Why I Dislike Eastern Bloc Countries

How do these guys keep doing this?

Seriously. How does an unknown 19 year old Russian dude bust out of NOWHERE at the Olympics and lap the field a million times then drop back to 3rd to last at Worlds where some unknown Ukranian dude busts out of NOWHERE to throw down and win. Granted they didn't just step on a bike yesterday, but most of the riders, very few of the media and none of the public knows who these guys are, but they are AWESOME at winning a World Championship or some other amazing achievement then no one ever hears from them again. So bizzare.

All I've seen for the World's points race was the results, no reports or pictures, so it's impossible to tell if this guy benefited from a crash, some wierd race condition, 10 years of daily motorpacing in a secret warehouse in the Russian tundra or slack-ass out of competition testing standards... Hmm.. Either way, Juan Llaneras was the only name on the podium I recognized, and he's on the bottom step. First place was Volodymyr Rybin from the Ukraine and second was Ioannis Tamouridis from GREECE. I mean come on, he's from Greece. The greeks haven't done squat in the track racing world since the Olympics, where they magically got much better, but were still middle of the road at best. Now this guy hauls off and beats the best track racers in the world.

Quote from cyclingnews.com: "Favourites will include 2004 Athens Olympic gold medalist Mikhail Ignatiev (Rus), Joan Llaneras (Spa), the gold medalist in the event at the 2000 Olympics and silver medalist at the 2004 Athens games, Juan Curuchet (Arg), the bronze medalist at last year's worlds, and American Colby Pearce (Boulder, Colo.), second overall in the 2004/05 world cup standings.
Lesse, any mention of Vlad the Impaler or the Greek guy? Nope. Where are our favorites? Llaneras was the only even close in third, and of 20 riders Curuchet, Pearce and Ignatev were 12th 13th and 18th respectively.

I'll hold off on further speculation and slander untill I get the full story, but for now let's just say it's f#%!ing wierd.

In other news, big props to this guy for sticking it to the man:
http://www.cnn.com/2005/US/03/24/art.prank.reut/index.html
DT