sport: how dare these selfish goons expect we love Paolo Bettini to breathe this filthy crap, particularly when he's comparing his form unfavorably to that in Athens 4 years ago? Oh, okay, Tom "Sniffy" Boonen maybe, he likes to party, surely he's no stranger to, for example, smoke-filled nightclubs--but to ask our boy Paolo to deign to ride in that lung-gunking garbage? Now, *here's* a chance to make that disgraced (and disgraceful) rugrat Ricco' useful again--let's force him to pedal ahead of the squadra azzura with one of those "Sharper Image" ionic air purifiers bolted on his handlebars to ease the way for his betters, why don't we? See, little Riccardo, there's still a place for you in cycling...

The Road to Beijing: meantime, Cadel Evans, having recovered sufficiently from the knee injury caused by his stumbling drunken fall at the Silence-Lotto "Boys Gone Wild" post-Tour party (just kidding, Cadel's massive humorless bodyguard!), is gonna be at the Olympics after all, certainly at the road race and possibly even at the time trial along with such notable competition as returning broke-back Giro-bashed American speed god Dave Zabriskie. Good enough luck to you in the time trial Cadel, 'cause at least you're not dull as dirt to watch in that--but I'm still hoping Dave Z and (in the road race) the Italians wipe the tarmac with you!

Yes, Comrade: and, the Party line on doping continues in perfect lockstep, as the boss over at the International Olympic Committee parrots WADA's bizarre insistence that every single doping poz proves that no elite athletes are doping. Um, not to rain on the Lions Club parade here, but in light of Ricco's little revelation that he was snarfing enough EPO every day to fuel a rampaging herd of wolf-spooked buffalo and mostly not getting caught, isn't it slightly, slightly within the realm of mathematical possibility that you're just culling the stupid and leaving the very best (in wiles or financial backing) skanks in sport to set the world records?

I Wanna Be A Supermodel: sleek studmuffin-o'-the-Cannondale Ivan "Man-Candy" Basso is the subject of yet another humble, fawning interview with Gazzetta dello Sport, ruminating on the pure love of family and eye-opening charity work that has inspired him to work long and hard for the privilege of perhaps once more honoring his beloved sport by riding, and dare he even think winning, clean (as indeed he always did anyway, having merely "attempted" to dope) to earn the world's forgiveness, and, not coincidentally, getting enough dough out of Liquigas from his smarmy rehab efforts to get his favorite Ferrari out of hock (oh, give me a goddamn break, you Pollyannas, like you weren't thinking it!). Oh, Ivan, convince me again how the earth is flat as I lose myself unquestioningly in those beautiful starlit eyes of yours...

His Goose Is Cooked: finally, a shout-out to Anonymous for his or her question about Vladimir "Goose" Gusev's "irregular blood values" and subsequent immediate expulsion from the Astana House of Purity, to which I can only say, if one of Johan Bruyneel's boys actually had the astonishing ineptitude to come up "irregular" while he was currently *on* Johan's team, Gusev *must've* been taking some !@#$ on his own without...um, nuthin'. There, that won't get me sued by him or Armstrong I hope! And hey Anonymous--didn't you mean internal *anti*-doping programs? I thought so!

Hints From Heloise

(Well, Ricco'): so as Riccardo Ricco' issues a yipping (if informative) mea culpa in his desperate effort to become the next St. Ivan Basso of Varese, and loyal roommate Leonardo Piepoli, having reportedly tossed his captain under the bus by first proclaiming "I am like Ricco'" to the gendarmes and then denying he took anything at all unlike his cheating skank captain, it seems to me that Ricco's little confession offers some valuable tips for the rest of the riders should they themselves get busted (and God knows they're gonna keep needing 'em):

1. Taking EPO for an entire Tour is a "youthful mistake": Sort of like being an hour late for curfew one night and briefly making your parents worry you've been in a car accident, except with precisely-calibrated IV drips, clandestine trips to prestigious university medical clinics, huge payoffs through dummy bank accounts, and months of strategic planning.

2. You might want to tweak the testing protocols, because I should really have tested positive *every* day: !@#$ if I'm gonna be the only sap in the peloton who goes down for this!

3. I acted alone: because I'm really, really praying I can score a ginormous deal with a deep-pocket better-microdosing team when my two-year ban is up. Anyone want to suggest any names?

4. You get really tired riding the Giro clean, so you have to dope for the Tour: 'cuz as long as you don't embarrass yourself on Italian soil, who cares if you screw the French?

Peking Duck: yep, the number of riders continuing to bail on the Olympics (not including such inadvertent exclusions as world champ Marta Bastianelli, busted for taking a banned diet supplement--and after Jan Ullrich got so relentlessly !@#$%-slapped as a fat lazy cycling-hating pig every year every time he put 5 kilos on in the off-season, can we really blame her? after all, her cycling fed doesn't!) continues to rise, as Thor Hushovd claims lingering illness (bad timing considering Credit Agricole's tank, tho' I hear Lotto could use a sprinter if you don't mind getting ignored on the team bus like the most uncoordinated kid being picked last in gym class for the dodgeball game) and Damiano "Not Tonight Honey, I Have a Headache" Cunego withdraws from lingering, if rather weird, effects from his nasty late-Tour crash in the Big Show. You know Damiano, perhaps you just oughta use this time to reflect on your recent years' struggles and triumphs--you took your Grand Tour already, there's really no shame and truly quite a bit of glory in copping to being a Classics man!

The Tifosi Weigh In: needless to say, the Italian faithful are already placing their bets for the Olympics, tantalized by the Bettini-Rebellin combo o' foreigner-crushing death, rushing to offer the tenderest best wishes for a speedy recovery to the same Cunego they've been pounding on as a heinous failure since he took the Giro, still pissed that basically every Spaniard on earth is riding the Games while pouty-lipped pin-up Ivan "I Only Tried to Dope" Basso is still stuck at home for what who gives a rat's !@# if he did it or not, and, in the very essence of good sportsmanship and bitchy nationalist smirking, warmly congratulating Alejandro Valverde, his dog Piti, and Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes for his win at Clasica San Sebastian yesterday and any impending victory in Peking. Forza we love Paolo Bettini!

Freak-!@# Cycling Quote o' the Week (Jan Ullrich Gone-But-Not-Forgotten Edition): "pointless, magic squander, pumped my cycle as smartly as Jan Ullrich jazzing through the Tour de France. My climax quickened the..." (From Woman: An Intimate Geography, by Natalie Angier)

Welcome Back, Doper: finally, a warm welcome back to Operacion Puerto victim/Manolo Saiz protege (like you know who! except this boy got nailed) Michele Scarponi, who returns to the peloton at the Giro dell'Appeninno by apparently defiling we love Gilberto Simoni's Diquigiovanni squad, like Gibo doesn't have enough problems with his association with that moron Ricco'. You might amp up the bawling-and-kissing-babies gig now Michele--without Basso's dreamy hotness or Millar's ostentatious sobbing (or either of their palmares, while we're at it), you've still got some serious rehab work to do!