I think it’s only fair to admit that maybe I should replace the word “UCI” with the word “testers” in that last rant I wrote. Thanks to Cyclingnews’ plainly insufficient reporting—which did no more than simply translate the term “Vlaamse Gemeenschap”—it was, and still is, unclear exactly what the “Flemmish Community” means.

Frankly, it still doesn’t make any sense—there are too many different meanings to the term, but none of them seems to be a sport drug enforcement body. At any rate, things seem to be going better for Tom—he won’t be fired—and I’ve gotta say, his use of cocaine sounds a lot like my use of alcohol.

Only two stages in, and already the ’09 Giro is looking like it’s going to be awesome. Mark Cavendish and Lance Armstrong take aim at Garmin-Slipstream in more ways than one before the 1st stage TTT, while Stage 2 features some classic Giro riding, complete with a crazy finishing circuit and a big sprint at the end.
[right-click for iTunes compatible download]

YouTube version is also up. I’m going to continue holding off on embedding the QT source files here for now; if you’re really missing it, on Safari and OS X, the awesome Click to Flash plug-in lets you view YouTube movies in H.264, instead of (gross) Flash.

It’s not that I don’t think Mark Cavendish is the fastest sprinter in the world. Milan-Sanremo speaks for itself. But he had an easy time of it at last year’s Tour, thanks to one of the most misguided cases in the history of arbitration and, well, that problem that Tom Boonen has.

Petacchi is getting a bit long in the tooth, and lacks the magnificent sprint train that drove him to a staggering nine victories in the ’04 Giro, but he came into this year’s event fit. Petacchi took the Giro di Toscana just last week; a stark contrast to Cav’s April build-up of hanging out at the beach with his fiancee, before failing to even finish with the group at Romandie.

(The UCI may not be specifically to blame as I’ve indicated here. The arguments that follow remain valid, and apply to all testing bodies.)

I’m furious that the first day of the Giro was ruined by another positive cocaine test from Tom Boonen. But my ire is not directed at the Belgian classics rider. Instead, it’s aimed at the authorities who senselessly soiled his name by announcing a positive test which violates no established protocol, and thus constitutes a clear violation of Article 11 of the UCI’s own internal ethical code [PDF].

Oh, Cav. You dashing young blade, you. Getting all self-righteous that Garmin Slipstream was practicing (OMG!) for the TTT in Stage 1 of this year’s Giro . As we all learned from Chariots of Fire, that’s simply not what persons of quality do. And Lance Armstrong, Mr. Millimeter himself, inexplicably agrees.

Never mind that Columbia Highroad won the TTT at Romandie last week, or that Franti Rabon was quoted as saying “[Columbia-Highroad's] big goal coming here was to win the team time trial” after the victory. Garmin-Slipstream’s notion that the season starts today is utter nonsense, and somehow disrespectful. How embarrassed must Cavendish be now? Why, those hammy British cheeks must be as pink as that jersey he’s got on.

From today’s Velonews:

From Johan Bruyneel’s Twitter:

And, of course, we know it’s Lance because of the Shep Fairey skid lid.

From Stage 2 of last week’s Tour of Romandie.

Even if you’ve got the watts to jump away from a ProTour-level field on a Category 2 climb, to be a serious contender, you still need the skill, coordination and nerve to come screaming down swtichbacking, off-camber descents while negotiating the occasional pothole or motorbike.

And these two *still* didn’t get away for the win. What a sport this is, eh?

(Not going to post Quicktime vids unless they’re in the How The Race Was Won podcast for the moment. Sorry about the bummer Flash quality—Vimeo keeps gagging on the source file despite the fact that this was produced identically to all my other clips.)

So seeing as it’s the middle of the season and mere days before the second-biggest stage race of the year, what better time for drastic, sweeping changes to come out of nowhere. Let’s start at the top: the UCI wants everyone to suffer more and so has decided to enforce their utterly arbitrary 3:1 “fuselage form” rule.

You may recall that the boys from Aigle tried to do this back in February, but were met with protests. After all, the teams had gotten their equipment for the year, and had already tallied some UCI points with it, so in theory, the season was already polluted with “illegal” equipment. But I guess by the UCI’s logic it’s OK to enforce the rule now because teams have even less time to replace non-compliant components before the Tour.

Wait, wait…a loose federation of Central European businesses/state entities—named after the the capital city of Kazakhstan so none get any actual ad exposure—is having trouble putting together the constant supply of capital needed to run a cycling team? I’m not surprised that Astana’s collapse is happening so much as I’m surprised that it took this long.

Look at that picture in the upper-left: that domed building is blue. The fashionable high rises are yellow. The statelier, more reserved high-rises are yellow-trimmed. Another set of buildings by the river is fire engine red. The last time I saw a city that looked like this, it was made out of Legos.

A little back-and-forth over the Interwebs between Daryl Impey and American cycling commentator/bogger/some sort of Time rep at one point or other Smithers, related to the Theo Bos Affair: