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Levi Leipheimer roared to victory in the name of Lance Armstrong a day after the seven-time Tour de France champion crashed out of the Vuelta a Castilla y León in northern Spain.   Leipheimer topped Astana teammate Alberto Contador in a windy, flat 28.2km individual time trial Tuesday by 16 seconds to win in his European season debut.  

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Lance Armstrong will undergo surgery Wednesday to stabilize the collarbone fracture he suffered Monday in a crash during the first stage of Spain’s Vuelta a Castilla y León. Upon returning to the United States Tuesday, Armstrong sought the advice of orthopedic surgeon Douglas Elenz who outlined the risks and benefits of inserting a plate to stabilize his mid-shaft clavicle fracture. X-rays taken in Austin showed that Armstrong’s right clavicle was more seriously damaged than indicated by films taken in a Spanish hospital.

Dear Lennard, I am considering storing my new full suspension bike using a vertical type rack that stores a single bike hanging vertically from the wheel. I was wondering if that could cause any damage to either suspension, front or rear. Does it make sense to hang the bike from the rear wheel? Nir Dear Nir, Hanging it from the front or rear wheel will not hurt it unless either of your shocks leak oil through the upper seals. In that case, hanging it could still be a good thing, because it will alert you to the problem and motivate you to fix it. Lennard

The list of past champions of the Redlands Bicycle Classic reads like a who’s who of American cycling. Thurlow Rogers, who still puts the hurt on SoCal masters and pros, took the inaugural title back in 1985, one year after finishing sixth in the Olympics.

Editor's Note: Rebecca Rusch is competing in South Africa's Absa Cape Epic stage race on a Mixed team with fellow American Matthew Weatherley-White. Rusch, a two-time 24-hour mountain biking world champion, is sharing her daily diaries with VeloNews readers. Absa Cape Epic, Stage 3

The 73km third stage of the Absa Cape Epic presented by adidas took riders from Villiersdorp to Greyton, with 1,976 meters of climbing. The Songo.info team of South African Burry Stander and Swiss rider Christoph Sauser continued their winning streak by again taking top honors.

After several years of trying to make a breakthrough on the domestic cross-country racing circuit, mountain biker Ross Schnell needed just one event last season to launch his career in a new direction. Schnell’s 2008 win in California's legendary all-mountain race, the Downieville Classic, catapulted him to almost instant widespread fame in both cross-country and downhill circles.

Austrian cyclist Christof Kerschbaum, who was provisionally detained as part of an investigation into the trafficking of doping products, has been released, a judiciary source revealed on Tuesday. The former coach of the Austrian Nordic skiing team, Walter Mayer, was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the case on Monday and is still in custody. A spokesman for prosecutors said all the people suspected of trafficking doping products had been questioned.

Danilo Napolitano (Team Katusha) took a bunch sprint to win Tuesday’s kickoff to the 2009 Settimana Internazionale di Coppi e Bartali–Trofeo UniCredit Banca. Napolitano took the 81.2km stage 1a in Riccione in 1:58, trailed by Marko Kump (Adria Mobile) and Enrico Rossi (Ceramica Flaminia), who finished in the same time. In the afternoon’s stage 1b, a team time trial, ISD emerged triumphant, covering the 14.3km course in 17:17. Miche-Silver Cross-Selle Italia was second at 17 seconds with CSF Group Navigare third at 19 seconds.

  San Francisco, Calif. (March 23, 2009) – Organizers of the San Francisco Twilight Criterium are putting out an appeal for additional corporate sponsorship to ensure this year’s race will take place. The widely successful event that was run in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge attracted large crowds and a quality field in its inaugural edition last year. But given the current economic climate, more financial backing is needed to make the Sept. 5 race a reality, said race director Ryan Dawkins of Project Sport, LLC.  

Track powerhouses Britain will be without a host of big names as the four-year cycle towards the London Olympics in 2012 clicks into gear at the world championships in Poland this week. Britain claimed an astonishing seven of the ten track gold medals on offer at the Beijing Olympics last year but will be without three of the stars who, in Beijing, won six golds between them.

Lance Armstrong’s broken right collarbone won’t keep him out of the Tour de France, but being competitive in time for the May 9 start of the Giro d’Italia remains a major question mark.   Whether Armstrong can recover in time to start July’s Tour is not a major concern for Astana team manager Johan Bruyneel, but he’s not so sure about the Giro with the start in Venice just six weeks away.  

2009 Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah is an invitation-only, NRC event. SALT LAKE CITY – March 23, 2009 – Tour of Utah Executive Director Terry McGinnis announced today that the Tour is healthy and expanding this year, adding another stage to an already outstanding line-up. This year, America’s top racers are being invited to compete in what is widely regarded as the toughest stage race on the National Racing Calendar (NRC), featuring more climbing than any other bicycle race in the United States with a prologue, five stages, and 325 miles over six days for a $45,000 prize purse.

It’s official: Tyler Farrar will miss this year’s northern classics. The bad news was confirmed by doctors Sunday, who diagnosed an acromioclavicular (AC) separation in Farrar’s right shoulder resulting from his crash in the 100th Milan-San Remo. “It’s not severe enough to require surgery, nothing is broken,” Farrar told VeloNews by telephone. “It’s not that bad of an injury, it’s just bad enough that you couldn’t race a cobblestone classic. It’s just an inconvenient timing.”

Monumental. The night before a race, the last thing I do before I climb into bed is to prepare my bag for the next day. Each rider has a suitcase and a race bag. The suitcase travels to the finish in the team truck and we carry the race bag, which holds everything we’ll need for the day, in the bus on the way to the start. With everything ready to go, tucked in bed, I look over the race book one last time before closing my eyes.