The shit is hitting the fan.
Additional searches by Belgian authorities have turned up more prohibited substances, and two people remain in custody following this week’s raids near Kortrijk. Authorities are claiming to have found just the ‘tip of the iceberg’, and are holding ex-racers Rik Coppens and Pierre Herinne as alleged dealers. The pair, both 38 years old, will appear before the magistrate on Saturday. Meanwhile, the Quickstep soigneur Johan Molly and another former racer David Windels were released.
Source: www.cyclingnews.com
Virginia. Where parents get 27 months in prison sound for hosting a party for their son’s 16th birthday party and providing alcohol.
Their mom, Elisa Kelly, and her ex-husband, George Robinson, are paying the price for hosting Ryan’s 16th birthday party — more than two years in jail each. Ryan had asked his mother to buy his friends some beer and wine, as long as they all spent the night.
Doesn’t sound too dangerous, right? But you’re probably wondering, as I was, if some kid died driving home or was injured in some way. I mean a twenty-seven month sentence is nothing to scoff at. Something bad had to have happened, right?
Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney James L. Camblos III, who prosecuted the parents, said it was the worst case of underage drinking he has had to deal with in 15 years.
Really? The worst you’ve seen?
The couple initially were charged with 16 misdemeanor counts, but seven of the partygoers had no alcohol in their systems. Of the nine who did, all were below the legal limit for intoxication, according to Wren.
Nine kids below the legal limit, and that’s the worst case of underage drinking you’ve seen in fifteen years at the prosecutors office?
You just gotta wonder about that statement.
The couple pleaded guilty in Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court, and Camblos recommended a 90-day sentence at the time. But the judge, angry about the recent death of one of Ryan’s classmates at Albemarle High School in an alcohol-related crash, sentenced them to eight years.
The couple appealed to Circuit Court, which reduced the sentence to 27 months.
They had pleaded guilty, expecting the recommended 90-day sentence, and then got eight years thrown at them.
So I guess they should be happy with just two?
Source: www.washingtonpost.com
OK, let’s get this straight as reported in Velonews. T-Mobile fields a top tier cycling team for about $12 million (a mentioned figure of the cost for a top tier team, I don’t know the real numbers). They also dump $1 million Euros into sponsoring the Tour de France within Germany.
Now, because of the smell of drug offal, a lot of it from historical T-Mobile itself (Ullrich, Zabel, Riis … bla bla bla … bla bla bla ) has so filled the air, they want OUT of their public display of their involvement and advertising of the Tour in Germany.
lede:
German telecommunications company T-Mobile announced on Saturday that it wants to withdraw its sponsorship of the Tour de France’s television coverage in Germany in a damage-limitation exercise.
Cyling’s image in Germany has been rocked by several high-profile doping admissions from cyclists competing for the former Team Telekom, now known as Team T-Mobile, and the company is keen to prevent any further damage to its image.
Oh yeah! The state of pro racing is thriving! Like Anna Nicole’s baby before she over dosed fatally.
The images that circulate in my brain in times like this are of Tyler Hamilton. His stoicism as the sports quiet hardman. Working, working, working, and then having success between the times of misfortune and disappointment. Except the reality was:
The second page of the file allegedly showed that he won Liège-Bastogne-Liège six days after a double transfusion of blood, won the Tour de Romandie shortly afterwards, and prepared for the Tour by not racing in May and taking anabolics and EPO. He then raced only the Dauphiné Libéré in June – completely anonymously, and didn’t even start the final stage. At the time, he claimed to be suffering from stomach problems all week, but El Pais alleged that according to Dr Fuentes files, it was during another period of blood extraction. In the final lead up to the Tour, he was to take more growth hormone and re-infuse the blood, as well as doing so on the first rest day of the race. Source.
The internal lie has spilled out and the days of stoicism and image cloaked heroism are not with us now. Instead the sports arguably biggest sponsor is trying to cover their association with the sport. Like putting makeup on needle tracks. The sport has been murdered by its own spawn, who now lament its passing.
Everything follows the money. As the sponsors leave, so everything will leave. The sport has a choice that must be made in some sort of group consciousness way. Either follow the Law of Omerta and continue doping, or go to 1) amnesty and reconciliation & 2) persistent blood profiling. If you can’t carry the extra oxygen in the blood, the playing field gets awfully close to level.
Oh shitty.
From: Doug
Just incase you are not up to speed.
WORLD Criterium Championships will be held During Interbike Thursday Sept 27th.
The event will have Men and Women Pro-Class races, and for Interbike exhibitors, an Industry Cup Challenge (info here) worldcriteriumchampionships.com/wp/?page_id=8.
The Pro-Women’s race will be at 7:00 P.M., the Industry Cup at 8:00 P.M. and the Pro-Men will race at 9:00 P.M. with an after party hosted at Mandalay Bay. The event will feature a fast and technical, six turn, 1-kilometer course held at Mandalay Bay. worldcriteriumchampionships.com/wp.
It is the last race in a 10 race series.
Athens Twilight, Athens, GA, April 28
Tour of Somerville, Somerville, NJ, May 28
CSC Invitational, Clarendon, VA, June 2
AT&T Downtown Austin Criterium, Austin, TX, June 16
Iron Hill Twilight Criterium , West Chester, PA, July 7
Wells Fargo Twilight Criterium , Boise, ID , July 21
Presbyterian Invitational Criteriumb , Charlotte, NC , August 4
Chris Thater Memorial Criterium , Binghamton, NY , August 25
Parker Criterium , Parker, CO , September 15
World Criterium Championships , Las Vegas, NV , September 27
More race series info here. usacrits.com
Industry Cup teams of four? Oh, I can find four.
Members must be full time employees in the cycling industry whose primary income is derived from working for the company entering the event (not as spokesmen).
If my guys made a sum total of dick last year, and I paid them a sum total of dick, does that mean their primary income was my dick?
I mean, does that mean we’re in?
And what are you afraid of, drunkcyclist winning? Shit, we’ll be too drunk to find the start line.
Would you believe recent polling shows the same number of people know about John Edwards’ $400 haircut that know that Iraq did not have Weapons of Mass Destruction?
And that would be right around 45% of people in this country.
Source: electioncentral.tpmcafe.com
Good luck trying to blame that on the liberal media bias, cowboy.
In other fun news:
Today the Council of Europe makes it official: Poland and Romania hosted secret detention facilities on behalf of the CIA.
Source: tpmmuckraker.com
Oh, how far we’ve fallen from being a “shining city upon a hill whose beacon light guides freedom-loving people everywhere.â€
Who said that? Ronald Reagan did. Over and over again.
And what are we now?
It ain’t shining. And it ain’t on a hill. It’s buried in the mud down there somewhere in New Orleans’s Ninth Ward.
Heck of a job, Brownie.
A reader submission:
From: Eric
have you seen this? Bill Strickland over at Bicycling, soft-pedaling his implicit first-hand knowledge of doping…
sittingin.bicycling.com
pardon my french, but what a fucking wanker. and yeah that’s me shouting from the soapbox in the comments.
I know a bit about doping as well. And what I’ve always said is everyone is doing it.
Every one.
Those guys he was in the van with were more than one or two levels above our domestic pros. They were, and still are, on another planet.
It ain’t the training, it ain’t the culture… It’s the drugs. Full stop.
Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off today for the first shuttle mission of 2007. There is no truth to the rumor that Paris Hilton, Alberto Gonzales, Ivan Basso, George W. Bush, Vladimir Putin, everyone who ever appeared on “Survivor,” “Dancing With the Stars” or “American Idol,” the editorial board of The Washington Post, Ann Coulter, Michael Moore, Rush Limbaugh, Bill Maher, James Dobson and all those goddamn penguins that have taken over the national movie houses were aboard, scheduled to be stuffed into an uprooted Alabama septic tank and placed in permanent orbit around the moon. More’s the pity.
The extent of pent up anger in the general population never ceases to amaze me.
I casually blew past a Mercedes “Roadster” SLK class hunk-of-junk as it sat with right turn blinker on, waiting for the non-traffic to pass. Just sitting at the stop sign, a few miles into my commute. The owner fussing with her yippy lap dog, that was in its appropriate place for driving through a packed city – on her lap. Without even thinking I passed her to move on my way, to which lap dog woman took great offense. No words on my end, I’m just ridin’.
But of fucking course.
Yes lady, I figured your $50,000 car had some power under its hood, and a horn too. And thanks for yelling my name over and over again – “Asshole! You asshole! Asshole!” – as you sat at yet another red light. Have a good one, you know? I’m off to the river front bike path…
But there she is, speeding the wrong way around the stadiums with the top half of her dignified Mercedes driving lap dog self hanging out the window, only to remind me again that yes I am an asshole. Guess what? I know. You told me that a few minutes ago, amongst some other folks in my life.
I also know that her car costs more than my house did, and that my bike shop wrench job that I still had an hour to ride to was surely less important than Fluffy’s grooming, and that she has a PA plate that started with FLY, appropriately. But its the image of her brownish black pomp in the breeze as she had a temper tantrum that sticks with me. The dog yipping away. And makes me laugh every time.
Next time you need to primp your bitch, how about going for it before getting behind the wheel, eh?
In other new, Paris Hilton is crying her way back to jail. I thought you’d want to know, Patrick.
And Colorado has approved a Share the Road license plate. Nice work kids. Keep on fighting the good fight.
Back when men were men and sheep were nervous…….
Big Jonny and Gnome, at their finest……
snake
I thought about posting a poem I wrote.
Never done it before, at least not that I can remember. And why not just post one? I’ve got a few of the little bastards sitting around, both on paper and in my head.
Tonight is as good as any other night.
Here goes:
Poetry
What I dislike the most,
is the pretentiousness in poetry.
The odd phrases, the thick language.
As if it is somehow required to confuse people,
first,
before you impress this shit out of them.
I was three years younger than Paris Hilton is now when I got thrown in the Denver City-County Jail drunk tank in 1977 because a buddy of mine got lippy with a salty Colfax copper during my going-away party (I had just graduated college and was moving to Vermont, so a few of us thought it would be smart to try to drink Denver dry).
It was Labor Day weekend, and the jail was definitely open for business. We climbed the barred walls for a while and made primate-house noises until the booze wore off. One of our roomies, a peckerwood with a bad perm in a leisure suit who was in for trying to pick up a hooker, said he could see his apartment from our cell’s window. He wasn’t calling anyone, ‘cause he was married and his boss was a born-again, and as far as I know he’s still in there.
A duster (PCP freak) confined to a single cell all by his lonesome spent the night marching up and down and hollering incomprehensible shit at the top of his lungs until a jailer finally threw open the mainline door and shouted something along the lines of, “Keep that shit up and I am gonna be forced to consider you an asshole.â€
“What’s an asshole to you?†screamed the duster.
“You an asshole, muthafuckah!†hollered another drunk-tanker. “Now shut the fuck up, we tryin’ to sleep!â€
I expect ol’ Paris is sleeping purty damn nice tonight, diamond-studded ankle bracelet or no, in her 2,700-square-foot, four-bedroom, three-bathroom, Spanish-style home on 0.14 acre above the Sunset Strip in the Hollywood Hills. And if there are any dusters there, well, no doubt they are invited, honored guests. And anyway, sleeping is overrated.
