O'grady's Foaming Rant is hilarious!!!

It doesn't get any truer than this! spot on & hilarious too

Friday's Foaming Rant: Sports, entertainment and business
By Patrick O’GradyVeloNews editor at large
This report filed June 2, 2006

Liberty Seguros cycling team director Manolo Saiz, arrested on doping charges, was released Wednesday after being questioned by police, the Civil Guard said. - The Associated PressManolo Saiz has found a new sponsor to underwrite his ProTour team, barely a week after insurance giant Liberty Seguros pulled the plug on its $8.5 million-a-year deal. - Andrew Hood, VeloNews
So, Lance Armstrong is innocent and everybody else is guilty. Thank God we finally got that settled. Now we can say to hell with bicycle racing and find a respectable sport to follow, like cockfighting.

photo: Jimmy OlsenBeing a clean cyclist in the 21st-century peloton must feel like being a Quaker among the Crips. Call me crazy, but I think there may be something wrong with our sport if its practitioners - despite years of dope raids, bad press and lost sponsors - are still skulking about with enough dirty money in their pockets to buy a sticky 15 minutes with Paris Hilton and packing Igloo suitcases full of refined corpuscles, ursine growth hormone and gorilla testicles. What the hell is the plan here? Going for the GC in the Tour of the Island of Dr. Moreau, are we?
Maybe. Yahoo Sports' cycling page yesterday sported 14 headlines. All but two involved doping. Our own site today looks like the sports page of The Lancet, or maybe The Daily Planet's police blotter ("Luthor Found With Banned Kryptonite, Vows to Clear Name"). And whenever I write another screed on this scummy topic I feel less like a correspondent and more like a co-defendant.
Following this sport has become something like girl-watching in Orange County. You'd like to think it's all diet and exercise, but you know why the surgeons all drive next year's Mercedes-Benzes.
What's in our future? Cloning? Got bad legs today? Send out You No. 2, he's feeling tip-top, and nobody will be able to tell the difference, not even Dick Pound. Or maybe the directeurs sportif will be able to take a page from Superman's Fortress of Solitude, wherein the Man of Steel's army of replica robots stands lined up like so many mechanical water-carriers awaiting the star's pleasure. Human beings are so last century, don't you agree? You won't see any Giro stages shortened by weather once ASO (Asimov Sports Organization) is running the show. And just think, only three laws to remember, too.
In the meantime, we're stuck here in the present with the flesh-and-blood dopeheads, so we'd better try to make the best of it. Maybe we should begin by reconsidering whether there are any significant differences remaining between "sport" and "entertainment."
I used to have firm if foolish notions about the former. A sport had to have a finish line, or points awarded impartially for specific actions. It demanded a high degree of skill and fitness. And it couldn't be something a fat bastard could do drunk while sitting down.
OLN and ESPN promptly flushed out my headgear in that regard by televising the likes of poker, dominoes and bass fishing. I fully expect that before much longer, one or the other will be treating us to the World Fart-Lighting Competition, presented by Taco Bell, Bud Light and Bic. And before the first commercial break, some smart guy will be busily designing an asbestos asshole that is both indistinguishable from the original equipment and contains a miniature propane tank to give the savvy pooter that little extra something. Damn the rules, doc, there's money to be made! Sure, we may lose a few guys to ignition mishaps, but that's one of the costs of doing business.
Because that's what this noisome crap is all about - business. You can call it sport or entertainment, but if you do it for money, it's business, and you don't have to look much beyond the front page to see how that game is played.
And anyway, who cares? We don't object to doped-up movie stars treating rehab like we might a Starbucks (a quiet place to drink some coffee and take a break). We just smile, shake our heads bemusedly ("These crazy Hollywood types!") and plunk down a ten-spot to see their next inane flick. Why should we give a rat's ass about cycling's drug problem?
So relax. Quit trying to peek behind the curtains and enjoy the show. Speaking of which, there's a new Superman movie due out this summer, and it's just what the doctor ordered for cycling fans desperate for a guy in colorful, tight-fitting garments who's clean as a whistle and can fly.
Of course, he can't, really; not without a whole lot of specialized assistance. But you knew that.