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Eyewear design is the most protected wing of the building — no pictures allowed.

Australian Cadel Evans has been given scope for a more promising tilt at the Tour de France yellow jersey with a reinforced team for the July 4-26 event. Silence-Lotto on Friday named the two-time runner-up as team leader, with his compatriot Matthew Lloyd joining Belgian Jurgen Van den Broeck and Dutchman Thomas Dekker on duties of helping Evans in the mountain stages. Germany's Sebastian Lang, who has recovered from a crash at the Dauphine Libere stage race last week, is also included.

Europe is the middle of national championship week, with most nations holding their respective time trial races Thursday and Friday ahead of road racing action this weekend. Here’s a wrap-up of the some of the main events: Spain: Contador
Alberto Contador (Astana) confirmed his favorite status for the upcoming Tour de France as he won the Spanish national time trial title Friday in Cantabria in northern Spain.

Annapolis, Md. – Team Type 1 rolled onto the Annapolis, Md., City Dock early Friday morning as champions of the eight-person team division of the Race Across America (RAAM). The athletes on Team Type 1 – all of whom have Type 1 diabetes – won the non-stop, transcontinental race in record time. They completed the 3,021-mile (4,861 km) distance in five days, nine hours and five minutes after starting Saturday afternoon in Oceanside, Calif.

Former world road champion Zinaida Stahurskaia was killed Thursday in a training accident after being hit by a car. She was 38. Officials from the Interior ministry in Belorussia confirmed her death Friday. Stahurskaia won the 2000 world title and the 2002 women’s Tour de France, but saw her legacy tainted when she served a two-year racing ban in 2006.

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PRESS RELEASE

The Utah-based Monavie-Cannondale professional mountain bike team is prepping for a busy July racing schedule chock-full of single- and multi-day cross-country races. Topping the list is USA Cycling's marathon national championships on July 4, the June 28-July 4 BC Bike Race and Colorado's July 5-10 Breck Epic. "This is busy season for us," said team manager Matt Ohran. "Epic racing around the world is our team's tagline, and we have to live up to that."

A short-term agreement between the UCI and USA Cycling has made room for Team BMC, the only American UCI-registered Pro Continental team, to field full squads at national-level stage races for the remainder of the season. The Swiss-American team will now be allowed to field a full team at the Fitchburg-Longsjo Classic, the Cascade Classic, the Tour of Elk Grove and the Tour of Utah. All are part of USA Cycling’s National Racing Calendar series.

“Press Camp” is a new event for the cycling industry. Positioned somewhere between Interbike and the elaborate, expensive, private media launches by the biggest brands in cycling, it’s an intimate affair designed to give the small- to medium-sized players in the industry some one-on-one time with reporters. Almost twenty brands have convened in Sun Valley, Idaho, and gathered about the same number of editors for two days of focused meetings, product introductions, and demos. Look for reports to trickle out over the next week or so as we gather the stories and bring them to you.

The Sho Air-Specialized U.S. Cup East/West Shootout race, held on the final day of the Interbike trade show in Las Vegas, will not see a change in its September 26 date. The news comes after series organizers attempted to shift the race date to the afternoon of Tuesday, September 22. The proposed date change was meant to see the event, which is also the USA Cycling Pro Cross-country Tour (ProXCT) finals, run in conjunction with the final day of the popular Outdoor Demo at Bootleg Canyon.

Carson, Calif. – Reigning United States criterium champion Rahsaan Bahati won't be the only star doing the pedaling at the Ultimate Pro-Tour Cycling Experience camp presented by Bahati Racing and Cannondale in mid-July in Aliso Viejo, Calif.   Daytime Emmy Award-winning actor Shemar Moore will meet camp participants when they participate in his charity ride to benefit the MS Society during the four-day cycling training camp. Moore plays Special Agent Derek Morgan in the CBS hit series, “Criminal Minds.”  

Liguigas is betting on youth for the Tour de France overall, with improving youngsters Roman Kreuziger and Vicenzo Nibali selected to head the Italian team’s hopes. With star rider Ivan Basso skipping the Tour to focus on the Vuelta a España later on this season, Kreuziger and Nibali will be aiming to slot into the top 10 overall.

The USA Cycling Masters Road National Championships is headed to Louisville, Kentucky, June 28 – July 4 with nearly 1,000 riders age 30 and above already registered to duke it out for national titles. Louisville welcomes the event for the second year in a row with a full seven days of competition in the road race, individual time trial, tandem time trial and criterium events.

The Tour of Utah (August 18-23) will feature at least eight professional teams this year, including: BMC Racing; Garmin-Slipstream, OUCH-Maxxis, Bissell, Team Type 1, Land Rover-ORBEA, Fly V Australia, and Colavita-Sutter Home. In addition, eight amateur teams are confirmed: Trek/Livestrong, Cal Giant, Bobs, Rio Grande, Waste Management, Ciclismo Racing, ZteaM Cycling, and Team RideClean.

2009 Tour of Utah stages:

Team Type 1, Bissell, Colavita-Sutter Home and Kelly Benefit Strategies are the latest team to be confirmed for the 2009 Tour of Missouri in early September. The teams will join most of the best known domestic and ProTour squads at the Missouri race, including Astana, Garmin-Slipstream, Columbia-Highroad, BMC, Saxo Bank, Cervelo TestTeam and OUCH-Maxxis.  

Chris Horner won’t be starting the Tour de France after he was overlooked as part of the nine-man squad revealed Wednesday by Astana. The veteran Horner crashed out of the Giro d’Italia in May and was hoping to be back in top shape to earn a Tour slot, but he was not awarded one of the nine spots on the loaded Astana team. Another surprise name missing from roster was reliable Spanish workhorse Benjamin Noval, a veteran of Tour-winning campaigns of Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador.

Press Release

Reigning French national champion, Jeannie Longo races at the 1980 world championship road race. Longo will defend her national road title on Saturday. If successful, it will be her 16th.

At 50, Jeannie Longo is showing no sign of slowing down as she won her 56th national champion’s jersey, successfully defending her French national time trial title in Saint-Brieuc on Thursday. The Grenoble native easily defeated a strong field of challengers, covering a 23.5-kilometer course in 33:42, some 33 seconds faster than second-placed Edwige Pitel. Marina Jaunatre took third, with a time more 59 seconds off of Longo’s.

Gert Steegmans ? the Belgian sprinter who’s refused to sign an anti-doping charter that includes hefty penalties for violations ? has been left off Katusha’s nine-man Tour de France team. Steegmans was put on “non-active” status and not included in the Russian team’s nine-man roster. “All I can say is it’s too bad, I can’t say much more on the topic,” Steegmans told the Belgian daily La Derniere Heure. “I cannot answer anymore questions. I am not even sure I am going to be able to race the Belgian championships (Sunday).”