Welly well well. No need for the cycling media to head out in search of breakfast this AM. We all had plenty of egg on our faces from this little press release from the kids over at Sony-Ericsson. Yes, the very same Sony-Ericsson that was supposed to be sponsoring a team (scroll down), and supposed to be bringing fat stacks of cash, and supposed to be signing Gilberto Simoni and Stuart O’Grady. So who do I blame for this massive bit of fubar? Hey, who else would I blame? They are, after all, the ones who first put the Sony-Ericsson team forward as a fait accompli. Hell, they’re still way behind. Compare their headline with some others from this morning. See the difference? But, if you’re a buck-stops-here kinda guy, you gotta hold Ferritti responsible – the dude was not dealing with a legit contact at the company. But maybe he can make ammeds; current reports hold that he is in Stockholm at this very moment, trying throw together a last-minute deal with the real Sony-Ericsson folks.
So, is there any other news to report? Well, Eurosport says that Bettini’s looking forward to Lombardy, and that the sprinters are happy with the new ProTour scoring system, but these are both kind “duh” stories; Bettini’s l’il homey Luca Paolini was cleared to race yesterday, and the ProTour points for a TdF stage win just got raised from 3 to 10. Pez has some ‘cross dude from Germania to report on sweet Euro’ ‘cross stuff now, and Magnus Backstedt will be attempting the derny-paced hour record soon. Ludovic Capelle is appealing an 18-month dope suspension (I think) and something about Inigo Cuesta and CSC (my Dutch isn’t so hot…). But, yeah, so, not much else in the way of news this morning. I did find this sweet video a few days ago, and uh, let’s see…what else? Oh, Fantasy Football is going well for me so far this season. See if you can guess which team is mine.