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Passing Lake Garda

Petacchi took full advantage of the Domina Vacanze train to launch his own sprint

Petacchi celebrates... but just a little.

Cinque!

This was supposed to be one of those days where we found out whether the 86th Giro d’Italia would continue to be a race or not, depending largely on whether Stefano Garzelli could take a minute or so out of the guy in the pink jersey. But rather than nip away at the lead of Gilberto Simoni, Garzelli – regarded as the superior time trialist of the two – actually lost to the Saeco rider in a 42.5km time trial from Merano to Bolzano. No, the Giro d’Italia is far from over, but it sure took a big step in that direction Sunday. Unlike a Tour de France contest between, say, Lance Armstrong and

World champion Gunn-Rita Dahle led her Merida team to a 1-2-3 finish in the opening round of the women's cross-country World Cup in St Wendel,Germany, while Christophe Sauser (Siemens Mobile Cannondale) surgically dissected the men's field to earn the right to don the blue Series leader jersey. Top North American finishers were Alison Dunlap (Luna) and Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski (RLX-Polo Sport), a distant 12th and 15th respectively. St Wendel, nestled among the rolling hills in the picturesque Saarsland region, just south of the Mosel River, is a regular stop on the World Cup circuit, with 2003

Nurnberger's Judith Arndt wrapped up the Tour de l'Aude, Sunday as Saturn’s Ina Teutenberg put a strong exclamation point on the race after taking the final stage in Limoux on Sunday. Six riders chugged away from the main bunch early in the race and held the lead until three other riders bridged out on the final lap. There were several attacks in a frenetic charge to the line, Saturn's Teutenberg snuck ahead to win her second stage win of the race and the fourth for Team Saturn. It was a positive ending for the team, which also won the overall team competition and saw Lyne Bessette take

World Cups are so easy. They start out like it’s a one-minute race and then they just get faster and faster. The course at St, Wendel was generally dry, with just a few power-sapping, soft, muddy sections. Well for me, some highlights from the race were definitely the pictures of naked chicks taped to the paved climb at about 1km into the race. In addition to the naked chicks, there were also poster of Carmen Electra tapped to the road too. The course also went thru a beer tent which was pretty cool and there were about four parts of the course that had announcers with air horns and

The Navigators’ Glen Mitchell and Suz Weldon (Ashmead College) took the third stage of Montana’s Ecology Classic near Missoula on Sunday. It was a day of racing that saw the scheduled fourth staged cancelled due to severe thunderstorms. Race leaders Burke Swindlehurst (Navigators) and Becky Broeder (Intermountain) held on to their positions as overall race leaders. While Mitchell and Weldon both won on Sunday’s technical, 8.3-mile time trial course, the two riders come from different ends of the spectrum in terms of experience. Mitchell, a two-time New Zealand national road champion,

... then along came Aitor Gonzalez

Another day, another bottle

Simoni did more than minimize the damage...

Is the Termin-Aitor back?

The kiss

The sparkling wine

Backstedt had to wait for the biggies to start...

The power of the jersey...

... and support from the fans, all drove Simoni to excel.

Good design or illegal paraphernalia?

Gunn-Rita Dahle

Sauser wins a battle of attrition

Saeco’s Gilberto Simoni started Saturday’s decisive 14th stage decked out head to toe in pink, his helmet, socks and cycling shorts matching the maglia rosa he obviously has no intention of giving up. Simoni attacked with 5km to go on the steep, 8.8km climb to Alpe de Pampeago high in the Italian mountains to win his second stage in three days and extend his overall lead to 1:19 over second-placed Stefano Garzelli (Vini Caldirola-Sidermec). Simoni once again dropped his rivals on the steepest roads of the Giro d’Italia, and only Garzelli remains close enough to be a threat. Going into

Laurent Brochard (Ag2r) outsprinted Colombian Felix Cardenas (Orbitel) to win the final stage of the Tour of Castilla y Leon on Saturday in a difficult mountain stage in Avila. Francisco Mancebo (iBanesto.com) scored his first victory of the season after finishing seventh at just three seconds back of the winning pair. Mancebo finished tied with teammate Denis Menchov, but gets the win based on stage placements after the pair won as part of the team time trial earlier in the week. The 182km stage featured three Category 1 and one Category 2 climbs, and Kelme’s Oscar Sevilla, still

Editor:In reference to Jed Schneider’s article regarding USA Cycling and possible porn magazine sponsorship, I really don't think it's realistic to think that the porn industry is going to lower itself to that point. Joe Erwin San Fernando is porn's hideawayEditor:Jed Schneider may hold a master's degree in geography from the University of Kansas, which keeps him from getting lost in Flanders, but he's way off on where his porn comes from (see "Tales from the gutter: Mark gets the win!"). San Fernando Valley is the porn capital of the world, not Orange County. Orange County is a

Liza Rachetto (Intermountain) and the Navigators’ Jeff Louder won the second stage of the Montana Ecology Classic Saturday near Missoula, Montana on the demanding and tricky Perma road course. Rachetto’s teammate Becky Broeder and Louder’s fellow Navgator, Burke Swindlehurst, retained their overall leaders’ jerseys. The Perma course is demanding, due in great part to the two Category 3 climbs that are on this 89-kilometer circuit. The course offers a tricky run-in to the finish, which has in years past played a role in breaking the hearts of many would-be stage winners and general

Gilberto Simoni attacks to pad his lead over Stefano Garzelli.

Garzelli and Raimondas Rumsas chase the race leader.

The peloton weaves its way through the Dolomites.

Gonzales chases mountain points.

Riders climb the Alps during the 162km 14th stage

Pack of riders climbing in the Alps

Pack of riders climbing in the Alps

Saeco rider and current leader Gilberto Simoni

Vini Caldirola rider Stefano Garzelli (L) and Lituanian Lampre rider Raimondas Rumsas

Saeco rider and current leader Gilberto Simoni is cheered on as he climbs

Saeco rider and pink jersey holder Gilberto Simoni pushes to the finish line

Friday’s calm after the storm at Monte Zoncolan served up another chance for Alessandro Petacchi (Fassa Bortolo) to strut his stuff. And strut he did in the 149km 13th stage from Pordenone to Marostica. With Mario Cipollini out of the Giro d’Italia with injuries after setting a new record with 42 career stage victories, it was up to Cipo’s heir apparent, Daniele Bennati, to make a run at derailing Petacchi. At just 22, Bennati is going to be very good someday. But Petacchi is already very good, and he proved it by outsprinting the young protégé to win for the fourth time in this year’s

The UCI has cleared the way for Jan Ullrich to race in July’s Tour de France. On Friday, the UCI officially approved the registration of Ullrich’s new team, Bianchi, and awarded the team Top Club status, essentially guaranteeing it a spot in the Tour. Bianchi stepped in after Team Coast was suspended May 9 after not paying riders' salaries. “As a result of this decision, Team Bianchi retains, as of today, all rights of participation to races on the international calendar, and rights in general linked to a Top Club status,” a UCI statement said. A decision on Bianchi’s status wasn’t

“Good evening, sports fans, Biff Barf here in the Biff Barf Sportlight Spotlight, biffin’ ’em up and barfin’ ’em right back atcha! I call ’em the way I see ’em - and if I don’t see ’em, I make ’em up!” – George Carlin as sportscaster Biff Barf in “The 11 O’Clock News” from “FM & AM” After Jayson Blair got popped for writing fiction in the news columns of The New York Times, America’s legendary paper of record, you’re probably wondering whether anything you read these days can be trusted. Well, rest assured, we here at VeloNews go the extra kilometer to make certain that your cycling news is

Race director Jean Marie Leblanc says the door is not completely shut on the prospect of reigning world champion Mario Cipollini riding in the 100th Tour de France. "The decision at the moment is not 100 percent 'no' to Cipollini," Leblanc said at a Tour de France sponsor's dinner near Marostica, where the 13th stage of the Giro d'Italia ended on Friday. Cipollini's Domina Vacanze team was not given one of the four wildcard spots in the sport's showpiece event which were announced on Monday, but Domina president Ernesto Preatoni had tried to persuade Tour organizers to include the team.

Burke Swindlehurst (Navigators) and Becky Broeder (Intermountain Cycling Organization) won the first stage of Montana’s Ecology Center Classic Friday in a race that was cut short after support vehicles ran out of spare wheels. The 100-mile Pintler Road Race stage near Phillipsburg, Montana, about 40 miles southeast of Missoula, included a seven-mile stretch of newly graded gravel road called Rock Creek Road - and 25 wheel changes on that section alone, almost all the result of punctures. The race had been slated to cover Rock Creek Road once more, but after support vehicles for both the

Number Four

Garzelli attacks on the final hill.

Rosina hill

Petacchi gets No. 4

Petacchi celebrates

Simoni still gets the bottle every day.

Jayson Blair joins the VeloNews.com staff.

One more hint that this is not your average bike race.

Will we see rainbows in July, too?

Gilberto Simoni delivered on his promise to be the main protagonist up Monte Zoncolan, winning Thursday’s 12th stage in the epic shootout between the stars to tighten his grip on the overall lead. The Saeco rider attacked with 3km to go from the menacing summit. The Giro’s strongest men were trading shots on the steepest road in Italy and the tifosi were eating it up. Simoni hoped for more, but he finished 34 seconds ahead of pesky Stefano Garzelli (Caldirola-Sidermec) and Francesco Casagrande, who came across third at 39 seconds in arrears. The win consolidates Simoni’s hold on the

Dutch rider Jans Koerts won Thursday's second stage of the Tour of Belgium, but the headlines tomorrow will be Axel Merckx taking the leader's jersey. Landbouwkrediet seemed to have the stage under control, in order to protect the lead of stage 1 winner Tom Steels. But once the race hit a finishing circuit in Knokke, riders began counter-attacking, including runs by Johan Museeuw (Quick Step), Geer Verheyen (Marlux) and Max Van Heeswijk (USPS). Merckx and Koerts finally escaped the grip of the peloton with 8km to go and quickly opened up a 20-second gap. Koerts gets the win, Merckx gets the

I didn’t have a lot to say about anything this week, so I decided to run with the short-attention-span special. No Snowmass to replace TellurideRegarding the fate of the cancelled Telluride World Cup, all the talk at Big Bear was that a Colorado-based promoter was in talks with the UCI and that there was a good chance the event would end up at Snowmass, a ski area near Aspen. Well, we got a call Wednesday morning from the promoter, CycleCyndicate’s Eric Jean, and he said that it just wasn’t going to work out. “We couldn’t make it happen financially,” Jean told me. “We needed about $225,000,

Editor:Last year I went to France to follow the Tour. I was well aware of the history of Mario Cipollini in the Tour, good and bad - but my feeling was that the Tour de France went beyond what was reasonable and into the realm of personal vendetta when spots for additional teams opened up after the 2002 Giro and Cipollini's team was not selected. I enjoyed my trip to the Tour immensely, but in every sprint, I knew that the best was not there, though Cipollini had done what the Tour had demanded, reinventing himself with breakaway wins, courageously traversing mountains, a grand-tour finish

“Life is what happens when you’re making other plans,” John Lennon once said. Words of wisdom, Lennon’s fortune-cookie philosophy, and lately it seems I’ve been experiencing plenty of life - which, I suppose, beats the alternative. Maybe I should stop making other plans. For starters, with mortgage rates dipping to a 40-year low last week, I’ve been actively looking into buying my first place, which means applying for my first home loan - a procedure that has thus far involved countless conversations with various real-estate agents, lenders, sellers, and my mother - who, in my case,

Dear Bob;Do you have any information regarding the procedures and method inwhich athletes are selected by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency drug testing?What is their authority to test? Is the testing method fair and legal asimplemented? What are the ramifications for an athlete who fails to showup for testing?TJColorado Dear TJ;You raise two separate legal questions:1) What are the limits of the authority of the USADA to requiretesting; and2) What are the limits on the USADA or the National GoverningBody (NGB) for enforcing non-compliance, either after a positive test ora failure to comply with

The former site of the Iraq National Olympic Headquarters, complete with its recognizable five rings on the wall outside and a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein inside the walls, stands a charred wreck. It sits near the Canal Expressway in Western Baghdad, filled with a few poor Baghdad residents sifting through the wreckage for something useful to loot. Already, the head of the statue of Saddam that once stood outside had been sawed off and taken away. According to the New York Times, a metal framework used for administering electric shocks to athletes who didn’t perform, was taken to a

Thursday’s elite national road championships in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, saw a continuation of the T-Mobile dominance on the women’s side with Amber Neben leading a 1-2-3 sweep by the women’s national team. In the men’s race, Mike Voight brought home the first-ever elite national road champion’s jersey for the longtime East Coast regional powerhouse Snow Valley team, after an epic day of racing that ended in the rain after five hours in the saddle. The brutal 28-mile course beginning and ending in the Seven Springs ski resort featured a wide variety of climbs, from short, steep power

Italian Fabiana Luperini (Aurora RSM) outkicked Nathalia Boyarskaya of the Russian national team in stage 6 of the Tour de l’Aude Feminin, while Saturn’s Lyne Bessette collected her second leader’s jersey with a little help from her team. Luperini and Boyarskaya got away 76km into the 115km circuit race around Castelnaudary, on the Fanjeaux climb, and since neither was a threat to Bissette, Saturn couldn’t have been happier, according to assistant general manager Giana Roberge. “Riding tempo and looking after Bessette's safety, Ina Teutenberg, Katie Mactier and Manon Jutras spent the

... and leaves Casagrande to ride his own race

Glory days in San Francisco.

Simoni shines

Simoni makes his move...

Belli

Marzio Bruseghin

The day's first escape

The climb all have been dreading

Pantani says he's back; Thursday showed he might be right

Thursday was tough... even on the 'easy' parts.

Pantani showed some of his old form

Garzelli minimized the damage.

Simoni established his supremacy in the mountains.

Simoni managed to make even the steep parts look easy.

Simoni wins.

Simoni celebrates.