Chad D. Thomas: If At First You Don't Succeed, Tri Tri Again.

This past Sunday saw the running of the 202nd edition of the Paris-All Rights Reserved By SpecializedⓇ cobbled-together classic, and while World Champion Peter "Grab 'Em In The Biscuits" Sagan may not have won he did astound fans with his exceptional bike-handling skills when he bunny-hopped a fallen Fabian "Spocktopus" Cancellara:

Peter Sagan kept his chances of winning Paris-Roubaix intact by bunny-hopping over a crashing Fabian Cancellara on the Mons-en-Pévèle cobbled sector.

Already 40 seconds down on the lead group, Cancellara and Sagan were pushing hard to connect back up with the group up the road, which formed nearly 100km earlier.

Cancellara, sitting third wheel in his group, slipped on a muddy part of the sector and went down hard, but Sagan, on the Swiss’s wheel, somehow managed to avoid going down and continued his pursuit.

And here's the video:

#ICYMI: Cancellara chute et Sagan l'évite de justesse / Cancellara crashed & Sagan managed to avoid himhttps://t.co/nAaK1HhS7c
— Paris-Roubaix (@Paris_Roubaix) April 10, 2016

Alas, it would appear that Cancellara's cutting-edge new Trek Domane with the flexible headtube was not enough to keep him upright, though reportedly Sagan did appreciate its lateral stiffness and vertical compliance while he was riding over it.

Speaking of bike-handling skills, triathletes don't have any, and it would also appear that some of them are equally bereft of morals:

Davis, who comes from Carlsbad, Calif., and is one of the top triathletes in her age group in the world, had been first out of the water and first off her bike — she was sure of it. Spectators using a mobile phone race app that shows competitors’ relative positions called out encouragement, telling her she was ahead by a comfortable 10 minutes. As she ran, Davis looked out for rivals, asking the age of every woman she passed or who passed her, and encountered none from her age group.

Yet there she was, accepting the medal for second place at the awards ceremony the next day, five minutes behind a Canadian triathlete named Julie Miller who seemed to have materialized from nowhere and somehow won the race.

Yes, apparently Canadian triathlete Julie Miller is cutting the course like a pair of off-brand compression socks cuts off your circulation:

This odd series of events eventually touched off an extraordinary feat of forensic detective work by a group of athletes who were convinced that Miller had committed what they consider the triathlon’s worst possible transgression. They believed she had deliberately cut the course and then lied about it.

Wow, "triathlon's worst possible transgression," really? That's huge, especially when you're talking about a "sport" that looks like this:

They should at least qualify that by calling it "triathlon's worst possible non fashion-related transgression."

Anyway, this "extraordinary feat of forensic detective work" also served as the inspiration for the upcoming television crime drama, "Triathlete Detective Squad: Special Skinsuit Unit," in which a pair of investigators who practically radiate sexual tension relentlessly root out crime wherever it may swim, bike, or run:

Think "True Detective" by way of "Baywatch," with a wardrobe inspired by Cinemax After Dark.

As for the alleged cheater, she blamed 1) jealous competitors; and 2) those pesky timing chips that are always getting lost:

Miller denies it all, in the most emphatic tones. She says that she is the victim of a smear campaign by envious, spiteful athletes who cannot cope with her success and high profile and that the only thing she did wrong, besides winning too often, was to lose her timing chip in a couple of races.

So in other words, yeah, she cheated.

Anyway, it would appear that the world of triathlon is nearly as cutthroat (and dorky) as the high-stakes world of Kickstarter, because remember the "Lumineer" integrated stem/headlight I mentioned last week?

Well here's someone who totally came up with the idea first but forgot about it until now, so he made some scribbles on a napkin and wants $1,000 for it:

I had the idea for the LiteStem in 2013, but because I've been embroiled in law school I didn't have time to pursue it, and I kinda forgot about it. I saw that some other group called Lumineer is trying to make a bicycle stem with an incorporated LED light and remembered my design. I thought, "Hey, these guys are doing this on Kickstarter, why not me?" I realize those guys have their light up here as well, but my design is different in that the LED lamp is vertically adjustable on the fly. So, therefore I think it's more useful.

I dunno, you'd think a lawyer could come up with a better excuse than that--though I suppose I can relate because I fish stuff out of the trash that I invented first all the time too:

(BSNYC Phallo-Drive SL Integrated Slowy-Shifty System)

I can't believe I forgot to patent and manufacture these things! What the hell was I thinking?!? Oh well, coffee cup rings are as good as a trademark, so just send a couple grand to my Kickstarter and we'll call it good.

Lastly, science tells us that Fred "Woo-hoo-hoo-hoo!" speed is 46mph: