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A little scenery — the town of Sisteron

And a little scenery of another kind altogether (no testosterone jokes, please)

The big break of the day

Voigt driving

Marcus Burghardt’s bike wired up and ready to race.

SRM techs getting the Giant setup to transmit power data.

The GPRS transmission unit.

The power control unit.

ChristianVande Velde’s SRM with FSA manufactured carbon arms.

Discovery Channel’s new Madone wired and ready.

The GPRS unit.

SRM had to refine the profile of the crank mounted gauge to fit the Trek Madone’s new cup-less bottom bracket shell.

This Belgian gent is celebrating his 50th year of attending the Tour

Where do those tight closeups come from? Why, from the guys with the 400mm lenses

At 35 degrees C it was bottle after bottle, all day long

The break heads past the village of Theze

A young French fan at the finish

'When I was your age, we walked 20 kilometers to see a Tour stage, uphill both ways, in the snow . . .'

Horner goes better with Coke

Meanwhile, back at the podium . . .

It's all orange on the front as Rabobank sets the tempo

Ruins in the start village of Tallard . . .

. . . and a knight from there as well

A Frenchman on the podium: Cedric Vasseur

... and Daniel Lloyd gets the jersey.

A big bump in the road for Stapleton and efforts to save T-Mobile.

MTB News and Notes: A conversation with Adam Craig

The last wild-card team picked for the 2007 Tour de France showed Tuesday that the organizers made the right choice, after Barloworld's Colombian climber Juan Soler earned an impressive solo win in the 159.5km stage 9 haul from Val-d'Isère to Briançon.

COURSE: With a start from just south of Gap, and heading through Provence to the Mediterranean coast, this long stage looks ripe for a successful breakaway. Two Cat. 3 climbs in the final 30km will split up the break and also disrupt the chasing efforts of the sprinters’ teams. The Col de la Gineste, out of the small wine town of Cassis, summits 10km from the finish, which is on a wide boulevard on the eastern edge of Marseille. HISTORY: There have been 32 stage finishes in the port city of Marseille, the most recent in 2003 and 1993. Four years ago, Denmark’s Jakob Piil out-sprinted

French champion Christophe Moreau, one of the stars of Sunday’s grueling stage to Tignes, says he is hoping to do well in the Pyrénées in the Tour’s final week and finish on the podium in Paris. His best Tour finish to date was fourth in 2000. After eight stages of this Tour he’s sitting in seventh overall, 3:06 down on race leader Michel Rasmussen, but on a par with other contenders like Alejandro Valverde, Cadel Evans, Fränk Schleck and Denis Menchov.

Spaniard Alejandro Valverde has refused to rule out Alexander Vinokourov’s chances for the yellow jersey this year. His co-captain Oscar Pereiro, however, believes otherwise, saying that Astana’s other star - Andreas Klöden – may pose a bigger threat over the final two weeks of the Tour de France. Valverde played a key role in Sunday's eighth stage when a series of attacks by Frenchman Christophe Moreau led to the Astana pair losing more time on their rivals.

It’s tough to tell what Rabobank’s Michael Rasmussen is better known for: His aptitude for winning the Tour’s climbing jersey or his phenomenal meltdown in the 2005 Tour’s final time-trial. [nid:39592]On Sunday’s stage 8, Rasmussen once again established the former, and placed doubts in everyone’s mind that anyone else will be able to take the Tour’s polka-dot jersey in the near future. He also established a solid foundation for his newly proclaimed aspirations to win the overall classification.

Buried deep in Sunday’s UCI commissaires’ report was a penalty against Levi Leipheimer for illegal mechanical assistance and bidon pulls. The top American contender was fined 50 CHF and penalized 5 points and 10 seconds for the bidon pull and fined an additional 50 CHF for illegal mechanical assistance. Leipheimer couldn’t care less about the money or the points, but those 10 seconds could be vital in the battle for the overall crown when every second counts.

Discovery Channel team leader Levi Leipheimer admitted on the Tour’s first rest day that he’s not yet riding to his top ability, but believes he will be by the time the race reaches the Pyrénées in its pivotal third week.

Results - Stage 91. Mauricio Soler (Col), Barloworld 4:14:24 (38.92kph)2. Alejandro Valverde Belmonte (Sp), Caisse d'Epargne, at 0:383. Cadel Evans (Aus), Predictor-Lotto, at 0:384. Alberto Contador Velasco (Sp), Discovery, at 0:405. Iban Mayo Diez (Sp), Saunier Duval, at 0:426. Michael Rasmussen (Dk), Rabobank, at 0:427. Levi Leipheimer (USA), Discovery, at 0:428. Kim Kirchen (Lx), T-Mobile, at 0:469. Andreas Klöden (G), Astana, at 0:4610. Carlos Sastre (Sp), CSC, at 0:46 11. Christophe Moreau (F), Ag2r, at 0:5412. Mikel Astarloza (Sp), Euskaltel-Euskadi, at 0:5413. Yaroslav Popovych

Hardly anyone knew a thing about Juan Mauricio Soler Hernández before he ran away with Tuesday’s climbing stage across the Galibier. Journalists were scrambling to find out more about the soft-spoken son of farmers from central Colombia who bolted away from the world’s best climbers to win Barloworld’s first stage of the 2007 Tour de France.

On the eve of the U.S. National championships RockShox has quietly put a new cross-country fork into the hands of its top sponsored athletes. Reports put at least four riders onto the new fork for the upcoming Mount Snow, Vermont event. The championship race will not be the first competitive event the fork has seen, it is currently being raced in the European Transalp race by Karl Platt. Gary Fisher-Subaru’s Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski has had one of the new forks for roughly a week. He was shipped the fork to ride during the week leading up to the national championship race, and had it mounted

Weather: Highs in 80s, partly cloudy, brisk cross-headwinds Stage winner: Colombia's Mauricio Soler (Barloworld) took the biggest win in both his career and the history of his team by breaking clear of the peloton 10km from the top of the Col du Télégraphe. The 24-year-old from Ramiriqui, Colombia, then rode through the remnants of the day’s breakaway to finish 38 seconds ahead of Alejandro Valverde and Cadel Evans. Race leader: Rabobank’s Michael Rasmussen defended his yellow jersey by sticking with the race’s top GC contenders.

After the recent withdrawalsof three high-profile Australians, cycling fans from down under found somethingto cheer about Tuesday in the form of Predictor-Lotto’s Cadel Evans. Theslim Aussie rode aggressively on the race’s first two hors categorieclimbs in stage 9 to finish third on the stage and move into fourthoverall.

Mountain bike racer, Barry Wicks was the first to sign on with Giro for eyewear. But in the week prior to the Tour de France, Giro signed Discovery Channel’s Alberto Contador and Caisse d’Epargne’s Nicolas Portal. At the prologue in London the ink was still wet on both contracts. Nonetheless, Giro produced a special pair of green glasses to go along with Contador’s Discovery Channel team’s newfound eco’ conscience.

The Tour de France offered up another beautiful in the Alps and our man Casey Gibson was there to record it.

On Tuesday, the first real day in the high mountains at the Tour of Qinghai Lake, the expected assault on Discovery Channel saw overnight leader Allan Davis knocked off the top spot on the overall classification, and replaced by Selle Italia's mountain man Gabriele Massaglia. A late offensive on the 3880-meter-high Laji mountain by Selle Italia and Relax-Gam, the team of race favorite Francisco Mancebo, almost saw the blond-haired Aussie rejoin the front group on the 50km-long descent. Though unfortunately for Davis, just as his group began to close in on the front 17, he wiped out on

Keith Norris (AEG-Toshiba-JetNetwork) won the U23 stars-and-stripes jersey in a field-sprint of 174 riders on Sunday, July 15, at the USA Cycling National Festival in Champion, Pennsylvania. It was a close call for Norris, who jumped out front early to position himself for the final sprint, proving his strength and holding the lead without a lead-out. Cody O’Reill (Kodak Gallery-Sierra Nevada) and Jacob Keough (CL Noonan-Coast to Coast) finished second and third, respectively. “The whole race was much faster than I anticipated,” Norris said. “My plan was to be in the top three coming out of

Stage 10 - Tallard to Marseille (229.5km)

Stage 10 - Tallard to Marseille (229.5km)

Soler takes the stage for Barloworld

Rasmussen crosses with Leipheimer on his wheel

Rabobank setting tempo

T-Mobile's evil luck continued as a stray dog wandered onto the route . . .

. . . and took down Marcus Burghardt

The normally stoic Vino' weeps after conceding more time on Tuesday

Valverde leads

The break

Astarloza cracked the break

Contador has a go

Contador and Popovych

Contador and Evans

Going up: The 9085-foot, hors categorie Col de l'Iseran

Rasmussen knows who the boss is at Rabobank now — it's him

Soler attacked 'like a crazy man'

RockShox’s new BlackBox cross-country fork.

A side view revealing the Power Bulge.

The damper assembly.

The upper air chamber.

The lower air chamber.

The brake cutout on the lower left leg.

A rebound adjuster on the lower right leg.

The three-piece crown.

The under side of the crown.

Evans was the only rider to bridge to Contador.

Nicolas Portal with the Havik.

Portal had a crowd waiting for him at his team bus.

Alberto Contador with his green glasses.

A closer look at the Havik

Sponsored athletes will have a special branded model.

Bruyneel was happy before the stage. We're bet he's even happier now.

A busy start village

The start village at the Tour offers a variety of entertainment

Stage 9 - A Casey Gibson Gallery

Meanwhile, the fans gather on the climbs...