Hey there. I´m writing from some whack Madrillano Internet cafe, and have 21 minutes left on my Euro, so this will be brief: Kirchen won the Tour of Poland, getting a bit of revenge on ProTour leader (who beat him at Fleche-Wallone, but could muster only fifth here) and certain ProTour winner Danilo DiLuca, whose relatively one-sided victory (simply from dominating one-day races) exposes perhaps a rather large hole in the ProTour´s scoring system (only 3 points for a stage win?). Also interesting en Pologne was young Dutchman Thomas Dekker who laid a little pre-Worlds smackdown on would be-favorite Bobby Julich in the race´s final TT, clipping the American by seven seconds.

Dick Pound, whom I dislike profusely, and who is so hard nosed and litigious that he once sued the Premier of Quebec for calling him a “crackpot,” really seems to be out of his mind. He’s supposed to be the head of the organization concerned with fairly eliminating doping from sport. But so far, he’s been little more than world’s largest Dopers Suck t-shirt, sounding off ineloquently about how all cyclists are on drugs and how he doesn’t “like people who cheat. Period.” (Funny, I don’t recall Pound being at all miffed about the conclusion to this year’s Gent-Wevelgem – you can watch the finish yourself on Cycling.TV to see what I mean.) The latest victim of Pound’s frothy vitriol is UCI chief Hein Verbruggen. What’s the deal, Dick? Trying for a place on Celebrity Mole?

See what I meant by yesterday’s headline was that one major race currenty going on (the Vuelta) is like the 3rd week of the Tour, which is “boring” because it generally lacks any real GC change; and the other major race (Tour de Pologne) is like the first week of the tour in that the stages are long, flat, and invariably end in group sprints. Today was no different, with big, fat Niki Sorensen (CSC) fending off master of body language Javier Pascual Rodrigues, in an exciting-if-somewhat-meaningless finish in Avila. Heras maintained his insurmountable lead. And in Poland, tailwinds prevented anyone from so much as establishing a break before Lampre’s Daniele Bennati won his second group sprint of the Tour, while race leader Luca Paolini (Quick.Step) still has yet to finish in a position other than second. The win is Bennati’s 5th ProTour group sprint victory in the past month.

Ok, seriously. Vuelta: Quesada escapes to win. Oooooh, it’s such a big deal because he’s 5th on GC. NOT. Even after getting away, he’s still six minutes back of Sr. Heras. The only real suprise going on is that Quesada’s team, wild-card entry Communidad Valencia is beating everyone else down in the teams competition. By the way on an entirely unrelated note, CV used to be this outfit called Kelme, which is alleged to have had this teensie-weensie problem with doping, but that’s neither here or there…

Bike racing draws in stupidity like a vacuum. And, even though Laurent Fignon became le professeur simply because he had spent some time in college and wore funny glasses, I’m not talking about the intellectual quality of the riders, here. I’m talking about things like BioPace and performance-enhancing coffee . Or Cyclo-Zen, which suggested that your inability to climb might not be due your poor watts/mass ratio at lactate threshold, but instead to your lack of mental toughness. And though each of these things is pretty silly in its own way, by far the dumbest thing I’ve ever come across during my (admittedly short) time in cycling is Dopers Suck.

Don’t call it a comeback! Outsprinting an on-form Luca Paolini to take the first stage and the GC lead of the Tour of Poland yesterday was none other than 2003 TdF maillot vert Baden Cooke, back for his first pro win in 18 months. Though many bad journalists described yesterday’s stage as “glitch marred,” it was actually only delayed, following the late arrival of two spanish teams: Illes Balears and Euskatel. After that, it ran smooth as butter until a crash 300 meters from the line, which the aforementioned bad journalists failed to even mention. I suppose that’s what happens when you just copy reports verbatim from AFP.

Y’know, I thought we were done with this bike racing nonsense. But even after a week of subsisting on nothing but nachos and logging a fat 2:30 of training between GMSR and Saturday morning, I found myself back out at the start line of yet another Cat 4/5 race. This time it was the Doc Reilly Memorial out in Cobleskill, NY (just off I-88, the interstate to nowhere). Race goes around Howe Caverns for under 40 miles, and features some pretty nasty climbing. Despite the fact that most of my EPO, er, uh, altitude training, had worn off [the short-lasting effect is a pretty good indication that it really was altitude and not EPO -ed], my other option was the Topsfield Road Race, and a 100-man hour-and-half elbow fight ending in a guaranteed group sprint sounded way less fun than possibly getting dropped less than a week after being crowned King of the Mountains could ever be.

Oh, sure, just because the Vuelta stops for a minute, the whole cycling world just shuts down and stops putting out new stories? Jeez, look at ProCycling; as of 10:30am EDT today, this was their lead story. “Menchov frustrates Heras” indeed. Did they even hear about Stage 15? Well, you won’t find that sort of lazy, arse-dragging here. No sir. We never stop because, frankly, we’ve got nothing better to do.

You might have thought the Vuelta a Espana was turning into the Tour de France. A relatively unexciting leader, having grabbed the lead in the TT, was now just following his most likely rival’s wheel, letting bolder non-GC riders snare stage wins. That was before today. Now, following his fish-clad (that’s the points jersey, by the way, and apparently, Ernest Hemingway in the background) charge to the Valgrande ski area, Roberto Heras has shattered Menchov’s seemingly inflappable facade and leads the GC by over 4 minutes. On a climb that had the cyclingnews commentary team going “Oooh, there’s another really steep bit” every few k, the 3-time champ put time into everyone, despite the driving rain and heavily bandaged right knee. It could have been a performance to rival Schilling’s bloody sock, except that Heras wasn’t dosed up to the eyballs on painkillers, and, oh yeah, he wasn’t on TV either. (Thanks, OLN!)

(Is that a good headline or what?)

The UCI today made an official statement on l’affair Armstrong today. Aside from being a huge expansion on their previous statement, it also seems to be a flying leap into Armstrong’s corner, adminstering sternly-worded slaps to both l’Equipe and WADA chief Dick Pound (who I’ve been calling an overrighteous zealot for months):

“the UCI confirms its commitment to investigate how and why confidential information was disclosed to members of the news media. In particular, we deplore the fact that the long-established and entrenched confidentiality principle could be violated in such a flagrant way…”