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Italian cyclist Emanuele Sella has admitted taking the banned blood booster EPO. After a hearing before the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) on Friday in Rome, in which he and compatriot Marta Bastianelli were banned from all competitions, Sella issued a statement in which he admitted having had access “to an unauthorized drug” and “clarified the context” in which he had received it. "I have got a weight off my shoulders. I'm conscious of what I did and as a result I decided to cooperate," Sella told Gazzetta dello Sport after the hearing.

France's Jeannie Longo will write another considerable chapter in cycling's history books this Sunday when she becomes only the third woman to compete in seven Olympic Games. Longo, the 1996 Olympic champion, who has 13 world titles, is set to follow in the footsteps of Jamaican track star Merlene Ottey and Swedish fencer Kerstin Palm. Come the 126.4km women's road race on Sunday, the wily Longo will want to be treated as just another rider with hopes of stepping on to the Olympic podium.

Bob,
It is difficult to express my outrage after verifying the facts of the Autumn Growhowski story (See “When justice fails”). I find the collision (it should never be called an "accident") terrifying, and the resulting lack of justice simply unacceptable. How can the lawyers in this case sleep at night? In six months, a killer will be free to drive, drink and perhaps kill again...and this is justice? How could any so-called civilized society act in this manner?
M. M.

Things will be very different for Jason McCartney as he lines up Saturday in what will be his second crack at an Olympic medal. Four years ago, after winning the qualifying race to make the U.S. Olympic team for the Athens 2004 Olympic Games, the Iowan was in sweltering Athens as a wide-eyed domestic pro lining up against the likes of Paolo Bettini. Flash forward four years and McCartney, now 34, will be breaking a sweat again in the heat, humidity and smog of Beijing. The thrill of being at the Olympics is still there, but long gone is the sense that he doesn’t belong.

Price: $39.95 Available from: www.richardsachs.com/dvd.html "Imperfection is Perfection" is a movie about Connecticut frame builder Richard Sachs and his bicycles, filmed by Des Horsfield. Horsfield's film takes an intimate look into the life and mind of the bicycle frame builder as Sachs talks about why he does what he does. A trailer can be viewed at Des Horsfield Productions.

Bicycle Pedals Recalled by Look Cycle; Pedals Can Break Causing Cyclists to Fall WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. Name of Product: KéO Bicycle Pedals Units: About 80,000 (40,000 pairs) Distributor: Look Cycle USA, of San Jose, Calif. Hazard: The steel axle inside the pedal can break, posing a fall hazard to cyclists.

ALGERIA (1)
? Hichem Chabane (Konica Minolta / Bizhub)

ARGENTINA (3)
? Alejandro Alberto Borrajo (Colavita / Sutter Home)
? Juan José Haedo (CSC Saxo Bank)
? Matias Medici (Scott-Marcondes Cesar-Sao Jose dos Campos)

AUSTRALIA (5)
? Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto)
? Simon Gerrans (Crédit Agricole)
? Matthew Lloyd (Silence-Lotto)
? Stuart O'Grady (CSC-Saxo Bank)
? Michael Rogers (Columbia)

AUSTRIA (2)
? Christian Pfannber

From selling bikes to helping design the Olympic road course, Todd McKean is China’s main man when it comes to cycling. In Part 1 of our interview, McKean discussed the upcoming Olympic Games. In this segment he talks grassroots cycling, riding in Beijing and Cycling’s future in China.

The racing hasn’t yet begun at the Laoshan Velodrome, site of the Beijing Olympics’ track events, but the USA track team has already been jumped. No, it wasn’t a team of big-legged brawny sprinters that pounced on Team America’s trackies, or a gang of cup-toting drug sniffs. It wasn’t the Germans, Russians or Dutch. It was a horde of camera toting news-hungry media men, eager for a story — any story. And on a slow news day, word travels fast.

Alison Powers (Colavita-Sutter Home) and Jonathan Chodroff (CRCA-Empire Cycling Team) won the national elite time trial championships in Irvine, California, on Wednesday. Elite Women Powers said she fulfilled a goal she set seven months ago by besting second-place finisher Mara Abbott (Team Columbia) by 1 minute, 39 seconds. Chrissy Ruiter (ValueAct Capital) came in third at 51:05.50.

Age: 25 (Watson Lake, Yukon)

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Component giant SRAM has a new minority owner: Lehman Brothers Merchant Banking. The fund manager is making an undisclosed investment in SRAM, which will retain its senior management, the company announced Thursday. SRAM, which markets products under the SRAM, RockShox, Avid, Truvativ, and Zipp brand names, expects 2008 revenues to approach $500 million. “We have now achieved scale where we believe it is prudent to add an experienced institutional investor to our shareholder base," Stan Day, SRAM's chief executive.

Riders have been checking out the course for the 2008 Olympic road race in Beijing. Photographer Casey Gibson has been, too.

Team Columbia is sending 18 riders from twelve different nations to the Olympic games. While the riders will wear uniforms representing their home nation, it's still a remarkable turnout for the U.S.-based team. “To have so many riders representing their countries at the Olympics, a showcase event, is truly exceptional for Team Columbia. It’s actually made it a little tricky finding riders for all the usual competitions,” team owner Bob Stapleton said. The teams riders will race in the mens and womens road races and on the track.

The stage profile for the 245.4km Great Wall Olympic road course — which the elite men face on Saturday — looks like a comb placed on its end with seven sharp teeth pointing straight up. The section of the comb’s handle represents the flat 78.8 km tour of Beijing’s landmarks, including the Temple of Heaven, the Great Hall of the People, Tiananmen Square and the National Stadium.

Four American cyclists who wore filter masks because of pollution concerns when arriving in Beijing apologized Wednesday to Olympic organizers, U.S. Olympic Committee chief executive Jim Scherr said. Mike Friedman, Bobby Lea, Sarah Hammer and Jennie Reed were among about 200 athletes from an American delegation of 596 who were issued masks by their national governing bodies to combat pollution in Beijing. "They've now seen how their actions have been perceived," Scherr said. "They were very eager to take the right action, which was to apologize to their hosts."

Lance Armstrong on Wednesday downplayed his chances of winning the Leadville 100 mountain bike race this weekend, saying a top-five or "on a good day, top-three" finish is more likely. "I'm not in it to win it, as they say," Armstrong told reporters in a conference call from Aspen, Colorado, where he has been vacationing and training for the 100-mile race, which starts in the considerably-less-posh nearby community of Leadville.

Age: 22 (Airdrie, Alta)

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Age: 28 (Conroe, Texas)

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Anti-doping tests used at the Olympics and other major sporting events are too often based on faulty science and statistical methods that can yield erroneous results, a researcher charged Wednesday in a leading scientific journal. Donald Berry, an expert in biostatistics at the University of Texas, used the case of American cyclist Floyd Landis to point up flaws in anti-doping procedures, but cautioned that the problems he uncovered apply across the board to lab tests designed to ferret out athletes who cheat by using performance enhancing substances.

Age: 31 (Langley, B.C.)

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Age: 26 (Zionhill, Pennsylvania)

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Age: 31 (Victoria, B.C.)

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Age: 38 (Burnaby, B.C.)

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Age: 26 (Santa Barbara, California)

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Age: 34 (Irvine, California)

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Age: 24 (Mertztown, Pennsylvania)

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Age: 35 (Greenville, South Carolina)

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Age: 30 (Kirkland, Wash.)

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