Jesus H. Christ. It’s awfully tough to take a bike race seriously, even The Big One, when nutters in tactical gear are shooting up movie theaters.
Seventy-one shot. At least a dozen dead. And the shooter apparently got it all out of his system — whatever “it” might be — because he just chilled out afterward, waiting to tell the cops about his booby-trapped apartment.
Is it a good thing that this maniac survived to tell his macabre tale? I’m not so sure. We’re all going to hear a lot more about this guy and the spiders in his skull than will be good for us.
Oh, yeah: And it’s long past time for Louie Gohmert to shut the fuck up, and for his constituents to repent for inflicting this festering pustule upon the body politic. Seriously. That nobody has pounded this fuckwit’s teeth right down his yammering gob and out his asshole continues to mystify me. I’d take an honest satanist over his class of blustering “Christian” any day.
Poor Fränk Schleck. I can’t find it in my heart to judge him if he resorted to a diuretic. Think how he must’ve felt all these years, lugging around that hideously unattractive water weight.
Les flics came for Rémy Di Grégorio on the first rest day of the 2012 Tour de France, dragging him off to the Bastille on suspicion of using products other than baguettes and mineral water to fuel his race around France. Zut alors! Say it is not so!
His team, Cofidis, as you may recall, is all too familiar with this sort of thing. David Millar and Phillipe Gaumont in 2004; Cristian Moreni in 2007; the party never stops. Each time the team trots out the old zero-tolerance twaddle. Same shit, different day.
Come to think of it, Bradley Wiggins — presently wearing the maillot jaune in the Tour de France — was among the Cofidis riders who went home after stage 16 in 2007. I don’t suppose any of the cunts or wankers in the press corps will wish to shake off their bone-idleness, get off their arses and apply themselves to discussing those dark days with him.
Speaking of which, Sean Kelly, a man with his own flair for language — whatever language it is that he’s speaking — thinks that Wiggo’s press-conference tirade is an indicator that while he may be strong in the legs, he’s weak between the ears.
“Bradley has always been fragile,” Kelly told Cyclingnews.com. “A puncture or another upsetting incident can make him lose his head. Last year, (Cadel) Evans experienced some mechanical problems behind (Alberto) Contador, in the stage to L’Alpe d’Huez, and if it had been Wiggins, he would have panicked. But to win the Tour, you have to know how to stay calm, overcome adversity, whatever it may be — and that, I’m not sure he’s able to do.”
Sean Kelly, one of the hard men of the peloton when I was first becoming interested in the sport way back in the day, implies in a chat with the working press that this modern lot is a shower of eejits — and I’m not inclined to argue with him after watching stage six of Le Show Beeg, in which pretty much everybody save the Eurosport commentators, ASO management and Paddy McQuaid found themselves on the tarmac, in the ditch or inside an ambulance.
Sean Kelly back in the day, as photographed by Cor Vos
“These kinds of crashes happen, but you have to ask, how did it happen?” Kelly told my man Andrew Hood over to VeloNews.com. “Nobody wants to brake anymore. Everyone is pushing to be in the top 30 riders. Everybody is taking so many risks, and they will have crashes because of that.”
From your lips to God’s ear, Sean a chara. Today’s appalling clusterfuck on a narrow section of road, which left dozens of riders on the floor and sent several out of the Tour altogether, looked as though someone from the Spandex Liberation Army had set off a roadside bomb as the peloton rode past. Andy tallies up the body count here.
Some crashes can be blamed on course designers. Others can be chalked up to ineptitude (yes, pro cyclists fuck up just like we do, only at higher speed). I don’t know whom to pin this one on, other than upon the collective mindset that everyone — sprinters, wanna-bes, winless guys fretting over next year’s contract, GC men and their minders, and anyone in a Euskaltel-Euskadi jersey — just has to be at the front, all at the same time.
There isn’t enough room. Forget about UCI regulations — it’s a violation of the laws of physics. You can’t squeeze a thousand pounds of Lycra through a garden hose. There’s gonna be an explosion. And we saw it today.
Editor’s note: Incidentally, in case you’re wondering where I am lately, I’m helping Charles “Live Update Guy” Pelkey with running commentary on the 2012 Tour over at Red Kite Prayer. Well, maybe “helping” isn’t quite the word we’re looking for here. “Hindering” may be more accurate. Whatever. I’m there, and you should be too. See you.
Not so fab is the word that scumbags have been burgling and/or trashing the homes and vehicles of evacuees from the Waldo Canyon fire.
Now, call me intolerant, but I find that intolerable. It’s not bad enough that Hell comes to town and rousts you out of your bed, sets you on the road with whatever you can stuff into a bag before it catches fire? Nope, we must have a little human deviltry to give it some edge.
I can’t think of an epithet vile enough for such people. Grave robbers seem positively civilized by comparison. At least their victims are beyond any need for TVs, toasters and whatnot.
It makes one yearn for the sort of rude Western justice often meted out in horse operas. Unfortunately, the fire has left us short of trees for hangings.
Mad Blog Media 