2008 Teams Announced | Amgen Tour of California

I cannot believe that the organizers have invited (Crack) Rock Racing to participate in the Amgen Tour of California …

This is a team that has hired alleged (and in at least one rider’s case, convicted) dopers like Santiago Botero, Oscar Sevilla, and Tyler Hamilton. This is a team that is actively consorting with a rider that is currently banned from the sport for a doping violation (in Floyd Landis). This is a team that is losing sponsors (HED for sure, and others are rumored) because of these associations.

Ah, but this is also a team that signed on as a “founding sponsor” of the Amgen Tour of California itself … I guess when you buy your way into a race, it wouldn’t really be cool to exclude the team.

But with all the ridicule that Amgen, makers of the most widely abused performance-enhancing drug, has taken for sponsoring a race, why not add a team that seemingly turns a blind eye to doping to the mix as well.

And people wonder why this sport is going to hell in a handbasket.

I know Sager has got at least one compadre on the squad, and there are a lot of other good riders on the team; but Michael Ball reminds me of John Wordin (and the whole Mercury/Viatel fiasco) … and I’ll feel sorry for the rank-and-file riders when the team implodes mid-season.

And I really hope I’m wrong, for their sake.

Donal Óg

It is late last night the dog was speaking of you;
the snipe was speaking of you in her deep marsh.
It is you are the lonely bird through the woods;
and that you may be without a mate until you find me.

You promised me, and you said a lie to me,
that you would be before me where the sheep are flocked;
I gave a whistle and three hundred cries to you,
and I found nothing there but a bleating lamb.

You promised me a thing that was hard for you,
a ship of gold under a silver mast;
twelve towns with a market in all of them,
and a fine white court by the side of the sea.

You promised me a thing that is not possible,
that you would give me gloves of the skin of a fish;
that you would give me shoes of the skin of a bird;
and a suit of the dearest silk in Ireland.

When I go by myself to the Well of Loneliness,
I sit down and I go through my trouble;
when I see the world and do not see my boy,
he that has an amber shade in his hair.

It was on that Sunday I gave my love to you;
the Sunday that is last before Easter Sunday.
And myself on my knees reading the Passion;
and my two eyes giving love to you for ever.

My mother said to me not to be talking with you today,
or tomorrow, or on the Sunday;
it was a bad time she took for telling me that;
it was shutting the door after the house was robbed.

My heart is as black as the blackness of the sloe,
or as the black coal that is on the smith’s forge;
or as the sole of a shoe left in white halls;
it was you that put that darkness over my life.

You have taken the east from me; you have taken the west from me;
you have taken what is before me and what is behind me;
you have taken the moon, you have taken the sun from me;
and my fear is great that you have taken God from me!

  — Isabella Augusta, Lady Gregory (1859 - 1932), Irish dramatist.