Gossip!

Muppet Babies, Disconjoinment, Risky Zippers, and More!

First, there were Muppet Babies and Scrappy Doo. Miniaturization of our heroes (what, you’re saying Muppets taking Manhattan wasn’t heroic?) continues with National Champion Babies! Double Belgian champ Philippe Gilbert’s son Alan wore his tricolors with pride as the chubbiest baby champion of Belgium. Miss Leea Schleck sported a dress which included a sassy mesh panel in the skirt — sewn from papa Frank’s Luxembourg champion — kit. With Visconti repeating his Italian championship, his baby will surely rock a mini Italian jersey as he did last year.

Now, these babies will travel in a van to solve mysteries: first up, Curious Case of Vladimir Karpets Maybe Shoving Alberto Contador But Probably Not.

Two Schlecks enter, one Schleck leaves. After spending a few days in Trek’s Wisconsin HQ, brothers Schleck actually went their separate ways: Frank to rainy Luxembourg and Andy to Colorado for training, fishing, and Twitter group rides. Was there a tearful farewell scene at the airport? Cue montage set to Eric Carmen’s “All by Myself” of Frandy looking around for each other, happily destroying a car together, showing off matching scars, etc. Solemates disconjoined! Their first step in training for the next Tour de France.

Speaking of Trek HQ, the company’s annual schmoozefest turned into a roast when Twitter pranksters realized all tweets hashtagged #trekworld were displayed on screens all over the event. (Disclosure: yours truly prank twatted with the best of them.) Everything from chocolate milk evangelism to slicing and dicing of Trek-sponsored riders flashed across the LCD. Gary Fisher officially gave this social media hijack four LOLz. Chapeau, #trekworld pranksters!

What top shelf American pro, who’s had a pretty good season, was spotted buying TWO shopping carts full of groceries for himself at Whole Foods the day after Tour of Utah? All his prize moneys are belong to Whole Foods! There was a lot of coconut water in the haul, so his theoretical pro tip to you would be: “Suck on deez coconutz.” (Coincidentally, ToU Stage 3 winner Tejay Van Garderen is another believer in coconut water.)

Karsten Kroon wears Bjorn Borg brand underpants.

The toughest challenge in a time trial isn’t wet tarmac or a tight corner. It’s getting into the skinsuit. Poor Murilo Fischer tweaked his wang while zipping into his. (Let’s spare him the hack “Brazilian wax” joke...) Actually, the toughest thing about a time trial, if you want to get technical, is when you zip your dong and your teammate tweets about it. But come on, Brett Lancaster, pics or it didn’t happen!!

There's no sight in cycling more beautiful than the peloton winding its way through sunfower fields in July, right? Wrong! It's a shame there's no visual evidence of Karsten Kroon and Manuel Quinziato shaving their legs together while singing along to Radiohead. Because teammate bonding like that? So, so beautiful. And it can only happen in a sport for which leg-shaving is de rigueur.

Who cares how many licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Roll Pop. Can you eat a sticky PowerBar in under 2 minutes? Apparently, TT skills correlate to energy bar consumption speed. Fabian Cancellara ate his in under 2. Andy Schleck? No can do. By the way, this is the kind of thing the créme de la créme of professional cycling do in the team bus on the final day of Tour de France.

Het Nieuwsblad declared a Cavendish-Renshaw “divorce” but what really happened? Looking as far back as the Giro, Cav was still fancying roomie Renshaw’s ample ass. But within the first couple days of the Tour, Cav was trying to sneak a pic of new roomie Bernie Eisel’s wounded ass, under the pretense it’s for the “ladies.” Then, there was “Bernie 4 Cav” in a heart chalked on the road. Finally, it became official Renshaw signed to Rabobank for next season. Now, David Millar is having Cav’s baby?!  

This is too much dramz for a gossip column to handle. I’m signing off to go put an ice pack to my head.