Bye Bye Basso

After only 5 months into his recently inked 3-year contract, Italian cycling phenom Ivan Basso has resigned from Team Discovery Channel (partly owned by Lance Armstrong). Basso was signed in November 2006 as the heir apparent to King Lance (he finished 2nd to Lance in 2005 at TDF) with hopes of returning Discovery to the Tour de France podium wearing yellow.

To his credit, Basso appears to have submitted his resignation unilaterally and without "encouragement" from team ownership. Surprising team members and management with the move, Basso reasoned, "I do not want Team Discovery to be distracted by the drug scandal issues that I'll be dealing with in upcoming weeks."

Honorable, sure, but he and a lot of top cyclists (up to 70 by some accounts) have seen drug allegations resurface this week after Spanish police raided a doctor's home last year. Commonly referred to as Operacion Puerto, the Spanish fuzz confiscated a large supply of EPO, growth hormone, steroids, and hundreds of bags of blood with extensive corresponding records and code names from a well-known cycling physician, Dr. Fuentes. Studly cyclists such as German Jan Ullrich were forced into retirement because of their connection to Dr. Fuentes and Basso was cut by his former Team CSC.

So why resign now? Basso's home Italian Olympic Committee is reportedly going to ask for him to submit DNA so that they can compare it to bagged blood from Dr. Fuentes' refrigerator, suspected to be Basso's.

For a cyclist turning 30 this year, a couple year suspension would likely end his two-wheel career.

Another sad story for a sport that needs to clean up its act.