Looking to defend its ‘World’s Least Contiguous Stage Race” title, the Tour de Georgia announced it’s 2006 race course today. The route forms a rough northbound stepladder from Macon to Tennessee, staggering East/West like a drunken redneck all the way. Details and the biggest photo I could find here. It’s all the same to Gibo Simoni, though, as he’ll be too busy doing Giro prep to care. But in February, the lastest victim of the Saunier Duval contract-a-thon will poke his head out in the Tour of California. I’d say he’s “going-going back-back to Cali,” but I can’t say if he’s ever been before. It is, however, classic Gibo to get the year going with a week-long foreign stage race.

As the old saying goes, you know it’s gonna be a s&!††¥ day when the lead story is Ag2r becomes 20th ProTour team. Actually, I just made that saying up. But it surely is a harbinger of doom when the big story was a fait accompli last month, right? Because now there’s a total of a 5 French teams in the ProTour, despite the fact that French teams suck, yeah? Well, actually, no. Turns out the French teams don’t suck that hard. As the final ’05 Team Rankings Show, the Italian squads are far worse (if you put any faith in ProTour scoring system, which is a whole other can of worms entirely). And, though many scoffed at the idea of the UCI leaving a 19-team ProTour, there are those who think the ProTour would benefit greatly from a downsizing. Of course, this could all be deck chairs on the Titanic, because fewer and fewer teams are going to bother with a ProTour license if it doesn’t give them a free pass to the Grand Tours.

I really don’t know how these two combatants got tangled up. I mean, can you think of two things less related than a well-regarded vintage bike tubing and a smooth finishing, oddly glowing malt beverage? I guess it might be a make-up call for last week’s pathetically obvious battle. Rounds 1 and 2 can be found here and here, respectively. Now let’s get down to seeing which steel is more real.

One of the nicer things about having poor Italian and Spanish (and also being asleep when Europe wakes up) is that I don’t get drawn into these “no story” stories. Somewhere, a comments section has a link to a Todociclismo article (Babelfish may prove to be of some assistance to my fellow Anglophones) reporting that Igor Astarloa was headed to Liquigas next season. Well, as Tuttobici and more helpfully, Velochimp report, that’s not true. I’m guessing a lack of independent confirmation kept Cyclingnews and VeloNews from running stories on it. Speaking of Cyclingnews, it seems during their recent recap of the Hamilton case, the UCI leaked some info in violation of both sides’ agreement not to discuss the case. The Hamilton team’s response doesn’t say specifically what information was revealed, but I’m willing to bet someone with way more patience than I could figure it out.

Arg. I am so sick of reporting doping news. But I suppose if I didn’t want to do that, then I picked the wrong sport, yeah? Anyway, the first rider to lose his Grand Tour title due to a dope offense requires some attention, right? Here’s a stack of rider reactions (following a brief summary), including Pedro Delgado, the ’88 Tour winner who, with current regulations in place, would have been kicked out of that race for a positive Probenecid test. Despite Heras’ looming legal assaults, the Vuelta director says here that this proves the effectiveness of anti-doping measures, while in this article, the UCI prepares for yet another challenege against its only EPO test. I’m really beginning to wonder if the UCI really has faith in this test, or is just panicked about losing it’s only current EPO countermeasure.

Yes, so they think it is conclusive this time, and there really is EPO (or evidence of it) in Roberto Heras’ urine sample. Though under normal circumstances, this would mean a two-year ban from UCI competition and a further two years of ProTour non-participation, it probably just means about five more years of legal struggle, what with the sudden uncertainty of the EPO test, and with Heras’ sample in particular. Maybe if the Hamilton case ends unfavorably, Heras will drop legal action to clear his name. What will definitely happen is that Denis Menchov will be declared victor of the ’05 Vuelta, and reluctantly become the first Russian to win that event. Tony Rominger will also retake his claim to winningest Vuelta rider ever, though it feels kinda slimy, as Rominger was a protege of Michele Ferrari, who’s been on trial for supplying dope to riders for the past 3 years. And, of course, the biggest loser here is pro cycling, which gets another high-profile dope case to dirty its image. Actually, scratch that; the biggest loser here is whoever dropped 25,000 EUR on this.

The nice thing about having a comments section is you can let other people report on breaking news for you. Like yesterday, when someone dropped the comment on Heras’ inconclusive B sample. 24 hours later, confusion still reigns. Perhaps the clearest explanation comes from ProCycling’s story, though you could search all day and not find anything definitive. Basically, Heras and his attorney have seized this moment to question the test, while the powers-that-be insist everything is normal. My sympathies in this case lie entirely with the scientists, because, as I learned in my AP Bio days, gel electrophoresis can produce results that are devilishly hard to decipher.

People often ask me “How exactly does being independent make your cycling page better? Doesn’t it mean you just don’t have any real sponsors?” Well, yes, that is one (somewhat simple-minded) distinction. But here is another: Cyclingnews recently published this review about Zipp’s 303 ‘cross wheelset. I felt it was a pretty even-handed article, overall positive, but still willing to point out shortcomings. But then I noticed this photo of a young man in an Excel Sports Boulder kit, and thought to myself “Wait, isn’t Excel Sports a huge Zipp dealer?” After a live chat (upper right) with an Excel rep, I found out not only that they sell “a large volume” of Zipp wheels, but that Rob Karman, the author of the review, is currently an Excel Sports Boulder employee (scroll down just a tad). So the guy reporting on the quality of these wheels for Cyclingnews, who you’d think would be impartial, actually benefits directly from their sale. Avoiding conflicts of interest like that are what being independent is all about.

Most team training camps in the Alps involve reconnaissance on the big Alpine passes of the Tour. Not so for T-Mobile, who, perhaps realizing that heavy snowfall would foil any cycling plans this time of year, engaged in a military style team-building exercise. Once entirely the domain of overpaid business executives with an unhealthy fixation on The Art of War, these camps were brought into vogue by Bjarne Riis a few years ago, and the results of his CSC team seem to be a rousing endorsement of their effectiveness. Don’t worry, folks, I won’t call this plagiarism (see my rant from earlier this week); T-Mobile’s recieved more than enough flak for stealing things from CSC already this season. Anyway, after watching Ullrich and Kloeden chase Vino down repeatedly in this year’s TdF, I can’t name a single squad more in need of team-building than T-Mobile.

Yeah, I know, this one is obvious. If you gave a 7-year-old kid a cycling blog, this is probably the sort of crap he’d come up with. But come on, I can’t keep filling this page with arcane nonsense or no one will want to read it.