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The 2009 Women’s Prestige Cycling Series resumes next week at the Nature Valley Grand Prix stage race held in Minnesota, June 10 – 14. Following the season opener at Redlands and the Joe Martin Stage Race in Arkansas, Webcor moved into the lead in the Best Young Rider and Team classification, while Team Type 1 stretched its lead in the Individual standings.

Minneapolis, Min., May 29th, 2009 — The Kelly Benefit Strategies Pro Cycling team is auctioning off a "hot lap" in the team car to benefit World Bicycle Relief. The winner of the eBay-based auction, which starts today, will get behind the scenes access to all the action as the KBS pro cycling team races in the 25th Annual TD Bank Philadelphia International Cycling Championship, June 7th.

Katusha's Danilo Napolitano won the first stage of the Tour de Luxembourg on Thursday, winning a field sprint at the end of the 157km race from Luxembourg to Mondorf-les-Bains. Switzerland's Gregory Rast of Astana, the winner of Wednesday's prologue, retained the overall leader's jersey, two seconds ahead of Jonathan Hivert (Skil-Shimano).

The French team Cofidis will continue into the 2010 season, extending the team’s life for at least one more year. Cofidis, which began in 1997, is one of the oldest sponsors in the peloton. The French credit company was considering ending its long-running sponsorship at the end of this season, but decided to back the team for at least one more year. “The adventure continues,” team manager Eric Boyer told AFP.

Alberto Contador returns to competition this weekend for the first time since April to race the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré in France, where he will line up as the pre-race favorite.

After a busy spring, the Spanish climber enjoyed a brief resting period and then recently did some hard efforts during recon missions of some of the key Tour stages in the Alps and Pyrénées.

Oregon’s Pacific Power Mt. Hood Cycling Classic swung into action with the Panorama Point prologue time trial on Wednesday. Warp9bikes.com-Tristar’s Mike Olheiser made the team’s trip from Alabama to the Northwest worthwhile by taking the 3.1-mile race ahead of Paul Mach (Bissell Cycling Team) and Chris Baldwin, who signed with OUCH-Maxxis just in time to race Mt. Hood. Olheiser covered the course with a time of 6:12.63. Mach, meanwhile, nipped Baldwin, clocking in at 6:14.47, a tenth of a second better than Baldwin's 6:14.57.

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Grégory Rast (Astana) carved out his first victory on the 2009 season in Wednesday’s prologue at the 69th Tour of Luxembourg on a technical, 2.7km course in the streets of the capital. Rast – a winner of the Luxembourg tour in 2007 – covered the course in 3 minutes, 48 seconds to claim the opener of the five-day race. Stopping the clock for second was Jonathan Hivert (Skil-Shimano) at two seconds slower with Romain Feillu (Agritubel) third at four seconds adrift.

The mission was simple: cram my Subaru with enough bikes, tubes, wheels and chamois to outfit Astana, and drive 360 rugged miles from Boulder to the other end of Colorado. Spend three days surfing couches, mooching beer and otherwise freeloading my way around Durango's cycling community. Have some laughs, see some old friends and — how could I forget — pin on a race number for the 38th annual Iron Horse Bicycle Classic. Do it all without breaking the bank — or getting dropped.

I’m back. After my last fit session, I rode several times with my new saddle, new pedals and new position. I felt good, but I was still feeling that all-too-familiar burning sensation after about 90 minutes of recovery-pace riding. I was beginning to get really frustrated. I thought that I had plateaued and really wasn’t making any improvements. I decided to take a few weeks off the bike; the decision was partially my own, and partially dictated by my schedule — final exams were coming up and I really had no time to do anything but grade my students’ work.

The Astana team has passed a sort of financial stress test by the UCI, which said Wednesday that the team could continue to hold its ProTour license and compete in upcoming events. Astana secured a bank guarantee in time to meet a deadline of midnight Tuesday. The UCI said Astana could start the Tour of Luxembourg, which begins Wednesday evening with a prologue time trial. "The UCI has verified that Astana has fulfilled the conditions," the organisation said in a statement, one of those conditions being the fulfillment of outstanding sponsorship contracts.

Editor’s note: The Clothesline is new column about clothing, shoes, helmets and other cycling accessories. Perhaps the most personal of gear choices, clothing testing is subjective. Two riders can try the same jersey or helmet and come back with completely different opinions. With that in mind, we will try to get at least two editors sampling a product for a few weeks before reporting back on the fit and features. We hope you find it helpful. If it’s true that no two fingerprints are the same, is it fair to say that no two, um, butts are the same?

After finding great success with the compact road crank design it debuted in the 2002 Tour de France under Ivan Basso, FSA is pushing the concept to the mountain bike market. Carbon and alloy double-ring cranksets for off-road are among the new 2010 offerings from the company with headquarters in Italy, Washington and Taiwan. FSA is also expanding on the Vision line it acquired in 2004, positioning it as a road and triathlon brand with wheels, aerobars and more.

Dear Explainer, By now, we’ve all probably seen the crash that highlighted the final kilometer of this year’s Giro d’Italia. While I was actually hoping for Danilo Di Luca to pull off a miracle win, I am pleased that he didn’t do it by having race leader Denis Menchov crash and lose enough time to lose the Giro.

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When American Taylor Phinney won the under-23 Paris-Roubaix on May 31, it made our decision to feature him on the cover of our July issue appear prophetic. It wasn’t, however, a tough decision to put Phinney on the cover. His elite world pursuit title in March saw the teenage phenom scratch the surface of his seemingly boundless potential.