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Today, the rolling hills of Tuscany left their mark on the 2005 Giro d'Italia, as the first successful breakaway saw 27-year-old Liberty Seguros rider Koldo Gil triumphant in Pistoia. It was a beautiful victory on an ugly day; not just due to the overcast, rainy weather, but for the Sammommé climb that split the peloton into pieces, and most likely dashed the hopes of more than a few overall contenders. Just 12 riders finished 20 seconds in arrears of the victorious Gil – Damiano Cunego (Lampre), Danilo Di Luca (Liquigas-Bianchi), Mirko Celestino (Domina Vacanze), Patrice Halgand

The first week of the Giro is finished. The parcours has not been particularly tough in comparison to what lies ahead in the next two weeks, but the riders have still faced many obstacles. With nearly 200 riders heading into the rather technical finishing kilometers of the first week’s flat to rolling stages, many fell victim to crashes. Stages 4 and 6 were particularly messy in the final, with several crashes causing injuries, abandons and lost time. It is amazing to see fallen riders leap up and jump back onto their bikes. They never want to quit. Even when the injuries are bad, the

After two days of rain swamped the streets of Lawrence, Kansas, the NCCA Collegiate Road Cycling National Championships opener on Friday was a seminar in crash avoidance, and not everyone passed. “It was pretty crazy for the entire race. I just tried to stay at the front and stay out of trouble,” said Stanford’s Amber Rais, who won the 60-minute women’s Division I race in Friday’s Sunflower Outdoor & Bike Criteriums, run on a rain-slick, L-shaped, mile-long course in downtown Lawrence. After local hero Steve Tilford started the day off with a victory in the 45-minute open crit, the hourlong

Baldwin, Holden win Boulder Stage Race kickoffChris Baldwin (Navigators) and Mari Holden (T-Mobile) won the opening stage of the 2005 Excel Sports Boulder Stage Race on Friday, a short individual time trial that took in the hardest sections of the old Morgul Bismarck course outside Superior, Colorado. Baldwin was the only rider to post a time under 16 minutes for the hilly TT, which climbed 1100 feet in seven miles, ascending the fabled Wall, Hump and feed-zone hills. Baldwin covered the course in 15:42, besting teammate Phil Zajicek by 29 seconds, with Tim Duggan (TIAA-CREF) third at 34

Gil savors his win

Uhl hoped to stay out of trouble - and got the bronze

Brandenberg's bike - or what's left of it

Baldwin blazes the Boulder opener

Holden gets set to start

A big bunch leaves early in the day

Michael Barry made the break

The group was trimmed to three... and then to one

Chasing duties fell to CSC for much of the day

Rujano caught all but Gil by the top of the day's biggest climb

Cunego leads an elite group in 20 seconds after Gil takes the stage

Basso lost some precious time

Simoni thins out the herd

Di Luca is back in the jersey

As we've already mentioned several times now, so many of you have submitted entries (hundreds of them!) to our WeeklyPhoto Contest that we've now been forced to put up a gallery eachday this week in order to accommodate as many as we can. If we missed you this week, try again next week, please. Today'sGallery is now available for your viewing pleasure. We'll keepthis up all week and announce a winner on Friday. Just so we can handle what we've got, we must ask that you do not submit any more photos for this week's contest. We will begin accepting new submissions on

When the sprint is rough, tough, tight and twisty, there's only one person you should bank on. Despite missing the entire spring due to a virus, speed demon Robbie McEwen (Davitamon-Lotto) is just about back to his best form, winning today's crash-filled finale in Marina di Grosseto with apparent ease. In fact, in a rare show of generosity, the 32-year-old Queenslander tried to give the stage to his fellow Aussie and loyal lead-out man, Henk Vogels, soft-pedaling in second wheel with a kilometer to go, and allowing Vogels to surreptitiously sail off the front. It was a great move,

The Mailbag is a regular feature on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have seen in cycling, in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to WebLetters@InsideInc.com. Please include your full name and home town. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.Can’t beat Bay Area/SacramentoEditor:To Neal Rogers: I couldn't resist commenting on your well-written Boulder/Orange County article. I believe everything you and others say about Boulder as a cycling Mecca, but having lived in the San Francisco Bay/Sacramento area since 1993, I

Who can remember the last time the maglia rosa swapped shoulders every day in the first seven days? We can't. But it's good. Actually, it's great; it means this ProTour thing is working. There's certainly a stronger field of sprinters, as shown by Alessandro Petacchi's lack of success to date. And Fassa Bortolo fan or not, you have to admit it's great to see a new depth to the Giro. But to derail the Silver Train, the other sprinters' teams have brought along quality gregarios, unafraid of fighting the Fassas in the final kilometers, so it's a deeper field

I am officially out of touch with the outside world. I had no idea that they evacuated the capitol and the White House the other day because of what they thought might be some kind of terrorist attack. I don't even know what day that was... heck I don't even know what day this is. My daily concerns tend to focus on just a few things: eating, sleeping and spending the stage helping to keep Ivan out of trouble here and there. We've already done one week of racing and when we're not on the bike, we're often looking for something – anything – to do. That's especially

McEwen wins as Fassa falls

Bettini's back in the pink . . .

. . . displacing Di Luca

Hesjedal was one of the day's victims

And the Fassa choo-choo jumped the tracks once again

Another day at the office

With a few of the tifosi a little disheartened by what they saw on Wednesday, some may have been hoping to see another of their guys in pink. Well today, Danilo Di Luca gave them their wish. After his performance in L'Aquila, the 29-year-old darling of Italian cycling has surely won all the hearts of his countrymen. As they did at Pais Vasco, Amstel Gold, Flèche Wallonne and two days ago in Giffoni Valle Piana, his Liquigas-Bianchi team rode their hearts out, setting Di Luca up perfectly for the final kilometer and in a finale like Thursday’s, the speedster from Spoltore proved

My colleague John Wilcockson’s recent column, “Boulder cycling and its mountains,” got me thinking about all of the velonews.com readers who have never been to Boulder, or ridden anywhere in Colorado. Readers in places like Pennsylvania, Oregon, Florida, Wisconsin or British Columbia, who think their local riding and racing is just fine, thanks. Readers who may be sick and tired of hearing yet again about the “promised land” of Boulder. I know how they feel. I used to be one of them. This had nothing to do with Boulder, or even cycling. My irritation was with the surfing mecca that is

It’s the day before the 2005 collegiate road nationals, and already the Kansas clouds have offered up a blustering tempest that would send Dorothy and Toto running for cover. Less than 20 hours before the start of Friday’s race, the entire Manhattan-Topeka-Lawrence area is under an extreme thunderstorm, flood and tornado warning. Still, more than 500 collegiate cyclists – ranging from rosy-cheeked freshmen to bearded doctoral candidates – have descended on the University of Kansas’ hometown in preparation for Friday’s Sunflower Criterium, which spins a 1-mile, L-shaped loop near downtown

Score two stage wins for the man who leads both the Giro and the ProTour.

The Boulder area's fabled Morgul Bismarck course got the Hollywood treatment in American Flyers, for the two or three people who actually saw the movie

'Off Road to Athens' comes to Boulder on Saturday. Don't expect to see Kevin Costner in this one

Bettini needed to let off a little steam.

Thursday was potentially dangerous, happily uneventful

The daily ritual begins

Simoni and Garzelli stayed low key for most of the day

Danielson is looking toward the mountains.

Rodriguez goes it alone

Another unpredictable day in Italia. It's the only way to describe this first week of the 2005 Giro d'Italia, where, yet again, on a stage seemingly set for the pure sprinter, things went horribly wrong. Just as he did three days ago in Tropea, Paolo Bettini (QuickStep) foiled the fast guys' plans, attacking with vengeance on a not-so-straightforward finale, then burying the hatchet with a punchy sprint finish. Or so he thought... Only Baden Cooke (La Française des Jeux) had the legs and the audacity to challenge Bettini, but suspect sprinting tactics from the Olympic road champ

The Mailbag is a regular feature on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have seen in cycling, in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to WebLetters@InsideInc.com. Please include your full name and home town. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.Wilcockson revives fond memoriesEditor:Kudos to John Wilcockson for his delightful column about his 62nd birthday road ride around Boulder. As a 28-year-old Colorado native, an avid mountain biker, and the son of a former recreational road racer, I grew up watching the Coors Classic.

What a difference a year makes. Ivan Basso joined Team CSC for the 2004 season, and under Bjarne Riis’s watchful eye, the reserved, almost shy Italian took a major leap forward in his professional career. Last year he was the only rider strong enough to stay with Lance Armstrong in the Pyrénées and earned a stage victory and third-place Tour de France podium for his efforts. Basso has grown out of his shell with Riis, building the necessary skills to forge that “killer instinct” so necessary to win cycling’s grueling three-week grand tours. Basso is now racing in the first week of the Giro

It’s hard to believe that Stephanie Graeter has only been racing bikes for three years. After all, the 22-year-old Graeter – one of Christine Thorburn’s talented domestiques on the Webcor Builders team - has an impressive list of results that women 10 years her senior would be proud to claim. Still, the Fairfax, California, racer is only a college senior, and for the past two seasons has juggled the conflicting lives of a Cal Berkeley student and a professional cyclist. As Graeter will attest, completing two difficult degrees (one in environmental biology, another in German) is not an easy

The common thread we've seen running through the last two stages of the Giro has involved an early breakaway of riders hoping to stay away for the stage win, but falling just short. In the final kilometers of stage 3, the riders passed over a category-2 climb, and indications of who's on form were provided. All the favorites fared well, but a few stood out, like Damiano Cunego and stage winner Danilo Di Luca. Di Luca has had a spectacular start to the season, with two World Cup victories in April. We could see him in the maglia rosa in the next few days, as he is a climber and can

Wednesday, May 11As I mentioned before, this is my first Giro d’Italia. I’ve ridden the Tour de France before, but this is different. On the surface, the racing is much more relaxed. You have the attacks at the start, then maybe a break forms… and then everything is pretty much controlled until the end, when they pull the guys back and then you see this rush to the line. While it is more relaxed on one level, that changes things down the road, so you end up with some moments when you’re totally bored and others when it’s complete panic. Take Tuesday for example. We were pretty relaxed and

Bettini's celebratation was short-lived...

Not in the mood to talk. Cooke declined to discuss the matter.

Vasseur and Pinotti

Time to bring them back...

The 88th Giro d’Italia is already in full flight and there’s no more beautiful spectacle in cycling than the corsa rosa. With its passionate tifosi, its dramatic backdrops and action-packed racing, the Giro is the race of the season for many fans worldwide. While the Tour de France has eclipsed its Italian neighbor in statue and prestige in the past quarter century, the Giro looks to be creeping closer to parity with the French colossus. Thanks to a variety of reasons, this year’s Giro is sure to be more thrilling than the Tour and a much more entertaining race to watch. Look at the

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. Well, the maglia rosa only took a day's leave off Paolo Bettini's shoulders before the 31-year-old Italian decided he wanted it again. When stage winner Danilo Di Luca (Liquigas-Bianchi) lit it up on the decisive climb of Santa Tecla, Il Grillo simply hopped, skipped and jumped into the lead group, and held his top-10 position all the way to the end. By virtue of his eighth place in Giffoni Valle Piana, Bettini resumed his place at the top of the leader board, nine seconds ahead of Di Luca and 17 in front of defending Giro champion

Will a 31.7mm bar fit a 31.8mm stem?Dear Lennard,What do you think of using a 31.7 diameter road bar with a 31.8 stem? I'm under the impression that it is widely accepted to be okay. to use 25.8 diameter bars with 26.0 stems, and I do this on three of my bikes as I really like Deda bars, but prefer other stems. I would like to change one bike to a Thomson X4 stem and Deda oversize bars.Shane Dear Shane,The oversized handlebar diameter is done on an inch standard, namely 1-1/4”. Well, 1.25 inches is equal to 31.75mm, putting it squarely between the 31.7mm and 31.8mm dimensions. My opinion

We think we've created a monster, albeit a talented monster.As we said yesterday, we thought the response to ourfirst VeloNews.com photo contest was overwhelming, both quantitativelyand qualitatively, but our readers have outdone themselves again.Indeed, so many of you have submitted entries (hundreds of them!) that we've now been forced to put up a gallery each day this week in order to accommodate them all. Yesterday we posted what we thought would be thefirst of maybe three galleries, but as you might guess, that triggeredanother flood of submissions. So it's likely that

Van Hout goes at 8km

A lonely time for Van Hout...

... with this bunch finally swooping him up with 25km to go

The one ranked climb of the day had an impact.

Back in the lead.

Wheelbuilding part one ...

... and part two

Record and Chorus cranks

It was a battle of the bumping elbows on the mean streets of Santa Maria del Cedro in southern Italy, but fearless Robbie McEwen (Davitamon-Lotto) slipped through unscathed to claim both the win and the maglia rosa. The first 181 kilometers of the 182km second stage along the absolutely stunning Calabrian coast unfolded pretty much as can be expected, but then things got downright ornery as the peloton bore down on the final 1000 meters. There was an outright rebellion as Crédit Agricole and Davitamon-Lotto refused to step aside for Fassa Bortolo and undisputed sprint king Alessandro

Paolo Bettini couldn’t be happier asking scoring his first career Giro d’Italia stage victory and snagging the maglia rosa for good measure in Sunday’s action-packed first stage. The Olympic champion lived up to his signature nickname, the Cricket, and jumped away from the bunch with a perfectly timed attack to derail Fassa Bortolo’s feared Silver Train in the opening stage of the 88th Giro. “Winning everything together -- the first road stage, my first [Giro] stage and the pink jersey -- is great,” said Bettini, who bounced into the lead ahead of prologue winner Brett Lancaster thanks to

Jackson Stewart (Kodak Gallery-Sierra Nevada) and Christine Thorburn (Webcor Builders) won their respective races in the 32nd Testarossa Vineyards Cat's Hill Classic on Saturday in Los Gatos, California. Los Gatos native Stewart outsprinted his longtime friend, former teammate, and 1998 Los Gatos High School classmate Zach Walker (McGuire-Langdale) for the win. Stewart and Walker, with Ben Haldeman (Webcor Builders) and Glen Mitchell (Kodak Gallery-Sierra Nevada), had broken away with 15 laps remaining. Mitchell lost contact with four laps remaining and drifted back to a chasing trio -

The Mailbag is a regular feature on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have seen in cycling, in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to WebLetters@InsideInc.com. Please include your full name and home town. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.Lance talks the talk and walks the walkEditor:Come on, people, whether you like him or not, you have to realize talking trash and backing it up is what has made Lance Armstrong who he is today, way before cancer came along. Think back over the last few years: When Italy's Gilberto

Well you folks never cease to amaze us.We thought the response to lastweek's photo contest was overwhelming, both quantitatively andqualitatively, but our readers have outdone themselves againthis week. Indeed, so many of you have submitted entries, that we'vebeen forced to spread the wealth a bit and add a gallery a day for at leastthe next three days. As we post a host of images over the next few days,we'll be soliciting your opinions - and the opinions of our panel of volunteerjudges - as what your favorites and their favorites might be. On Thursday,we'll announce another

The prologue and the first two stages of the Giro are now completed and the riders are beginning to settle into the rhythm of the grand tour. For the next three weeks, they will pedal, eat, get massage, and try to recover. Being a part of the race is like joining a traveling circus, as everyone moves from one town to the next each day, putting on a show. The same faces appear each day in the peloton, but in a different order, and the ups and downs encountered make each day unique for each rider. The fans along the roadside are often dressed in pink, and even decorate their towns in pink.

I have to say the Giro is really cool. It’s my first time in this race … in fact, it’s the first time for a bunch of guys, everyone from 20-year-old kids, in their first year, up to Erik Zabel, who is making his first appearance at the Giro at the age of 34. He’s done something like 12 Tours de France, but never the Giro, until this year. The ProTour is part of the reason. Every top team has to be here and riders are looking at the season a little bit differently. Instead of spending May training, they come here to help the team, spin the legs and get some nice weather to boot. I figure

Tonkov delivers a win - and a message - at the 2004 Giro.