I’m not sure it’s a good sign that when I read this:

“At this point, maybe it should just name itself the Operación Puerto squad, but the new Tinkoff Credit Systems team looks likely to sign a top crop of riders, many of whom were named in the Spanish doping investigation.”

…my first instinct was to snicker. Okay, so it was the kind of derisive snicker that says, “Oh, if I couldn’t laugh about this, I’d cry,” but still.

It appears that Tyler Hamilton, Jan Ullrich & Francisco Mancebo are all linked to the Tinkoff team as either being already signed or being wooed by them. I guess it could be that they’re getting some cheap talent, and that they’re not likely to re-offend anytime soon (assuming any of them were guilty of anything in the first place). As my mother said after a local restaurant was shut down for a month due to salmonella poisoning, they might be the safest bets right now.

Then again, maybe not. And that just leaves me with my derisive snicker, fading slowly into tears.