Your Weekly Update As Things Wind Down

Seven days? Has it been a week already? Oh, right, there’s no Züri Metzgete, which makes for a pretty sizable gap. Some 30 day stretches are jam packed with up to five overlapping races, but suddenly the racing scene’s a barren wasteland (slight apologies due to Franco-Belge). No wonder there’s such acrimony over scheduling.

Anyway, cycling’s in such an advanced state of regression that even the doping news has been dominated by other sports. Rodney Harrison returns from his four-year…er, I mean, four week suspension for a steroids positive. Harrison, by the way, is the second NFL superstar to be exposed as a doper in as many years, and this under a drug testing policy that could best be described as pathetic. No word yet on how American football is in danger as a sport, but I’m sure the editorials are coming…

And Marion Jones – who didn’t see that coming. The only thing Travis Tygart and Dick Pound want on their mantles more than Jones’s medal cache is Lance Armstrong’s one remaining testicle. Forget what the two clean-sport terrorists actually said to the press after Jones confessed, the implicit message was “Lance, you’re in our crosshairs through July 2013. And don’t even try flaxseed oil bullsh!t with us.”

That’s not to say there wasn’t any cycling dope news, though. An apparently suspended DiLuca managed to still race at the GP Cimurri. How? I don’t even know any more. Ask me next spring, at which point maybe the Rasmussen saga will be properly sorted out, too. What interests me is whether or not DiLuca will be stripped of his season-long ProTour title (provided he wins it) as a result of his looming suspension.