Friday Roundup

News
The NY Times reports that two MLB players, Jay Gibbons of the Orioles and José Guillén who played for the Mariners last season and is now with the Royals, have been suspended for using HGH. The amount of the suspension? A whopping 15 days, and this penalty may be setting precedent for others to come as the highly anticipated Mitchell Report is due to be made public soon.

ESPN writes that trouble for federal prosecutors may be ahead in the case against Barry Bonds and that there may be a problem with Bonds' positive test for steroids:

The test was a private, outside-the-workplace drug screening, and strict protocols were not followed. Bonds' urine sample was mailed by BALCO officials to the Quest Diagnostics lab, which might pose a problem for the government. Typically in the drug testing of athletes, a trained collector of the same gender witnesses the sample being provided, and a paper trail documents the sealing of the sample as well as the place and time of every other human contact with it.

"It is unclear from the indictment how much of the case is based on those tests," said Howard Jacobs, an attorney who has represented high-profile athletes Floyd Landis and Marion Jones in doping cases. "If a lot of it is based on that, I think they have got some serious problems. You're in court with a 'beyond a reasonable doubt' standard in a criminal case. And if you can't definitively link those samples to Bonds and link every step of movement, forget it."

In other news on ESPN Giro champ Danilo DiLuca denies reports that he used an IV between stages of the Giro.

The CyclingNews posts its letter column today and one writer thinks it's crazy to have the same lab test both a riders "A" and "B" samples. You think?

The VeloNews editorializes that a couple of the grand tours may be sacrificing difficulty and suspense to insure PED free events.

The Boulder Report's Joe Lindsey thinks that sometimes his column just about writes itself, and this is more true than even with the Vinokourov case which took a couple of odd turns yesterday. Yes, it's true Joe, you can't make this stuff up, or at least you don't have to.



Blogs
Racejunkie is having a banner week and in this entry he feels poor guys like Floyd Landis are perhaps unduly suffering for crimes that now "retired" hypocrite Alexander Vinokourov will not, even though Vino continues to tilt at those windmills. He also observes DiLuca has taken up another past-time, pink-phone throwing:

Tip: Grip with index finger on the antenna for stabilizing spin.
(Photo: Gazetta.it)

Rant feels that Dr Eufemiano Fuentes sounds unjustifiably unrepentant in his comments bout his former association with cycling.