PezCycling News breaks my heart today:
Cipollini Implicated
Oh this is fantastic. Procycling reports that Mario Cipollini is the latest rider implicated in the gargantuan Operacion Puerto affair – an investigation that has promised so so much, but has of yet provided oh so few suspensions…none.
Somehow, someone got some info (Thursday edition of La Repubblica) and now “investigators on the case suspect there were links between Cipollini and Eufemiano Fuentes.” Supposedly, Cipo’s alias in Fuentes’ file was Pavarotti.
Of course the links go straight to Mario Cipollini’s career season of 2002, when he won just about everything and then topped it off with his career-defining World Championship win in Zolder.
So how does this work? Say Cipo is found to have doped at Zolder, does that mean that Robbie McEwen gets to wear the Rainbow Jersey for a year…four, five, or six years (whenever this might, if ever, be settled) after the fact? That’s a sweet deal.
Fudge. Only I didn’t say “Fudge”. Time to go suck on the big bar of soap…