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After several years of trying to make a breakthrough on the domestic cross-country racing circuit, mountain biker Ross Schnell needed just one event last season to launch his career in a new direction. Schnell’s 2008 win in California's legendary all-mountain race, the Downieville Classic, catapulted him to almost instant widespread fame in both cross-country and downhill circles.

Austrian cyclist Christof Kerschbaum, who was provisionally detained as part of an investigation into the trafficking of doping products, has been released, a judiciary source revealed on Tuesday. The former coach of the Austrian Nordic skiing team, Walter Mayer, was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the case on Monday and is still in custody. A spokesman for prosecutors said all the people suspected of trafficking doping products had been questioned.

Danilo Napolitano (Team Katusha) took a bunch sprint to win Tuesday’s kickoff to the 2009 Settimana Internazionale di Coppi e Bartali–Trofeo UniCredit Banca. Napolitano took the 81.2km stage 1a in Riccione in 1:58, trailed by Marko Kump (Adria Mobile) and Enrico Rossi (Ceramica Flaminia), who finished in the same time. In the afternoon’s stage 1b, a team time trial, ISD emerged triumphant, covering the 14.3km course in 17:17. Miche-Silver Cross-Selle Italia was second at 17 seconds with CSF Group Navigare third at 19 seconds.

  San Francisco, Calif. (March 23, 2009) – Organizers of the San Francisco Twilight Criterium are putting out an appeal for additional corporate sponsorship to ensure this year’s race will take place. The widely successful event that was run in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge attracted large crowds and a quality field in its inaugural edition last year. But given the current economic climate, more financial backing is needed to make the Sept. 5 race a reality, said race director Ryan Dawkins of Project Sport, LLC.  

Track powerhouses Britain will be without a host of big names as the four-year cycle towards the London Olympics in 2012 clicks into gear at the world championships in Poland this week. Britain claimed an astonishing seven of the ten track gold medals on offer at the Beijing Olympics last year but will be without three of the stars who, in Beijing, won six golds between them.

Lance Armstrong’s broken right collarbone won’t keep him out of the Tour de France, but being competitive in time for the May 9 start of the Giro d’Italia remains a major question mark.   Whether Armstrong can recover in time to start July’s Tour is not a major concern for Astana team manager Johan Bruyneel, but he’s not so sure about the Giro with the start in Venice just six weeks away.  

2009 Larry H. Miller Tour of Utah is an invitation-only, NRC event. SALT LAKE CITY – March 23, 2009 – Tour of Utah Executive Director Terry McGinnis announced today that the Tour is healthy and expanding this year, adding another stage to an already outstanding line-up. This year, America’s top racers are being invited to compete in what is widely regarded as the toughest stage race on the National Racing Calendar (NRC), featuring more climbing than any other bicycle race in the United States with a prologue, five stages, and 325 miles over six days for a $45,000 prize purse.

It’s official: Tyler Farrar will miss this year’s northern classics. The bad news was confirmed by doctors Sunday, who diagnosed an acromioclavicular (AC) separation in Farrar’s right shoulder resulting from his crash in the 100th Milan-San Remo. “It’s not severe enough to require surgery, nothing is broken,” Farrar told VeloNews by telephone. “It’s not that bad of an injury, it’s just bad enough that you couldn’t race a cobblestone classic. It’s just an inconvenient timing.”

Monumental. The night before a race, the last thing I do before I climb into bed is to prepare my bag for the next day. Each rider has a suitcase and a race bag. The suitcase travels to the finish in the team truck and we carry the race bag, which holds everything we’ll need for the day, in the bus on the way to the start. With everything ready to go, tucked in bed, I look over the race book one last time before closing my eyes.

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The South African/Swiss team of Burry Stander and Christoph Sauser (Songo.info) have won the first two stages and the prologue of this year’s Absa Cape Epic. With an overall time advantage of 6:35, the Songo.info pair will wear the yellow leader jersey for stage 3.

Morgan Chedhomme (Auber 93) won the prologue to the Tour de Normandie on Monday. The 22-year-old Frenchman covered the 5.1km course in Mondeville in 6:20, four seconds faster than Thomas Berkhout (Rabobank) and five better than Frederik Wilman (Joker-Bianchi). His average speed was more than 48 km/h. Tuesday’s second stage takes the 130 riders from Colombelles to Forges-les-Eaux.

Very few people will be talking about the biggest win of Joaquín Sobrino’s career. The Burgos Monumental rider sped to victory in the opening stage of the Vuelta a Castilla y León, but the world’s media were focused on the crash involving Lance Armstrong (Astana) with about 15km to go. The seven-time Tour de France winner went down in a nasty pileup as the peloton was completing its chase of a four-man breakaway and left the race in an ambulance (see main story).

After a relative lull in mid-March, with the European racing schedule dominated by two big races (Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico) and the first classic of the season with Milan-San Remo, the peloton is making up for lost time. There are major races this week in Spain, Belgium and Italy and the women’s World Cup begins in Switzerland. There’s a lot to cover, so let’s jump right in:

Monday to Friday, March 23-27