And speaking of.....

Like many of you perhaps, I spent a portion of this past weekend watching the SuperBowl.  This was actually the first professional football game I saw all year, and by all accounts, I guess I picked a pretty good one to watch.  There is nothing like seeing well-toned athletes perform in the peak of physical fitness.

("I can shit thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis big!")

As I watched the game, I wondered if the NFL battles with doping athletes as much as cycling these days.  But then it occured to me that their plates are probabaly already too full with issues of animal cruelty, sexual assault and nightclub shootings for them to worry about silly things like someone rubbing a little testosterone cream on their ass. 

And speaking of creamy asses, we of course know that doping can be a lot more involved.  Take Ricardo Ricco.  Yep, the self-proclaimed "Cobra" of the peloton, who was busted for doping a couple of years ago and recently made a comeback declaring his newly cleansed state, was reportedly rushed to a hospital in Italy on Sunday in shock after having transfused some of his own blood that he had kept in his fridge for 25 days.  Apprently he feared that the blood was not still healthy.

("The Cobra" is actually dumber than he looks)

Twenty-five days?  If you wouldn't even drink milk that old, I'm guessing injecting blood that was just hanging out in the fridge next to the pickles and mayonaise for that long would probably also be a bad idea.

And speaking of bad ideas, who came up with the new jersey for Team Geox-TMC?

Team Footon has replaced the giant black foot with a giant black shoe which is apparently able to fart from the sole.  I guess you could consider this forward progress?  This is a new frontier for cycling team sponsorship, as the Geox company has elected to depict an actual photograph of their product on the jersey rather than a simple company logo.  Imagine if all the pro teams did this.  Take for example Team RadioShack, who is named for the retail store that has been mass-producing electronics nerds since 1977:

(This is one Pro-jersey that I would actually buy)

And speaking of not-so-hot ideas....I have to say that the podium girls at the Tour of Qatar really leave a lot to be desired...