Much news in professional cycling, none of which will ever effect me and my bicycles or anybody that I know.
Good news for Lance, and probably good news for Agent Novitsky in terms of avoiding embarassment. Lance is Too Big To Fail. There are too many people wearing those stupid yellow rubber bands around their arms, too many people who have somehow identified Lance with the cancer death of their loved ones for them to take him down. Someday, when Lance thinks the time is right (with the Kondratiev wave, always data-driven) he'll be governor of Texas. Think that's crazy? One word: Arnold.
Bad news for Alberto Contador, who has been stripped of his victories in the 2010 Tour de France and the 2011 Giro d’Italia, and will be prevented from participating in the 2012 Tour de France. The victory in the 2010 Tour de France goes to second-place Andy Schleck of Luxembourg. Some see that as karma for ChainGate.
Personally, I think Lance is dirty but unindictable - too much time and money passed - and I think Alberto is clean but can't disprove the negative. A zero-tolerance policy doesn't make sense with new testing equipment that can sense microscopic traces.
Bad news for Al Gore, who exclaimed, "I didn't know a winner could be unseated two years later! Damn it. Tipper, honey! Oh, double damn it."
Good news for every second place finisher in a race, who can console themselves with the new implicit title. Used to be that Second Place meant First Loser. Now it means: Second Place (Winner In Waiting). Sample media interview:
Bob Roll: Bradley Wiggins, how does it feel to take Second in the Tour day France?
B.Wiggins: A little disappointing for now, but it's OK, and who knows what the next two years may bring? Boy he was strong in those mountains.
Possibly good news for Newt Gingrich, who seems likely to take second place in the Republican primary. He'll be standing by, with Callista if she stays healthy. Nothing else to do.
Bad news for the gambling houses that set odds and pay off wagers on the Tours. For instance, the people who bet on Andy Schleck in 2010 are winners now, right? The people who bet on Alberto and were paid are losers now, right? Oy.
Good news for finance types who see an aftermarket for insurance products that hedge the risk implicit in paying off wagers on one athlete when it can take two years to determine who really won.
Inevitably, those derivative aftermarket products will be packaged and traded just like other exotic, technical financial instruments. It'll take about eight years for the bubble to peak. When you see Pat McQuaid, president of the International Cycling Union, dumping his paper and getting out of the market, it's time to head for the exits.
But they are selling some newspapers, which is what the Tour de France is all about anyway.
Today's Tour de France Stage 2 (which, of course, is the third event - one prologue and now two stages) illuminated what I think is a key understanding of the Tour De France. 
The Hardy Boys, of course, have already dealt with shady mysteries and blackguards in bicycle racing:
The 
Today's Wall Street Journal contains two stories that either offer to expose the truth, or play the French game and attempt to convey bicycling drama into readership, depending on your place in the sanguine-cynical spectrum. 
The barrage of controversy and selling newspapers (and eyeballs) begins anew. It will provide some excellent, superhuman, and unnatural bicycling; it will show what men and money can do on bicycles; it will fuel bicycle innovation (notably, 
From 
Regional Teams will be eligible from: North Africa, Central Africa, Southern Africa, Central America, South America, China, Eastern Asia, Central Asia, Western Asia, Middle East, Oceana, Russia. Six riders to a team.
Every team chosen for the men's TdF can field a woman's team for the Tour De Femme if they choose to. Other teams may be invited, up to a maximum of 20 teams. Teams may have corporate, government, or NGO sponsors. 
Legend has Alfonsina Morini growing up a tomboy, playing with her brothers and their friends and riding her father's bicycle. When she was 10 her father paid for her own bike by exchanging chickens for it. Romantic accounts say that villagers crossed themselves as she rode past, dressed and behaving more like a boy than a girl. They referred to her as "the Devil in a dress".
Mrs. Strada entered as "Strada, Alfonsin." The absence of a final "o" or "a" on her first name hid whether she was a man or a woman. She was accepted as number 72 and, assuming her to be a man, journalists began writing of Alfonsino. The truth emerged the day before the start and by then it was too late.
The 7th stage, from Foggia to L'Aquila, was 304km long. The southern Italian roads at this time were nearly impassable. They were unpaved, rocky and icy. The mountain pass was so terrible that the riders could not get their bikes through the mire and mess on their own. Almost all the participants were towed part way by motorcycles and cars. Alfonsina suffered terribly on this stage. She fell on a descent and had to ride many more hours on bruised, scraped and swollen knee.
She rode exhibition races throughout Italy, Spain, France, Luxembourg and before Tsar Nicholas II of Russia in Saint Petersburg. In 1937, in Paris, she defeated the French champion, Robin. In 1938 she set the female world record for the hour, covering 32.58km at Longchamp, Paris, a record beaten in 1955 by Tamara Novikova of the Soviet Union.
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