Team Tactics! Wuss-Outs! Narc Bait!: It's Yer Giro d'Italia Rest Day Due Roundup! #giro

Porte Hole: look, I don't doubt that Richie Porte is a dedicated, hardworking guy. I also don't doubt that somewhere, Chris Froome is dancing an absolute polka at the realization that, despite Richie's early-race brag-fest, Porte now has no standing whatsoever to try to bushwhack Froomey, as Chris did so indelicately with his own team leader Wiggo a few years back, come July. But when your own DS is blasting your half-hearted excuse about a sore knee by saying that no, in fact it's yer head, and your own loyal domestiques are equivocating that they're not sure what the problem is and you'd better ask the race-whacked boy himself--added to Rigoberto Uran's shrugging off his own start-line bronchitis and nasty fall and deciding to battle on while the hugely-ahead maglia rosa sucked up a twice-separated shoulder and bashed legs and a smacked knee for !@#$'s sake--what *is* clear is that no matter how much pain you're certainly genuinely in or what incredibly disgusting virus you're now going to be diagnosed with, you're gonna look like a colossal whining, well, soccer player if you don't suck it up and honor the damn race you proclaimed your own obvious supremacy in by at least battling back as best you can til the final day you can slink back into whatever crap fuel-leaking rustbucket they're gonna let you ride in once they've taken your one-man rolling palace away. *Geez*, Porte, don't you owe it to your teammates to stay in and support your GC replacement Konig--if you're lucky, they won't even stuff you in the luggage compartment!

Tag Teams: meanwhile, though I normally hold Oleg Tinkov and Alexander Vinokourov about equal in the total raging nutjob department, I gotta say, while Oleg clearly can't shut the !@#$ up and quit openly smirking at whatever remains of Contador's competition--and anything can still happen, especially in this crazy race--at least he's being a hell of a lot more discreet than Vinokourov, having the sense to let Alberto's go-to guys visibly crack for the cameras while Vino's entire crew tick-tick-ticks away at the front of every monster climb as relentlessly as the worst days of Armstrong's motorized Stepford-domestique autobots. What the *hell*, Vino, of course ex-Euskie Mikel is completely pure, but you *did* just get threatened with the loss of your WorldTour license by the cowering impotent cycling authorities, don't you think it'd look a *little* bit less suspect now if you just ran 10 kilometers of plastic tubing directly from a cooler in backseat of the team car into the !@#es of their bib shorts? Still, to Aru's credit, he remains ever the gentleman, letting Landa off the leash when it was clear he could at least manage to glom onto Contador's wheel, pointing out Contador's relative weakness to his own teammate, and fully backing Mikel's taking off to grab the win. You could take serious deportment lessons from this kid, Oleg--if anything else should unexpectedly go wrong with *his* Giro, at least he won't have looked like a jerkface! Here, after a race moto totally jacks poor Atapuma, and despite an agonizingly brave surge by a then-heartbroken Trofimov, another darling former Carrot nails the Giro stage: PS Holy crap nice run there Hesjedal!

Next Up: an utterly sadistic post-rest-day crushfest, with the Passos Tonale and Mortirolo, and *two* climbs to Aprica. Enjoy, wee climbing glory-hunters and GC contenders--if even *you* guys don't run home crying by the end of the day!