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Dear Readers, I’ve discovered the ultimate in compatibility of shifting components: Sturmey-Archer 3-speed shifters and hubs work perfectly with Campagnolo, Shimano or SRAM 9-, 10-, or 11-speed drivetrains. What a sweet deal! Now you can avoid all of those flashy colorful bikes and get top performance with a nice, practical black bike with steel upright handlebars. Or you can simplify your flashy lightweight modern bike with a practical, three-position lever.

Lance Armstrong’s coach says the seven-time Tour de France winner is paying extra attention to his sprint as he prepares for his return to top-level racing following his broken collarbone. Armstrong is working on his top-end speed with weights in the gym and on the stationary trainer, coach Chris Carmichael told LanceNews.com, a new Competitor Group Web site launched Wednesday, April 1. Short, intense sprint workouts on the trainer should pay dividends later in the season, he said.

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Rudy Pevenage – the former Telekom sport director who’s now behind the wheel at Rock Racing – suggested there was more than one large-scale doping ring operating in Europe when the Operación Puerto scandal erupted in May 2006. Peverage -- who tutored 1997 Tour de France champion Jan Ullrich throughout much of his career – said in an interview with the Basque daily GARA that alleged ringleader Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes wasn’t the only doctor working illicitly with elite athletes.

The U.S.-based Rock Racing team has released a revised roster for the upcoming Volta ao Alentejo, one that does not include U.S. road champion Tyler Hamilton. Hamilton, who recently missed Spain's Vuelta a Castilla y León due to bronchitis, was originally listed as team leader for the Rock squad slated to compete at the Volta ao Alentejo, which begins Wednesday in Portugal. Hamilton was listed as team leader in a roster submitted on March 10. He has since been replaced by Spaniard David Martin.

The May issue of VeloNews features an interview with David Clinger, once one of America's greatest hopes for success in Europe, where he raced with Festina and with Lance Armstrong on U.S. Postal. In recent years, Clinger's career has stalled as he has battled addiction. He is best known for his facial tattoos, which he is now in the process of having removed.

The Italian team of defending champion Danilo Di Luca, LPR, won the opening team time trial in Tuesday’s first stage of the Settimana Lombarda.   The team covered the 18.7km course in 20 minutes, 54 seconds, nipping Katusha by six seconds with the Rabobank continental team, featuring Tejay Van Garderen, stopping the clock for third at 23 seconds back.   LPR sprinter Alessandro Petacchi was first across the line to snag the leader’s jersey.

Austrian cyclist Bernhard Kohl, stripped of third in last year's Tour de France for drugs, faces a maximum five-year prison sentence after admitting Tuesday to blood-doping and other offences. Kohl told a press conference that he had gone to the Viennese laboratory Humanplasma for transfusions with blood supplied by his former manager Stefan Matschiner. "He (Matschiner) supplied me doping products. I did blood-doping three or four times," Kohl said.

Reigning Olympic time trial champion Fabian Cancellara is expected to start Sunday’s Tour of Flanders despite coming off an injury-plagued spring that forced him to forfeit a defense of his title at Milan-San Remo.   Cancellara has suffered a string of illnesses, including an early exit from the Tour of California, and then a shoulder injury that forced him to miss nearly two weeks of training in early March.   Earlier this year, Cancellara said winning the Tour of Flanders was one of his top goals of the season.  

Filippo Pozzato continues on his strong pre-Flanders form, notching victory in the opening stage of the Three Days of De Panne in Belgium.   Pozzato, who won the Prijs Harelbeke on Saturday, out-kicked fellow escapee Frédérick Willems (Liquigas) to win the stage and take the first leader’s jersey in the four-stage, three-day race.   Greg Van Avermaet (Silence-Lotto) won the bunch sprint, some 57 seconds back to take third place.  

It’s crunch time for George Hincapie and his quest to win a northern classic. The 35-year-old enters the most important week of his racing calendar more confident than ever that an elusive trophy from Flanders or Roubaix will soon be his. The Columbia-Highroad rider says he’s feeling “stronger than ever” and has enjoyed one of the best winter preparations of his career, racing in the Tour Down Under for the first time and spending most of January training in California.

Dear Lennard,
I always wondered about hanging my mountain bikes vertically too but not really worried about the shocks but about the hydraulic brakes and what that might do to the lines. Is it fine?
Paul Dear Paul,
That’s a good question. If the bike is hanging vertically with the front wheel up, there would be no problem, because any air bubbles would gravitate toward the lever, which would be where you’d want them. But how about with the rear wheel up?

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Eric Hawkins’ custom motorcycle has a Schwinn Stingray gear shifter and dual Schwinn stems holding its ape hanger bars. The banana seat and the fender are both hollow gas tanks so that the top tube above the engine is free to hold the shifter and look like a Stingray.

Park Tool started in 1956 as Hazel Park Cycle Center, a bike shop on the northern edge of of the Twin Cities, adjacent a park of the same name. Owners Art Engstrom and Howard Hawkins fed themselves through the cold Minnesota winters by sharpening ice skates, and they built their own bike tools. They made the original Park Repair Stand out of old parts, and they patented the clamp’s design. The base that held it steady was a huge artillery shell casing filled with concrete attached to metal clawed chair feet. The “Hazel Park Bicycle Repair Stand Company” was born.