Another day, another detonation — that’s life at the 2010 Tour.
Yellow-jersey-for-a-day Cadel Evans went boom after breaking his left elbow in a crash on Sunday; he and management decided to keep it a secret, the team worked like draft horses for him, and it ended badly.
“We decided not to tell anybody because we didn’t want anybody hitting us on the first climb,” BMC team manager Jim Ochowicz told VeloNews. “We controlled the race and we were going to see what the outcome was … you saw the outcome.”
Indeed I did, and I felt badly for Evans, who really has done the world champion’s jersey proud this year only to get a steel-toed Sidi in the ’nads from Fate. And given the carnage thus far, I wonder whether Andy Schleck — the latest in a series of yellow jerseys — might be tempting fate by saying that the race has boiled down to a two-man race between him and Super Spaniard.
Don’t let your mouth write no checks your ass can’t cash, son. I don’t see no Champs-Elysees yet.
Meanwhile, speaking of mouths, asses and checks, it seems that Scott McLobbyist, the Repuglican candidate for governor of Colorado (The Slightly Less Grotesquely Fat Than the Rest of the States State), has been accused of lifting bits for his series of “Musings on Water” pieces from the works of Gregory J. Dobbs (no relation to Fred C. Dobbs), now a justice on the state Supreme Court.
According to The Denver Post, the Hasan Family Foundation paid McInnis $300,000 to do speaking engagements and “research and write a monthly article on water issues that can be distributed to media and organizations as well as be available on the Internet.”
Instead, McLobbyist took a gig at a law firm, jobbed the research out and now blames the researcher for the alleged plagiarism, which he says is “a non-issue.”
“Voters don’t really care about this issue,” he told a Denver TV station. “They care about jobs, getting back to work.”
I’ll bet they do. Hell, I’d like to find a job like that myself after three decades trying to draw some sustenance from the dusty, withered teat of journalism. Getting paid $300,000 for two years to steal someone else’s words when they’re just sitting there waiting for you in a corral? Sheeyit, that’s about as sporting as shooting puppies at the pound. My words are all free-range, and take some hunting down.
Mad Blog Media 
It seems Andy S. has a mouth and must scream.
I love this Contador/Schleck Specialized commercial:
Wow! The two best bike racers in the sport using humor in advertising. Thank you, Specialized.
I feel like the dark clouds of “What am I on? I’m on my bike, drinking Michelob Douchebag Extreme Ultra, listening to a radio I bought at the Shack, and raising money to fund my lifestyle–I mean fund my defense–I mean pay off the mothers of all my children–I mean fight cancer,” is finally lifting.
I was discussing this very thing with my better half, who knows racing better than yours truly with a career that included standing on a podium between Rebecca Twigg and Connie Paraskevin back-in-the-day. It’s not over ’till it’s over and the time is ripe for some of these guys minutes behind to go on a raid that could force the Astana or Saxo teams to chase, and chase hard. Don’t forget they let Sanchez become the virtual jersey just yesterday before eventually running him down. We hope for some exploits like this to liven things up and not let it be a two-horse race. Politicians and plagarism? The wife had some bozo in Malta “borrow” a lot of her published philosophical work for a series in his local paper before he was caught and kicked out of government. Once nabbed he tried to get her to agree to be “co-author”!
The feds are swinging their big bat at those in-the-know about the goings-on with BigTex and doping — how many will finally rat out the boss? I’d hate to be the guy who green-lighted the Shackstrong sponsorship right now!
$300K for two years’ “work.” Would love to see the statement of work and billable hours worksheet on that one. Calling both McPlagiarist and the folks who hired him “shit for brains” is an insult to decent, honest turds everywhere.
On l’Affaire du Landis: didn’t it take like a hundred years for BALCO to go from rumors to a grand jury? This thing is moving fast. But it makes sense. Back in the day, Lancey Pants could stop a guy from getting a job putting out cones for the Butt, Nebraska office park crit, so everyone had to play nice. But timing is a bitch. The guys who know where the bodies are buried, they’re not racing bikes anymore and have nothing to fear.
My bet: everyone’s guilty, but there’s no smoking gun tying any of the big names to the big deeds. The minions, some guy like Chef Duffy or another water carrier, will get the worst of it, for trafficking or another hands-on, non-conspiratorial offense. Folks like Tyler Hamilton and Jeff Evanshine will be featured in “where are they now?” segments of EPSN: Outside the Lines, and then disappear again. And for whatever reason, knuckleheads will keep paying Chris Carmichael good money to tell them what I can tell them for free: ride lots.
What is it about Colorado Republicans taking credit for other people’s work? Oh wait, it ain’t just Colorado Republicans, but the ones in this square state seem to be especially bad at covering their tracks. We had our own Mesa County commissioner, and candidate for Lieutenant Governor, Janet Rowland, do the same thing as McShithead, that is discover the usefulness of “copy – paste”, only she did it for the local freebie newspaper: (http://www.gjfreepress.com/article/20070205/COLUMNISTS/70204002).
As for Scott McShithead, fifteen years ago he dropped in the bike shop I was working at while campaigning. Like the sleezy politician that he is, he seized my hand, gripped it with his slimy palm, and shook it. I have yet to find a detergent that has managed to get the feeling of his gooey grip off me.
Why does this not want to print my bad comments?
John, one needs to be more resourceful to get rid of bad politicians in your workplace. Back about fifteen years ago in Hawaii we were in a really bad election season. My friend Gary Barnes’ State Senator, old guy politically to the right of Rush Limbaugh, was running against gay marriage after the HI Supreme Court had overturned Hawaii’s ban on same-sex marriage. His campaign workers walked into Gary’s garage to politicize us just as Gary and I had finished our occasional Saturday flog-to-death bike ride. We were standing there sweating buckets all over the garage floor when the crew walked in on us.
The pols tried to hand us some lurid, anti-gay propaganda with the title page printed in red on a black background. Almost simultaneously, Gary and I looked at each other, raced over into a sweaty, male embrace in tight lycra, and told the politicians that they had no business interfering in our lives, our love for each other, and our home. We had the same right to marry that they did. The pols, looking stunned and a little grossed out, literally trotted back to their car and left. No handshake necessary. A couple minutes later, the wives returned from walking the dogs. Gary and I were still leaning on the garage walls to hold us up as we laughed our asses off. Meena and Lorraine could only ask “what the hell…?”
steve-o: I was thinking about the speed of the investigation as well. I think there are three reasons why the feds are moving fast on USPS doping: 1) Using USPS money (federal taxpayer dollars) to fund cheating is way worse than overpaid baseball players funding their own drug deals; 2) Congress doesn’t give a shit about cycling the way they cared about America’s pastime–thank you former Senator Mitchell; and 3)the investigators got through their learning curve with BALCO–they’re seasoned pros at ferreting out all this crap now.
I think you’re absolutely right about timing. Big Tex isn’t El Jefe anymore. Most of the guys who can talk have less fear of professional and financial repercussions. Soon, it’s going to be the in thing to come clean. A rider who tells all will have a better chance at being a driver or DS or a marketing dude for what few teams are left after the fallout.
And it’s just a really good idea to tell a federal investigator and a federal grand jury the truth. A monetary fine or a fall from grace is so much better than jail time.
Colorado is strange animal, politically. On the one hand, most folks are moderates, be they left or right. But moderates aren’t sexy and are too busy working to run for office, so those who get elected tend to be a bit on the extreme side.
There’s a funny flavor to mid-west and Rocky Mountain conservatives. Most are conservative because they are traditional, not because they have some pathological ideological neurosis. These are the ranchers and farmers who would prefer the federal government stay out of their shorts. But these folks also realize that no man is an island, that they are sucking on the federal teat when it comes to using BLM lands, water rights of way, or taking farm subsidies. There’s a certain give and take there, in that they are more than willing to join the local co-op and work as a community, but they don’t want the federal government to tell them that they have to. I can respect these guys, since they’re mostly aware of the left/right contradictions that are modern American life.
But again, these guys don’t run for office, so instead, we get a GOP leadership that is filled with freaks, Promise Keepers and ready-fire-aim guys who are so ideologically blind that all they care about is party purity. They run on “fear the liberals” platforms, and can’t tell you why you should vote for them, only why you shouldn’t vote for the other guy.
It’s a shame … my county is 50% independent, 25% GOP, and 25% Dem … but does an independent ever win office? Nope.
One would think we would be ripe for an actual, viable third party movement.
In yesterday’s NY Times.
and from the NY Daily Snooze: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more_sports/2010/07/13/2010-07-13_source_grand_jury_subpoenas_lance_armstrong_sponsor_trek_in_cycling_drug_probe.html