And that, my friends, is that.

Tour de Sadness. Now Tour leader Michael Rasmussen (Denmark, Rabobank) has been fired by his team and pulled out of the Tour due to his sketchiness over scheduled doping tests. (VeloNews). I can't watch this train wreck anymore...

Tour de NOOOOOO!!

Why, Vino--why??? After his dramatic, gutsy stage win yesterday...when I jokingly said, "whatever you're taking, keep taking it!"...

Vinokourov tests positive; Astana withdraws from Tour (Velonews)

Double stage Alexandre Vinokourov (Astana)learned Tuesday that he had tested positive for homologous blood doping following his victory in Saturday's individual time trial. Vinokourov and his Astana team have reportedly withdrawn from the Tour....

Vinokourov, whose performance in Monday's stage was feted in the French press with headlines such as the 'Courage of 'Vino'', had been criticised before the Tour by UCI president Pat McQuaid for his association with Italian sports doctor Michele Ferrari....

Tour de Couleur!

If you have been watching coverage of the Tour de France on Versus...

...have you noticed that commentators Bob Roll* and Al Trautwig wear identical, color coordinated shirts each day--and that the color changes? Black one day, green the next.
In fact, there is an awful lot of color coordination going on here.


I guess these guys are covering an event in which it is a great achievement to get to wear a flamboyant, red-polka-dotted jersey.


*Who I totally love for his seat-of-the-pants analogies and very American pronunciation of "Toor Day France"

The Floyd Landis freak show

Been following the Floyd Landis testosterone doping arbitration hearing? Boy, have you been missing some weird shit.

Let me bring you up to speed.

1) July, 2006: Floyd Landis overcomes a devastating hip injury to win the Tour de France. Days later, one of his blood tests comes up positive for testosterone doping, throwing his victory into question. Landis offers various lame excuses, and a few potentially accurate conspiracy theories involving the French and tainted blood samples.

2) May, 2007: Arbitration hearing begins in Malibu to decide whether to uphold the positive results of the blood test and strip Landis of his 2006 Tour de France medal. Here's where it gets weird.

• American cyclist and three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond alleges blackmail. LeMond had been called by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to testify against Landis. He tells the panel that Landis's manager, Will Geoghegan, warned him not to show up, lest Geoghegan reveal that LeMond had been sexually molested as a child.
• Landis immediately fires Geoghegan, who himself almost immediately...you guessed it... checks into rehab "in an effort to address his problems." (AP via NYT)
  

And thus we have yet another awesome demonstration of the rehab maneuver, now firmly entrenched in the playbooks of PR flacks from every possible realm, it would seem. The childhood sexual abuse thing was sort of a red herring, but also pretty strange. I can't wait to see what happens next.

A Floyd Landis stream of consciousness

Let down by another hero. It's looking increasingly likely--though by no means certain--that Floyd Landis will get busted for testosterone doping and stripped of his Tour de France title. (Yahoo)

I feel a little bit like I did when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke. For context, I really idolized Bill Clinton during his first term, despite NAFTA and the health plan failure and so forth. (In high school my backpack sported a button with his photo and the slogan,"Democrat Women Stand By Their Man," which I had picked up at the Tennessee Democratic Party's booth at the Appalachian Regional Fair in 1992. Really wish I still had that awesome button.)

Anyway, when the Lewinsky/perjury allegations surfaced, I was pissed. Not exactly surprised or suddenly disillusioned, but pissed, the way you might be pissed at your little brother for doing something stupid, like egging the neighbors' house and getting caught. It's like, "You jackass. It's bad enough you did it. But to do it and then sign your name in spray paint on the driveway--that's just idiotic."

And that is somewhat how I feel about Landis right now...I mean, sure, "everyone dopes." But you shoot up testosterone during the Tour? And then make sure to win the stage so you'll definitely get tested? C'mon, man.

As a side note on the Clinton thing, I would later find it oddly prophetic that Paul Simon's "You Can Call Me Al" was chosen as a Clinton-Gore theme song during the 1992 campaign season. Consider the following verse.

Who'll be my role-model?
Now that my role-model is ....
Gone ...... gone,
He ducked back down the alley
With some... roly-poly, little bat-faced girl.
All along .... along ....
There were incidents and accidents,
There were hints and allegations .....

Say it ain't so!

Re: America...F**ck yeah!

"Floyd Landis is the coolest injured-yet-victorious athlete America has seen in recent years."...pending his vindication of doping charges.

America...F**ck yeah!

I almost cried. It was like watching Miracle on Ice.

Floyd Landis is the coolest injured-yet-victorious athlete America has seen in recent years.

• Cooler than Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling. (Because Mr. Schilling earned our eternal respect when he helped propel the Sox to their 2004 World Series victory on a hastily-repaired, visibly bleeding foot...but then lost it by campaigning for Bush!)
  
• Cooler than Kerri Strug, the U.S. Olympic gymnast who completed her routine on torn ligaments. (Because Floyd can put away 10,000 calories a day during the Tour! As compared to whatever Kerri eats.)