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Ten days after a horrific crash near the end of the World Cup downhill at Mont-Ste-Anne, Australian downhiller John Waddell remained unconscious in a Québec City hospital. According to a report sent out by Waddell’s ITS-Santa Cruz team director, Derin Stockton, Waddell still needs no outside assistance for his breathing and is in stable condition. “He has been checked out by a few different neurosurgeons, and there are a few different opinions,” wrote Stockton in an e-mail. “One doctor thinks now that it could be up to a month until he wakes up. He could still wake up in the next few days,

Less than three weeks after teammate Tara Llanes broke her foot in a car accident, Giant-Pearl Izumi downhiller Dustin Adams has seen his season put on hold after he was hit by a car during a training ride in Kamloops, British Columbia over the weekend. Adams suffered a broken right wrist and says that the best-case scenario would have him back racing in time for September’s world championships in Switzerland. According to Adams the accident happened when a car ran a stop sign and came into the intersection Adams was riding through. With little time to react, Adams ran into the passenger

Jean-Patrick Nazon (Jean Delatour) and Alessandro Petacchi (Fassa Bortolo) each used their sprinting skills to grab a share of Tour de France glory in Stage 3. Nazon focused on the intermediate sprints to win valuable bonus seconds that put him in yellow, while Petacchi confirmed he is the new dominant sprinter in the peloton after winning his second stage in three days. Winning sprints takes a great deal of power, but it also requires skill and experience. There are other riders with the physiological numbers (power) to match or surpass today’s great sprinters: Mario Cipollini, Erik Zabel,

For everything you learn in a single day of racing in the Tour de France, one of the biggest lessons for a rookie like me has had nothing to do with performance on the bike. It is to do with how you spend your time off it and, most importantly, trying to recover for another day in the saddle in between each stage. Like every other team in the Tour, mine - Quickstep-Davitamon – is equipped with an army of personnel who do their best to make sure your recovery is as swift as possible. But as my roommate Davide Bramati has taught me, there is only so much that others can do for you. In the

It is 8.52 p.m. It is now more than three hours after stage 3 of the Tour de France has been raced, fought out and finally won by Italian Alessandro Petacchi. The pressroom at Saint Dizier – a cavernous sports hall - still has 27 members of the 1000-strong print media furiously typing away. Our pledge to try and not be the last to finish (and, inevitably, be the ones who are later told at the nearest restaurant that “zee keetchun is closed”) is reaching a crisis point. With officials holding to their promise to close the pressroom at 10 p.m., the media around me are either working slower

Regina Scheleicher (Chirio Forno D’asolo) outkicked breakaway companions Tina Mayolo-Pic (Team Sats) and Andrea Bosman (Ondernemers Van Nature-Powerplate/Bik) in the fourth stage of the women’s Giro d’Italia on Tuesday. The three escaped in the final kilometers of the 141.1km stage on the climb from the Via Adriatica gate to the old town of San Vito Chietino. Schleicher launched her sprint in the last 200 meters, neatly passing her rivals. The 141.1km stage, from Frosolone to San Vito Chietino was animated from the start – indeed, the first hour was spent racing at over 40kph. Overall

Editor's note: During our live coverage of Stage2 of the Tour de France, our line editor made the brilliant decisionto include a link asking folks to pass on their good wishes to Tyler Hamiltonof CSC, who was starting that day's stage after breaking his collarbonein the finish-line crash onStage 1. Well a short time and 500 e-mails later, we had to pull thelink out. There are a lot of Tyler fans out there. We've been put all ofthem together and sent them on to Hamilton and his wife and included arandom selection below.Tyler’s Truly ToughEditors,Tyler Hamilton just became my favorite American

Dear VeloNews;After watching a few stages of the Tour de France, I see the teamsriding lots of carbon frames, aluminum/carbon frames and even magnesiumbut it seems like relatively few teams ride Ti frames. Yet, it seems likeas "Joe Consumer" these are being touted as the ultimate frames. So whyaren't the pros riding more Ti?-Andy PasternakReno, NVDear Andy,The short answer is that there are no titanium bikes in the Tour thisyear for sponsorship reasons, i.e., there is no manufacturer providingtitanium bikes to a team. But there is more to it than that. The Lotto riders using titanium

This week’s “What exactly does this have to do with cycling?” column comesto you from 35,000 feet, via the airspace between Denver and Portland Internationalas I travel to Bend, Oregon, to cover the five-day Cascade Classic stagerace.I should have arrived in Portland about now, but instead the Boeing737 that carries me just reached maximum altitude; our flight crew justgave us the green light to enable our electronic devices, the result ofa mechanical problem somewhere along Frontier Airlines’ daily flight schedulethat ended in a two-and-a-half hour delay.Not that I’m complaining.No, I’m

Alessandro Petacchi on his way to his second stage win of the Tour

Armstrong of USA passes through a demonstration of performing arts professionals

Quick Step rider Richard Virenque leading the pack

Gerolsteiner rider Haselbacher of Austria rides to the finish line holding his torn shorts after he crashed

Petacchi of Italy wins....

Another stage

From the Chaos...

Da Cruz (L), Etxebarria (C), Hary (R)

Nazon grabs yellow, Petacchi scores another win

The fans at sign in applaud another of their heroes

Freddie Rodriguez at the start, looking for another sprint finish

Raymond Poulidor, or Poo Poo, as they shout, gets his own car in the caravan

The wheel of choice?

Lance and Simoni smile for the press

Postal Team presentation by Credit Lyonnais

Lots and lots of Al, but where's the Ti?

Sunday’s “avoidable” crash at the end of stage 1 that eliminated Tyler Hamilton and Levi Leipheimer from the Tour de France has once again called into question the competence of race organizers who frequently include highly dangerous finishes at big races. And looking ahead to the stage finales for the rest of this week, it seems certain that there is more trouble in store. One of the most vociferous critics of Tour race director Jean-Marie Leblanc after the high-speed pileup at Meaux was American sprinter Fred Rodriguez of Caldirola-So.Di, who was leading the peloton as it headed into the

There really is no such thing as a “routine” stage of the Tour de France. Following the fireworks of Sunday's first stage, when Levi Leipheimer and Tyler Hamilton were the primary victims of a dangerous high-speed crash, everyone was hoping just for that. As far as Tour standards are concerned, Monday's 204.5km second stage from La Ferté-sous-Jouarre to Sedan in the French Ardennes region was relatively calm. Long, but surprising hilly in places, the day more or less followed the script of what's expected from a Tour stage in the first week: early attack by French riders that falls just

“Thanks for riding.” – the subject line of an e-mail sent to Tyler Hamilton, who closes his VeloNews diaries with “Thanks for reading,” after the CSC rider started stage 2 of the 2003 Tour with a broken collarbone Athletes are not always sportsmen, a term Webster’s New World College Dictionary defines as “a person who can take loss or defeat without complaint, or victory without gloating, and who treats his opponents with fairness, generosity, courtesy, etc.” Indeed, the sports page is starting to look less like a chronicle of inspirational achievement and more like a police blotter. Los

1. Baden Cooke (Aus), FDJeux.com, at 5:06:332. Jean-Patrick Nazon (F), Jean Delatour, at 00:003. Jaan Kirsipuu (Est), Ag2R Prevoyance, at 00:004. Erik Zabel (G), Telekom, at 00:005. Thor Hushovd (Nor), Credit Agricole, at 00:006. Robbie Mc Ewen (Aus), Lotto-Domo, at 00:007. Paolo Bettini (I), Quick Step-Davitamon, at 00:008. Stuart O'Grady (Aus), Credit Agricole, at 00:009. Fred Rodriguez (USA), Caldirola, at 00:0010. Mikel Artetxe (Sp), Euskaltel-Euskadi, at 00:0011. Oscar Freire (Sp), Rabobank, at 00:0012. Gerrit Glomser (A), Saeco, at 00:0013. Luca Paolini (I), Quick Step-Davitamon, at

"We have met the enemy and he is us.” The quote sounds like something from antiquity, perhaps a comment by a great general. It is actually a line from from Walt Kelly, the cartoonist who created “Pogo,” and first appeared in a poster for Earth Day in 1970. I use it here in reference to Canadian cycling and what I observed during our recent Tim Horton National Road Championships at Hamilton on the world’s course. We seem to be our own worst enemy. Coming from a road-racing background, educated in the sport by French, Belgian and Italian coaches and managers, and having raced with and managed

"We have met the enemy and he is us.” The quote sounds like something from antiquity, perhaps a comment by a great general. It is actually a line from from Walt Kelly, the cartoonist who created “Pogo,” and first appeared in a poster for Earth Day in 1970. I use it here in reference to Canadian cycling and what I observed during our recent Tim Horton National Road Championships at Hamilton on the world’s course. We seem to be our own worst enemy. Coming from a road-racing background, educated in the sport by French, Belgian and Italian coaches and managers, and having raced with and managed

Tyler Hamilton plans to continue in the Tour de France after fighting off the pain of a broken collarbone to finish the second stage of the race Monday. Hamilton, who sustained the injury in a mass crash at the end of Sunday's first stage, finished in 100th place in the same time as winner Baden Cooke (fdjeux). "It hurt all day long, but the most important thing was that I made it to the finish. This morning I didn't think I'd be able to last for 10 kilometers," the CSC rider said. "I felt a dull ache, and it hurt on the bumpier sections. Fortunately the way the race went was perfect

Once again there was drama on the undulating rural roads of the Tour de France today. And, again, it involved the VeloNews car. It also, once again, involved a policeman (okay, two). And, like yesterday, it again happened with our destination in sight – well almost. After zigzagging through the publicity caravan with the “25km to go” banner 100m behind us, I muttered I was pleased that we would reach the press room two hours ahead of the race – on this particular day a must with all three of us with much copy to write. With VeloNews magazine on deadline, John Wilcockson, Andy Hood and I all

Sharp eyes may have spotted Lance and the boys sporting new Giro helmets during these first few days of the Tour. We contacted Giro regarding the new lids and got this response from spokesman Eric Richter: “Lance has been testing this helmet in his lead-up to the Tour, and he has already given us important, positive feedback,” Richter said. “The testing will continue at the Tour, and we'll now look forward to getting feedback from all of our teams as they grind out the miles on the way to Paris," he noted. "It should be interesting! And we'll be happy to keep you posted on the progress.”

I guess the anti-American sentiment of French roads finally came to a head, erasing the top-10-finish dreams of Tyler Hamilton and Levi Leipheimer in the Tour’s infamous and dangerous first week. I, of all people, can feel for Tyler and Levi, although I was never a top-10 contender like they were. Tyler has had some good wins, and should be proud of his season no matter what he does the rest of the year. Levi, however, risked everything to bring his form to a head for the Tour, and had it all taken away in an instant. It's funny, because they probably haven't been in a crash all year; I

It is pretty difficult to look like a tough guy wearing skin-tight Lycra and clicking around in carbon fiber shoes, but Stage 2 of the 2003 Tour de France should prove to anyone that professional cyclists are some of the toughest competitors in the world. And, right now, the winner of cycling’s Tough Guy Contest has to be Tyler Hamilton, for riding a 204.5-kilometer Tour de France stage with a cracked collarbone. Collarbone injuries don’t necessarily inhibit your ability to pedal a bicycle, and many cyclists continue to ride on indoor trainers during their recoveries. Your ability to ride a

Nicole Braendli (Prato Marathon Bike) and Edita Pucinskaite (Michele Fanini) broke away from the bunch and fought their way through terrible weather to finish one-two in the third stage of the women’s Giro d’Italia on Monday. Braendli took the stage win, while Pucinskaite took the pink jersey of overall leader away from Rasa Polikieviciute (Team 2002 Aurora Rsm). "It is a dream come true," said the new race leader. The 84.2km third stage from Monteroduni to Castelpizzuto had three mountain-points primes, but the race was characterized primarily by terrible weather. When the riders

The Postal train

Armstrong and the ONCE boys

Jean Delatour's Frederic Finot (L) and Credit Agricole's Lilian Jegou (R) during a nearly 200km breakaway

Finot tries his luck alone

Caught 2.5km from the line, Finot is consoled by his family after the finish

Wilcockson (r) trying to look busy; Guinness (l) thinking of the buffet

A little early morning cafe for fans

Cooke and Nazon react to the sprint finish

The calm before the storm

French road hog

A mannekin celebrates the Tour from a window

The officials have a very nice ride in this fleet of Lancias

Podium staff at the Tour.

Rider supplies at the start from Aquarel

Riis is mobbed by the press as he explains Hamilton will start

All of you want to race here, don't you?

Lotto gives chase

Good morning, and... uhhh watch the shoulder, okay?

Lotto gives chase

Jegou and Finot

Finot goes on his own

Rasa and Jolanta Polikeviciute are laying down the law at the 2003 women’s Giro d'Italia. Their adversaries are surrendering to the twins; the two Lithuanians, along with their countrywoman, Edita Pucinskaite swept the first three positions on the tour’s opening stage and sit comfortably atop general classification. The first stage of the Giro d'Italia started in Grumo Nevano, seen off by a large group of spectators, and it concluded 119 kilometers later in Guardia Sanframondi, in the province of Benevento. Rasa attacked 10 km from the line, on the second ascent from Castelvenere to

Editor's Note: Because the major crash at the end of this stage took place within the final kilometer, all 198 riders in the peloton were awarded the same finishing time. No riders had been dropped by the field prior to reaching site of the crash, about 600 meters from the line.1. Alessandro Petacchi (I), Fassa Bortolo, 3:44:332. Robbie Mc Ewen (Aus), Lotto-Domo, at 00:003. Erik Zabel (G), Telekom, at 00:004. Paolo Bettini (I), Quick Step-Davitamon, at 00:005. Baden Cooke (Aus), FDJeux.com, at 00:006. Thor Hushovd (Nor), Credit Agricole, at 00:007. Oscar Freire (Sp), Rabobank, at 00:008. Luca

This was not a good day at the Tour de France. In fact, it was a downright dark day for Americans competing in the centenary Tour and one that even angered eventual stage winner Alessandro Petacchi, who said a massive pile-up in the closing meters of the 168-kilometer stage from Saint Denis to Meaux was the fault of unthinking organizers. No matter who is at fault, the bottom line is that both Tyler Hamilton and Levi Leipheimer are probably out of the 2003 Tour de France, while four-time defending champion Lance Armstrong and teammate George Hincapie also went down in the field-splitting