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Spanish rider Pedro Horrillo (Rabobank) is in a medically-induced coma in a Bergamo hospital Saturday following a horrific crash in which he fell nearly 150 feet into a ravine during the eighth stage of the Giro d’Italia. The 34-year-old crashed about 70km into the 209km stage on the high-speed descent off the Cat. 1 Culmine di San Petro. It’s unclear what caused the crash, but teammates spotted Horrillo’s bike on the road. Evidently, he struck a guardrail and toppled into the deep ravine.

Garmin-Slipstream team officials say it's too soon to say how Christian Vande Velde's crash at the Giro on Monday will affect his training and the rest of his race season. Meanwhile, Vande Velde says the pain has gone from "excruciating" to "manageable." Team doctor Prentice Steffen said Vande Velde broke one rib and received a severe bruise and sprain on his back, as well as a hairline fracture to his pelvic bone.

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For a rider who’s made a name for himself on the track, Bradley Wiggins (Garmin-Slipstream) has been surprising just about everyone when the road turns uphill in the Giro d’Italia. In the opening two climbing stages in the Dolomites, Wiggins has climbed better than ever before, finishing ahead of the likes of Damiano Cunego (Lampre) and Lance Armstrong (Astana).

Columbia-Highroad’s juggernaut at the 2009 Giro d’Italia continued Saturday as Kanstantsin Sivtsov used a bold solo breakaway late in the 208km stage to deliver a stunning solo victory 21 seconds clear of the hungry pack. Columbia almost made it a podium sweep, with Friday’s winner Edvald Boasson Hagen taking his second runner-up spot in three days while Michael Rogers was pipped by race leader Danilo Di Luca (LPR) for third.

The days have been long but fruitful. We have ridden more kilometers in the last week than most cyclists ride in a month, yet the hours in the saddle still seem to be passing quickly. The stages raced are slowly becoming a blur as our travel is incessant and every movement begins to blend together. What highlights the stages and separates them in my memory are our triumphs. It seems that all we have been doing the last week is eating, riding, sitting in the bus and sleeping. And, somehow, it seems we are eating and riding more than we are sitting or sleeping.

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Columbia-Highroad's Linda Villumsen won Friday's prologue at the Tour de l’Aude Féminin, the most prestigious stage race in the world of professional women’s cycling. Villumsen, the Danish national time trial champ, won the 3.9 km prologue through the French town of Gruissan in 4:52.22. American Kristin Armstrong (Cervelo) and Amber Neben (Nürnberger Versicherung) were fourth and sixth, both three seconds behind Villumsen and separated by a fraction of a second. Sandwiched between was Columbia's Ina Teutenberg in fifth.

Don’t take this the wrong way, but there is a lot more to riding bikes than just training for the next race. And while I know that might sound obvious, for me anyway, that simple truth got lost for a little while. During the last year, I’ve been willingly immersed in an exciting new world of power meters, intervals, thresholds and watts. I trained indoors on powder days, bailed on friendly group rides so I could stick to my workout plan, and skipped a few Friday night bacchanals so I’d be fresh for Saturday’s ’cross race.

Press Release Observance of the Equipment Regulations: clarification by the UCI The current UCI Technical Regulations have been in force since 2000. Observance of these regulations did not pose a major problem for several years. However, the UCI has noted that increasingly frequently these regulations are being breached, in particular the Articles of the Regulations on equipment used in time trials (Art. 1.3.023, describing the bicycle frame, and Art. 1.3.024 , describing accessories such as the handlebars, seat post and pedal cranks).

A look at the diet used by some Garmin team pros

USA Cycling mountain bikers shine in Europe

Euser in action at the 2009 Liège-Bastogne-Liège

Garmin-Slipstream’s American rider Lucas Euser was badly injured in a collision with a car during a training ride outside the team’s Spanish base of Girona on Thursday afternoon. Euser, 25, suffered a broken right knee, two broken ribs on his left side and a number of cuts and bruises.

The motorcycles, helicopters and stationary cameras of RAI Television bring you the Giro d’Italia up close — the video taken from right next to the riders and from the air and the long shots from the finish line.

Columbia-Highroad knew its young steed Edvald Boasson Hagen would probably win a stage in his Giro d’Italia debut, they just didn’t expect it so soon. Sport director Ralf Aldag thought Boasson Hagen, who turns 22 on Sunday, would be a factor in breakaways in the second half of the Giro. But just a day after sprinting to second, the tall Norwegian outfoxed a veteran group of five riders to hand Columbia-Highroad another stage victory.

Lawyers for top German cyclist Andreas Klöden on Friday spoke out to reject claims that the former Tour de France runner-up was involved in doping with his former team, T-Mobile. Experts who spent two years investigating the procedures of two Freiburg University Clinic doctors who worked for T-Mobile (formerly Deutsche Telekom) alleged Wednesday that Kloeden doped during the 2006 Tour de France.

Despite the turmoil surrounding the Astana team finances, manager Johan Bruyneel assured VeloNews on Friday that the squad will be at the Tour de France in July. Astana rode with new jerseys Friday that virtually fade the team sponsors from view, a gesture that the team is hoping will trigger a reaction from the Kazakh sponsors.

As the 92nd Giro d’Italia heads into its second week, Lance Armstrong will find himself racing on terrain he knows very well, even though this is the first time he has raced the Italian grand tour. The Texan is still in training mode at the Giro, but knowing many of the road he’ll be racing on through Wednesday should help him in his quest to bid for a stage win later in the race — perhaps as early as next Thursday’s 60.6km time trial along the Cinque Terre coast. The connections with Armstrong are intense and frequent over the next five stages of the Giro.

The sun hasn’t set on Astana yet, but the glow of the team’s sponsors has certainly dimmed. Following a long-running row over the non-payment of the team’s wages, eight of nine riders on the Kazakhstan-sponsored squad started the Giro d’Italia’s seventh stage Friday wearing race jerseys and shorts Friday with the names of the team’s major sponsors virtually faded out. Astana manager Johan Bruyneel said the protest is the team’s way of demonstrating its frustration that Kazakh sponsors are not fulfilling its contract obligations to the team.

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Press Release

Mechanics need the right tools to do their jobs. While of course their trucks are stocked with myriad good bike tools, sometimes they choose to use tools they made themselves. Or they appropriate a tool that was made for a different purpose. And the truck itself is a tool that is critical to doing their job.

Homemade truing stand

The Tour of Atlanta is back in 2009, and has several exciting new stages and courses for all levels of racers. Each stage will be hosted by the city of Alpharetta, just miles away from Atlanta. The TOA begins with a short TT, followed by a Criterium on May 22nd. The next two days will feature two races each day, with exciting courses in the heart of Alpharetta. The last stage will be a road race, and it will truly test the mettle of each rider. Here are some of the great features of the 2009 edition:

Lance Armstrong will target a stage win in the Giro d'Italia after falling off the pace in the overall standings, race leader Danilo Di Luca claimed on Thursday. "You mustn't forget that he stopped competing for three years and fractured his collarbone a month and a half before the race," the Italian said after completing the sixth stage. "I saw the footage of the Alpe di Siusi stage (on Wednesday) on television and he gave everything," Di Luca added. "He's doing his best, he's honoring the Giro. I think he'll focus on a stage victory."

The Rocky Mountain Bicycle Show has opened registration to the entire cycling industry. In keeping with the planned evolution of the show, RMBS/09 will include all areas of the cycling industry while highlighting the custom framebuilders in the Framebuilder’s Showcase. Both an industry and consumer show, RMBS/09 offers the opportunity to display cycling related products, sell them, all for hundreds if not thousands of dollars below most trade show rates.

The Kelly Benefit Strategies pro cycling squad heads east this week to field a double defense of last season’s victories at both the Bank of America Wilmington Grand Prix and Baltimore’s Kelly Cup, part of Bike Jam, Baltimore’s premier cycling event. Both races mark what Jonas Carney describes as the real start of the KBS racing program.