We've been sitting on this image since Floyd's hearing started, waiting for him to start crying, or just until we'd managed to think of the perfect "dining with Richard" joke. But Landis has been doing the cocky swagger, "rightful winner" thing, so we're just going to post it here so we can finally delete it off our hard drive. We really need that 81kb.


Excellent work putting Virenque's face in place of the disabled guy's head. Scathing satire. 7/10

Tomorrow
We find a new way to insult our American friends. Isn't there a race on somewhere we could be writing about?

Normally we'd save this kind of thing for December, when there's no racing on so we're willing to fill this site with any old redundant rubbish. But on Sunday Julio Perez Cuapio proved without a shadow of a doubt that he's the rider of the year, so it seems only fair to give him his award now.


Julio Alberto Perez Cuapio: Rider of the year.

We take back everything we wrote about Web 2.0 just being one big autistic mess of badly written blogs about the 9/11 terrorist attacks and sub-You've Been Framed quality grainy videos of people falling over. It turns out that camera phones and embedded video DO have a very important purpose.


That purpose: Allowing us to watch Quick.Step sing karaoke.


Just think, back in 1996 there was no way for British people to see other people singing Metallica songs in Flemish accents without actually going to a Metallica gig in Flanders. This is progress.


Bettini seems to be the weak link in this fairly perplexing choir. Curse of the rainbow jersey?

Watch it here. They're all wearing sunglasses to make it seem more rock and roll, which means the whole video is a little bit like when they did Comic Relief in secondary school and your form teacher would turn up dressed as Ali G thinking that was the very height of popular culture.

New ways to torture your pug dog! Strap him to the side of your bike, then tell anybody who asks that you're keeping him in shape. We'd love to see this implemented in the Tour de France.


Nobody tell the RSPCA

We found it here. We thought it was a joke, but you can actually buy one from here.

We're nine stages into the Giro, and so far all we've learned is that Alessandro Petacchi is the fastest sprinter in the world again and that Ricardo Ricco is particularly susceptible to bullying. Stage ten, the first sort of proper mountain stage, should provide us with some more answers.

Is Simoni over the hill? Can Di Luca complete his emergence as a genuine contender for a grand tour? Will Iban Mayo ever finish another mountain stage? And more importantly, who'll win stage ten?!

Danilo Di Luca
Danilo's come at this Giro with a determination reminiscent of Lance Armstrong. He's taken control of the race so far, but all the determination in the world can't make him capable of lasting three weeks over the hardest Giro route in years.
Odds to win stage 10: 5/1 (6)

Riccardo Ricco
Riccardo Ricco! Drug trafficker?! Victim of bullying by the big boys of the peleton?! The only man capable of following Di Luca's wheel on the first summit finish?! The boy creates drama everwhere he goes, it seems. We can't wait to see what happens first: Bettini chasing him down AGAIN, or suddenly getting into a huge inter-team rivallry with Simoni.
Odds to win stage 10: 13/2 (7.4)

Damiano Cunego
That Lampre kit is pretty horrible, all truth told. And we really can't see it looking that much better with a pink jersey over the top of it. Nevertheless, The Kid appears to be back, so we might have to get used to that particular garish colour scheme within the next week. But not tomorrow.
Odds to win stage 10: 7/1 (7.8)

Julio Albeto Perez Cuapio
Despite always being in storming form in the Giro, he never seems to get the results he deserves. We blame this entirely on his predilection towards suicide breaks. But on the first major test of the Giro, the favourites might be too busy watching each other... No, seriously.
Odds to win stage 10: 17/2 (9.6)

Gilberto Simoni
If Grand Tours lasted four weeks, Gibo would be winning them left, right and centre. He finishes so strongly that even if being an old man won't stop him winning this Giro, finding some way to lose time before the final week might. And how long before he starts throwing insults around when he realises things aren't going his way? Man, we love this guy.
Odds to win stage 10: 11/1-12/1 (12.5)

Mountains! Aren't they brilliant?! And we know how you can make them even MORE exciting... Winners always welcome at Betfair!

The Giro has started! And then stopped! This Giro has had it all so far: Childish inter-team rivalries; Ale-Jet's triumphant, teary return to form; and Discovery Channel riding like absolute mongs. Keep it up, guys, this is already going down as a classic. Tomorrow's stage is the first summit finish, so presumably the debate as to whether Cunego or Di Luca will win there should reach its logical conclusion: Both riders being thoroughly overshadowed by a 20 year old East European. We love this sport.

But who'll win overall?!

Damiano Cunego
Despite everybody in the world suddenly deciding to claim that Cunego has wasted his precocious talent, he's actually become a much more solid rider. Not that his new found ability to time-trial will have a massive impact on this year's route, but he should look pretty threatening compared to the previous couple of years. No mean feat when you're dressed in blue and purple.
Odds to win: 2/1 (2.98)

Paolo Savoldelli
We're not going to mention that Savoldelli is renouned as a doper, and instead do what the rest of the cycling media do and just focus on his descending skills. Skills that are both awe inspiring AND cannot be enhanced by drugs, no less. Thankfully this Giro is all about going UP hills, and there's only one flat time-trial, so Il Falco has no chance whatsoever. Time to take up mountain biking, a la Simoni?
Odds to win: 6/1 (6.8)

Danilo Di Luca
Despite saying on here that he had no chance of winning Liege - Bastogne - Liege, we bet on him anyway and ended up winning a pile of money. Thanks Danilo, you've paid for this website for another year, thus meaning we can slag you off a little bit more. He's on storming form at the moment, but probably won't be really competitive over such a tough course. Lovely team kit though -- goes great with pink.
Odds to win: 6/1 (7)

Gilberto Simoni
When he's not mocking Ivan Basso in internationally-distributed magazines, Simoni is usually putting in astounding performances in the Giro. The lowest he's finished every year since 1999 is third place, apart from 2002 when he was suspended from racing for having cocaine in his hair. Which is hardly fair on old Gibo, since we regularly come home from bars with an assortment of drugs in our hair, and it's never stopped us from riding Pro-Tour events.
Odds to win: 13/2 (7.4)

If you bet on them here, we make money. And so do you, if you know your stuff. Winners always welcome at Betfair!

Tomorrow
We continue our Giro coverage. But it'll be better than today's, because we're just getting warmed up really. Promise.

Teletext gets a bad press, but it really isn't just endless, slowly updating streams of football results and holiday adverts. Sometimes they report on cycling, like this headline about Chris Hoy's new 500m record.


The mind boggles.

We're sorry for having to drag Floyd's Information Minister into this, but WAR calls for desperate measures. Know your enemy well, we'll be issuing tests to everyone in Europe to ensure you're prepared for when they come after YOU.

This site is so going to get shut down as soon as Floyd takes a break from wanking for pennies. Luckily it's going to take a lot more wanking to fund his attack on WADA/USADA/UCI/France, so we should be good until at least the end of the Giro.

Basso's blood bags

An easy day for us, then. We like it when other people do funny things.

A rider who's ridden for Fassa Bortolo, CSC and Discovery Channel is a doper?! Next you'll be telling us Floyd Landis is a cheat too.

Oh, yeah. Thank you Ivan for admitting to being your dog, thereby making all the Floyd Landis stuff we had prepared for this week suddenly seem redundant. If only Mennonites believed in confession as ardently as Catholics do, we could have cycling patched back together in an afternoon.

Tomorrow
Something that isn't an appallingly written opinion piece! Wow!