A bit harsh I say... Someone clearly woke up on the wrong side of the bed! Tour de France - Blazin' Saddles: World of their own Eurosport - Thu, 17 Jul 08:04:00 2008 Can things get any worse for Barloworld? Mauricio Soler left the Tour before the mountains, Moises Duenas got busted for EPO and now two more riders have gone crashing out, leaving their team rostrum looking as thin as Frank Schleck's arms. http://d.yimg.com/eur.yimg.com//ng/sp/eurosport/20080717/25/81e3e0ba382b896299454eb3746b9fab.jpg More Stories Saddles archiveEurosport Player: Watch every stage LIVE !!Barometer: Thor Whushovd?Stage 11 in depthStage 12: The virtual mapPlenty more in our Tour de France section In all honesty, Barloworld might as well pack up and go home. It's not as if Robert Hunter or Baden Cooke are ever going to win a sprint now, is it? And who exactly are John-Lee Augustyn, Chris Froome and Giampaolo Cheula?? And talk about identity crisis: the team is sponsored by a South African brand management company (the irony) which specialises in dealing Caterpillar trucks; they are British-registered, Italian-managed, and filled with a hotpotch of South Africans, Italians and the odd Brit for good measure. One of those 'Brits' - Froome - isn't even British; he's Kenyan who has taken a British passport, making him the Kevin Pietersen of cycling if you will. Except Pietersen seems to bring something to his team. Barloworld's caterpillar tracks hit their first snag with the departure of Soler - and with it the team's only realistic chance of glory. The Colombian dominated the mountains last year but failed to ride over any this time around, his crown firmly resting upon Riccardo Ricco's swollen pate. The unfortunate events in stage 11 following Duenas' expulsion gave credence to the expression 'bad luck comes in threes' with first Paolo Longo Borghini fracturing his collarbone in a fall and then Felix Cardenas gashing his leg. Even before the two withdrawals, Duenas had somewhat soured Barloworld's morale, a spokesman summing up the situation with the doleful words: "The team is in a bad mood. We are in shock." On their website, Barloworld went to extraordinary lengths to stress their innocence in the sorry affair. A statement that would have made Pontius Pilate proud said: "It has emerged that some banned medicines that were absolutely not supplied or prescribed by the team doctor were found in Moises Duenas's room." Team manager Claudio Corti, sounding like a headmaster who has just discovered that one of his star pupils has a stash of dirty magazines hidden under his mattress, said: "I've asked the French police to fully investigate the case so that we can fully understand the seriousness of what Moises Duenas has done. He seems to have secretly used banned substances, hiding everything from everybody else in the team." Blazin' Saddles loves the use of the rhetorical devices 'It has emerged' and 'He seems to' but will make no further comment except this: "It appears that some readers are putting into the mouth of Blazin' Saddles words and theories that were categorically not given or even held as his own."
