I don’t buy the “fog” story for a second. Here’s what went down at OLN headquarters about 10:30am eastern time Sunday morning. Some OLN executive put this formula into the resident Deep Blue super computer:

OLN Amstel Gold Race programming calculus: [(No Lance Armstrong) * (Top Discovery Channel finisher was Ukrainian Volodymyr Bileka, 47th place and more than 2 minutes off the winning time) * (Discovery Channel’s George Hincapie was sole American finisher, not a factor, and 67th place more than 3 minutes back) * (Danilo Di Luca…who’s that?)]/(It’s not the Tour de France)=

Answer: No more than 8 minutes of coverage (including commercials). Follow 1980s CBS cycling journalism formula: 1 random peloton shot, 1 crash, and the final 30 seconds of the race. Create fake, weather related cover story to account for the missing 82 minutes of planned Amstel Gold footage. Provide Phil Liggett, Paul Sherwen, and Bob Roll with gratuitous amounts of alcohol to keep them quiet.

And in honor of the abbreviated OLN coverage, here’s the post-race comments of disgruntled Rabobank teammates Michael Boogerd and Oscar Freire in haiku form:

Boogerd
Botched Cauberg leadout
Glanced back…torched by Di Luca
I hate you Oscar

Freire
Read the script, biatch
Who’s thrice donned rainbow-striped threads?
Go cry to Breukink

“> 

Redlands Prologue: While the likes of Ben Jacques-Maynes, Eric Wohlberg, and Todd Herriott broke out the aero TT gear, The Tallest Man In Cycling blazed to a fine 10th place finish on his ‘cross bike. In case you’ve been ignoring his ‘cross and mountain bike results for the past several years, this man has a motor.

Man of Letters

While I was strolling through UNC’s Bulls Head bookstore a few days ago, a name on the spine of a book in the new arrivals section caught my eye: Kevin Guilfoile. Sure enough, after checking the author photo and brief bio, it’s the same guy that was in my graduating class from high school (not that I imagined there were doppleganger Kevin Guilfoiles strolling the planet who also happened to be writers). Periodically I catch up on his contributions to McSweeney’s, but Kevin’s really pulled out all the stops with a first novel published by Knopf. Of course, with the publication of this book, Kevin has laid waste to the competition in the CCS class of ‘86 Where-Are-They-Now? arms race. My only hope for retaliation is to not only rekindle my designs on signing a pro contract, but now I’d have to make a podium appearance at USPRO in Philly to boot. Damn you, Kevin. Still, I did plunk down some cash for Cast of Shadows and hope to read it one day once my grad school book learnin’ days have come to a conclusion.