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Moments before the start of stage 5 of the Amgen Tour of California on Thursday morning, Lance Armstrong was waiting to be called to the line in Visalia. He had a moment for a quick conversation about Friday’s upcoming time trial in Solvang. “So, Lance, you’ve got your stolen TT bike back. Will you be using it tomorrow?” “No, that’s too risky. We don’t know what happened to it. So I’ll be riding the replacement.” “Have you tested the new bike yet?”

There’s no better combination in bike racing than sunshine, Lance, Levi … and Mark Cavendish. While America’s two top champions are the favorites with their legions of fans all along the route of this fourth Amgen Tour of California, Columbia-High Road’s Cavendish is fast becoming a crowd favorite.

Price: $245 Sizes: 133mm length Weight: 175 grams Web site: www.fullspeedahead.com The K-Wing Aero Integrated seatpost by FSA was designed with the intention of unifying the aero seat tube standards in the industry. It is highly adjustable with carbon aero spacers and the ability to direct the saddle side to side by up to five degrees. The post is built with a carbon Kevlar composite and stainless steel hardware and weighs just 175 grams.

A steep, 200-meter rising finish at the end of Thursday’s hilly 183km second stage in the Volta ao Algarve looked tailor-made for Damiano Cunego or Alberto Contador. But those big-name riders have bigger fish to fry later this year, which opened the door for Basque sprinter Koldo Fernández to pull the double, taking the stage win and the leader’s jersey. The Euskaltel-Euskadi speedster bolted ahead of Portuguese sprinter Manuel Cardoso (Liberty Seguros) to claim his first win of the year, with Gerard Ciolek (Milram) coming through third.

The French Anti-doping Agency AFLD on Thursday handed German cyclist Stefan Schumacher a two-year ban from racing in France after failing a doping test at the 2008 Tour de France, his lawyer said. The decision issued by the AFLD applies only to events contested on French soil, said Schumacher's attorney Michael Lehner. That ruling, however, may be extended globally if the German cycling federation or the UCI pursue the case. Schumacher said he would fight the ban.

Davide Rebellin (Diquigiovanni) might want to reconsider his decision to retire at the end of this season. The veteran Italian snagged his second stage win of the week at the Ruta del Sol and almost snuck away with the overall in the fourth and final stage, a 168km leg from Torrox Costa to Antequera. Joost Posthuma (Rabobank) finished nine seconds back of the attacking Rebellin with the rest of the front pack to claim a two-second victory over Xavier Tondo (Andalucía-CajaSur) in the five-day race across Spain’s Andalucía region.

Editor's Note: Mark Johnson spent stage 4 of the Amgen Tour of California in a Garmin-Slipstream support car with team director Matt White and mechanic Tom Hopper.

Anti-doping prosecutor Ettore Torri said Thursday that a blood sample found in the laboratory central to the Operación Puerto scandal belongs to Alejandro Valverde. Torri made his claim following a hearing attended by the Spanish rider at the headquarters of the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) in Rome. Upon Valverde’s arrival, the public prosecutor's office in Rome announced its own investigation into his actions.

By taking in more of California’s varied terrain this year, the organizers of the Amgen Tour of California have given the peloton some challenging new courses. But the downside has been the logistics. In order to include the Golden Gate Bridge on Monday, the Sierras on Wednesday and Palomar Mountain for the finale this coming Sunday, long transfers have been inserted between every stage.

In its eighth year, British Columbia’s TransRockies Challenge will debut a three-day solo mountain bike race that will run concurrently with the first three days of the seven-day duo race. Called the TR3, the three-day event includes 150-200 kilometers of racing, and stretches from the TransRockies’ starting line at Panorama Mountain Village to the town of Nipika.

We had the opportunity to review power data from three riders from the 4th stage of the Amgen Tour of California. In addition to Gustav Larsson (Saxo Bank) and Rory Sutherland (OUCH), we also reviewed the download from Liquigas' Kjell Carlstrom. The three filled different roles on Wednesday and their power data shows just what sort of effort each of those jobs requires.

Gustav Larsson

No one was surprised when former NRC champion Laura Van Gilder got the call-up at the start of the Amgen Tour of California’s Women’s Criterium in Santa Rosa on Sunday. What did come as a surprise, though, was that the 44-year-old Pennsylvania-based rider with more than 300 career wins wasn’t wearing the team kit of Juice Plus as expected, but was instead outfitted as a guest rider for the local Sugar CRM team.

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Just how confident is Rabobank that its Dutch phenom will win the Amgen Tour of California’s best young rider’s competition for a third consecutive year? Consider this: the Dutch bank is sponsoring the best young rider’s competition, the leader of which wears an orange and blue near-replica of Rabobank’s team jersey. Asked about the color coordination, the 22-year-old Gesink laughed.