Playing Doctor! Hide and Seek! Hikes to the Death! Yer Assorted Off-Season Hijinks Roundup

The House of Doctor PleaseDon'tBustMe: so, almost alone among the current crop of Grand Tour champions, you've got a sparkling reputation as a clean rider for the ages--despite working for, of all bosses, the notoriously practical Alexander "Shut the !@#$ Up Or I'll Rat Out the Whole Lot of You!" Vinokourov--and what do you think is a great thing to do to preserve it? That's right, rehire your close friend and previous associate, Marco Pantani's freakin' doctor. Jaysus, I love Vinenzo Nibali, and admire his personal loyalty, but where is his *head*? I mean, by his tweet today, apparently even former Armstrong teammie/confessed but reformed dopester team boos Jonathan Vaughters thought this guy was too sketchy! Oh, I guess it's silly to worry, we'll all be too distracted to worry about this soon enough when another one of Vino's proteges gets popped...

No, Samu, No!: and, we love Samuel Sanchez continues to frustrate with assurances he's got buckets of offers but is merely chillin' at home with a nice cold beer considering whether he feels like just retiring or not, and all I can do is--BEG! BEG! BEG! CAN WE ALL START SOME KIND OF HUGE PLANETARY PETITION TO GET HIM TO KEEP RIDING? ANYONE ELSE WILLING TO CHIP IN for, y'know, not like a bribe or anything but a really, really expensive pile of encouragement? How crappy is BMC's rumored offer if he's not even taking it?! !@#dammit Fernando Alonso can you at least get your WorldTour act together and give this guy a DS job nurturing jailbait Basque talent? Aiiigggghhhhhhh!

What Was That Sylvester Stallone Movie Where Jon Lithgow Went All Nutwhack and Started Pitching People Off the Mountainside?: well, whatever it is, it oughta be retitled "Tinkoff Saxo Team Camp," because megalomaniac sadist-adventurer Oleg Tinkov has decided to make his twee toothpick GC contenders and everyone else on the squad conquer Mount Kilimanjaro, which Oleg'll've already personally done butt-naked in flip-flops sixteen times before base-camp breakfast and for which they'll be a special prize--first one to whinge about blisters, vomitous altitude sickness, losing limbs to frostbite or any other crybaby crap gets to singlehandedly pull Peter Sagan's lumpen carcass up the entire 19,341 feet of the thing. Just like they'll have to do during the regular season, ba-dum-bum! Oleg, you *do* realize most of these guys don't have enough body fat to keep 'em halfway warm at noon in the Sahara Desert, dontcha? Oh, well, some team-kit armwarmers and a coupla newspapers stuffed in their jerseys for the trek downhill and they'll all be juuuuuust fine, I'm sure....Look, there's Oleg at the top celebrating right now!