Honestly, we are still struggling with the legacy of PEDs in cycling: we had the controversy of Fabian and the alleged motor-in-the-frame, we've only just stopped laughing about the Team Sky skin-suits (jealous comments from certain French non-Tour-winning teams saying the new fabric gave a 25 second advantage, yeah, right!), and now a blatant example of cheating has slipped under the radar.
Fabio "Ugly Boy" Aru has admitted - admitted! Has he no shame? - that he has undergone surgery to enhance his performance.
Outrageous!
Team Sky members must be quivering in their bib-shorts this morning, wondering if they will be forced to undergo surgery in order to make a not-exactly-marginal gain. (that is a JOKE.)
Anyone with the tiniest bit of a snuffle, or any rider who regularly flails his way up a hill with mouth a-gape will no doubt be looking this up on the internet to see if it could benefit them.
What has he done?
He's had his nose enlarged. (mutters of "as if it wasn't large enough to start with...") Well, to be accurate, in January this year, he had some of the inner workings of his nose removed to allow more air in.
Isn't that cheating? How far is that from "oh, if my legs were longer I would have a more efficient pedal stroke so I'll have both legs surgically broken and pins inserted to make them 1.25cms longer" or something of that type?
Will we see members of the peloton turning to surgery to give themselves the perfect physical form?
What are the UCI going to say about that - you can't add a wing or a hump to a skinsuit, but you can have your nose enlarged?
And the most important and soul-searching question of all: while the surgeons were fiddling about with his nose, could they not have made him a bit less ugly?
