Your gratuitous Saturday post

Gotta love those Italian podium girls and their unusual smushed noses. (Do women's races have cheesecake guys kissing the daily winners?)

Great to have the Giro launched--it's truly one of our favorite pro races of the year.

Three notes: First, the peloton whined bitterly about today's TTT prologue course, and this supports a widespread theory that pro riders today don't have the Just Riding Along mileage of pro riders in the past. I'm not sure this rises to the level of "strong frat boy figures he wants to be like Lance, jumps on a bike and gets signed by Astana, then grouses about the TTT course at the Giro." I mean, you don't sign to a pro cycling team without putting 20,000 miles in. Still, it's tempting to believe that today's pros don't have the bike handling skills of their forefathers.

Second, Basso. All I can say about this is that it's a bit odd: He smashed the field in the Giro last year, supposedly "clean." And yet sometime between the end of the Giro, and the beginning of the Tour, he had a crisis of confidence that somehow resulted in a sending his blood to Dr. Fuentes? How plausible is that?

Third, Gasparotto who? Huh? Cheeky Leaky Gas fellow jumps at the line and gets the maglia rosa. Will this domestique still have to buy his own drinks into perpetuity? Magic 8-ball says, "Don't count on it." However you get the jersey legally, it's yours forever.

Speaking personally, I think DiLuca is a dick anyway. He just looks like a dick. Sorry, gotta call 'em like you see 'em.