After the omnipresent specter of doping, cycling’s biggest problem is an obvious shortage of Oligarchical Oversight Organizations Whose Names Readily Form Acronyms. While existing OOOWNRFAs such as the UCI, ASO and WADA, control a few important aspects of professional cycling, the sport still lacks a unified body with ultimate authority over who can race and who cannot. Thus, I am unilaterally declaring myself the Peloton Access Restriction Committee, referred to with more brevity by its French acronym, the CRAP.
The findings of the innaugural congress of the CRAP are as follows:
Andreas Klöden may not race in an Astana kit without the rest of his team. It is the decision of this committee that he instead must choose whether the correct Anglicization of his name is with an o (no umlaut) or an oe, and use the resulting moniker as his team name.
Michael Rasmussen may continue to race, but only on pancake flat courses guaranteed to end in a group sprint, or multi-sport events involving some form of competitive eating. At international events and all non-EU border crossings (Mexico, for example) Rasmussen’s shoes must also be smuggled through customs in boxes of artificial hemoglobin.
Danilo DiLuca is henceforth required to race continuously until Alessandro Petacchi suffers a mid-race asthma attack that actually requires the use of a rescue inhaler, or until the Italian Justice System begins to make sense.
Team Relax-Gam may only race the 2007 Vuelta if all their Operation Puerto suspects participate in the event, and agree to donate a pint of blood before every mountain and time trial stage.
Floyd Landis may not compete in the Leadville 100 unless he uses his Praying Landis time trial position. Landis may only leave the aerobars if Lance Armstrong uses the Kids on Bikes keynote address he’s attending instead of Leadville to confess to doping.
The top two finishers in this year’ss Tour de France are hereby suspended from racing until they admit that it is not only possible, but indeed likely, that someone ahead of them at the Tour was cheating. Similarly, until Dario Cioni admits that at least two days of the 07 Tour totally sucked, he shall be considered mentally unfit to start.
Patrick Sinkewitz, Mattias Kessler, Jan Ullrich, Tyler Hamilton, Alexandre Vinokourov, Cristian Moreni, Raimondas Rumsas, Dario Frigo, Roberto Heras and Danilo Hondo may all return to ProTour racing at any time, but only as stokers on tandems piloted by Frank Vandenbroucke.