[gura]

I think it's easy to forgive cyclists for getting any advantage they can. LeBron cramped up like a 13 year old with her first menstrual cycle in a 60 minute game because the air conditioning broke.

He needs to go ride 4+hrs a day over 21 days with no timeouts, halftimes and just a couple of rest days.

"You have no idea what the Tour de France is", Henri said. "It's a Calvary. Worse than that, because the road to the Cross has only 14 stations and ours has 15. We suffer from the start to the end. You want to know how we keep going? Here..." He pulled a phial from his bag. "That's cocaine, for our eyes. This is chloroform, for our gums."

"This", Ville said, emptying his shoulder bag "is liniment to put warmth back into our knees."

"And pills. Do you want to see pills? Have a look, here are the pills." Each pulled out three boxes.

"The truth is", Francis said, "that we keep going on dynamite."

[Baynative]

Add to that all the times riders have hit the payment this year and it makes for a much tougher sport than people realize. I'd like to see some of the whiners in basketball or soccer try bumping shoulders and trading paint in a bunch sprint at 45 mph.