Chemical Weapons! Discs-o'-Death! Doping Busts! Uh, And There's Bike Racing, Right?

Law and Disorder: well, more's coming out about the violent drunken goon-thug/innocent cyclist altercation involving Philippe Gilbert, and it turns out, !@#damn right PhilGil *did* go all chemical-warfare pepper-spray on that motorist's !@#, which *does* count as a "weapon" in Belgium--and coming from a strictly American Wild West mine's-bigger cowboy perspective here, *that* ain't no "weapon," but I digress--and now, big bad car driver is cryin' to his mama *and* the cops that will-o'-the-wisp Gilbert (who to be fair, has proven himself a mortal threat to frightened children in the past) was a mean, mean bully. I warned you in yesterday's people, don't !@#$ with the man--particularly since he sez he's *always* packin'!

And It Burns, Burns, Burns/The Ring of Fire, The Ring of Fire: meantime, as Movistar's Fran Ventoso shows off what looks to be a nice gory round chunk sliced outta his leg and rails about the nascent use of disc brakes in the peloton, and the all-powerful disc-brakes lobby lams into Fran for mistaking an obvious Velociraptor attack for a harmless bike part, the twitsphere's gone wild, not least UCI, who either are or aren't gonna ban disc brakes in races until more research can be done, presumably on the unwitting bods of whatever sap happens to go down in a pile of uncoordinated and lethally armed Lampre riders. Me, I say let's preserve valuable cyclist bodies *and* advance science with a good old-fashioned cage-match: two combative guys, say Cavendish, and Philippe, in one of those metal circus sphere cages, one with rim brakes and the other with discs, they ram into each other repeatedly, whoever comes out roughly in one piece (or the least number of pieces), the other guy's brakes are the new UCI standard. Saddle up, boys, problem solved!

Quoth the Beard, Nevermore: and, it's with total ennui that I note that Matteo Gavazzi's been popped for coke a truly impressive third time--the latest perilously close to the time he won an unusual number of victories, so maybe more'n a little off-hours clubbing just there--and with total bummedness that we love Luca "the Beard" Paolini's long, bad-!@# career is, most probably, over on account of his advanced age of 39 and his official 18-month ban for the same devil's nose-candy. Dammit, if only they'd been old enough to be aware for Nancy Reagan's appearance on "Diff'rent Strokes" to push her extremely effective "Just Say No!" campaign! Oh, these wild kids today...

Ardennes You Glad I Didn't Say Banana?: finally, if you *do* think Gilbert's gonna be hampered by a few freakin' fractures in his beloved Ardennes classics, think again, doubters--he's posted a pic of his X-ray with a good skyscraper's worth of steel pins in his finger on Instagram, and he is aiming that digit directly at *you*!