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Valverde paid a visit to the race doc early on

You just knew Alexandre Vinokourov (T-Mobile) would attack on a Tour de France stage like Wednesday's Alpine monster from Courchevel to Briançon. And if he went on the attack, Wednesday’s was just the type of stage Vino’ was destined to win. “We can't say that we were surprised,” said race leader Lance Armstrong after he kept his 38-second margin over Dane Michael Rasmussen (Rabobank). “Whenever somebody is in a breakaway all day long, it's always impressive. Like the other day, with Rasmussen, an all-day effort is never easy.” Still, to see how the ever-popular Kazakh national

Discovery protected Armstrong's lead

Italian Tour de France rider Dario Frigo was charged on Wednesday after customs officers found banned drugs in his wife's car. His wife, who was stopped on the motorway on Tuesday with what was understood to be about 10 doses of the endurance-boosting drug EPO (erythropoietin), was also facing a charge in connection with a customs offense. Later Wednesday, the couple were charged with "helping and assisting in the use of doping products, contraband and importing" by a judge in Albertville. They were released on bail. Frigo, 31, is banned from taking part in the sport while the inquiry

Armstrong on the Galibier

1. Alexandre Vinokourov (Kaz), T-Mobile2. Santiago Botero (Col), Phonak, 00:003. Christophe Moreau (F), Credit Agricole, 01:154. Bobby Julich (USA), CSC, 01:155. Eddy Mazzoleni (I), Lampre, 01:156. Lance Armstrong (USA), Discovery Channel, 01:157. Cadel Evans (Aus), Davitamon-Lotto, 01:158. Levi Leipheimer (USA), Gerolsteiner, 01:159. Mickael Rasmussen (Dk), Rabobank, 01:1510. Georg Totschnig (A), Gerolsteiner, 01:15 11. Alejandro Valverde (Sp), Illes Balears, 01:1512. Yaroslav Popovych (Ukr), Discovery Channel, 01:1513. Ivan Basso (I), CSC, 01:1514. Michael Rogers (Aus), Quickstep, 01:1515.

Please, someone - preferably a gendarme - start messin' with Texas

Just a day after he lost the yellow jersey to Lance Armstrong, CSC’s Jens Voigt will not get the chance to continue on the Tour de France after he arrived outside the permitted time limit following the 11th stage in to Briançon on Wednesday. Voigt, who wore the yellow jersey on Tuesday after taking the race lead on Sunday, suffered badly in his first day in the race lead on Tuesday which coincided with the first of three days in the Alps. Voigt could hardly walk after Tuesday's 10th stage from Grenoble to Courchevel. And the big German suffered again on the 11th stage, held over 173km

The Madeline

Here’s what the main players said after Wednesday’s 173km 11th stage. Lance Armstrong, Discovery Channel(sixth at 1:15, first overall) On Vinokourov’s breakaway Whenever somebody is in a breakaway all day long, it’s always impressive. Like the other day, with Rasmussen, an all day effort is never easy. Vino wasn’t the main concern today. We can’t chase down everybody with five, six minutes. We have to prioritize, and he’s not on our list of priorities, so we let him out there, kept the team together, and controlled the tempo. We knew [Vinokourov] would attack today. We can’t say that we

The littlest Lance fan...

Taking on a monster like Wednesday's killer Alpine stage from Courchevel to Briançon takes commitment from rider and fan alike. Our man Casey Gibson was out today, capturing images of both.

... gets real team support on the way up the Galibier.

Former mountain biker Michael Rasmussen is continuing to light up the Tour de France summits with his determined defense of the polka-dot jersey he pulled on a few days ago. Rasmussen, who rides for the Dutch Rabobank team - which is based in one of the flattest countries in the world - only took up road racing a few years ago, having had his fill with mountain biking. His spectacular stage win on Sunday, when he went off on a 169km breakaway to win the stage, already fulfilled one of the ambitions of the 31-year-old from Copenhagen. And after two tough days in the Alps, which saw Lance

This guy hauled this all the way up the Galibier. Maybe his helmet will give you a clue as to his mental state.

Hello,Sorry for the delay. It's been a busy few days here. By now, you know that Tuesday did change things in this Tour, but Wednesday showed that we haven't given up, though. Tuesday morning started out pretty well. The team was motivated and ready to go. As a team we were motivated and ready to attack the yellow jersey. I was not feeling any serious effects from that crash last Sunday. As expected, I had a tiny bit of pain when breathing deeply, but I didn't feel particularly weakened by it, either. I really felt I was holding my own on the climb to Courchevel when Lance went

Is that the peloton down there?

Discovery leads the chase

In his first Tour (1969), Merckx controlled the climbing tempo on the Galibier…

The hard road ahead.

… just as Induráin did in 1993.

Beat the clock: Voigt charges to beat the time cut. He didn't make it.

Stage 11 - Courchevel to Briançon >173km

Horner gets into the early break

Stage 11 - Courchevel to Briançon >173km

Vino' proves the worth of a valiant attack

Spanish sensation Alejandro Valverde confirmed his recent promise as a future Tour de France contender with a well-deserved victory on the 10th stage of the race Tuesday in Courchevel. Valverde (Illes Balears) held off champion Lance Armstrong (Discovery Channel) in a two-man race for the line of the summit finish last graced by the wheels of the late champion Marco Pantani, who won here in 2000, the last time the alpine ski station featured as a summit finish on the Tour. Valverde has been hailed as possibly the next Spanish winner of the world's toughest race. In his native country -

Lance back in command

The team's BH bike

Saturday’s stage from Pforzheim to Gerardmer had been so heartening for T-Mobile. It looked like a demonstration of how to unsettle Lance Armstrong and promised an exciting battle in the Alps. After six years, it seemed, a team had finally been formed that could dethrone the Texan, and understood exactly what it takes. On the slopes of the ski station of Courchevel in the Savoy Alps, however, T-Mobile’s hopes were shattered. Jan Ullrich and Andreas Klöden lost two minutes and 17 seconds on the Discovery Channel captain and the day’s winner, Alejandro Valverde. Alexandre Vinokourov lost five

Allez, Allez, Cadel!

The Tour de France blew apart on Tuesday as defending champion Lance Armstrong left a whole list of "Tour favorites" struggling on the climb to Courchevel. Photographer Casey Gibson was there to capture moments both big and small, starting with hos own favorite of the day, a shot of two young Frenchmen who rode to their bikes to the start in Grenoble on Tuesday morning, hoping to see their heroes. Crowds being what they are, the two couldn't get within 300 of the sign in. Indeed, the two were at least 200 meters from anything of interest... until the Discovery team bus pulled up and

Valverde leads the select group

Competitive Cyclist has teamed up with Peloton Project member Andrew Clarke of Greeneville, TN to raise $25,000 for the Lance Armstrong Foundation. As part of this fund raising effort, Clarke will hold a raffle for a variety of high-end roadie accessories. He will limit the raffle to 100 entries, and each raffle ticket will cost $100 -- every penny of which goes directly to the LAF and is tax-deductible. Participants in the raffle will have a one in ten chance of winning prizes whose total value exceeds $5,800. The grand prize of the raffle is a SRM Professional Dura-Ace 10-Speed Powermeter

Valverde impressed the champ with his tenacity

Lance Armstrong knows better than anyone that the Tour de France ends in Paris, and not after just the first mountain stage. That’s particularly true this year because the second half of the 92nd Tour, starting with Wednesday’s stage 11, is more challenging than ever. Mountain stages don’t get much tougher than Wednesday’s, which features 12,600 feet of climbing in just 173km (108 miles). After an initial 30km descent from the start in Courchevel, the uphill work begins with the 25.4km haul up the Col de la Madeleine. This classic alpine climb pitches steeply (up to 10 percent) out of a

Ullrich is now the team leader - but is there a team to lead?

Well looking back there were some good parts of the day. There was that one downhill part and… well, the rest of it wasn’t too much fun. Basically our job for the first 100k was to keep Pellizotti, Garzelli and Cioni out of the wind and after see if they could do something if they had the legs. Obviously with Lance doing what he did today, there were a lot of guys who found out they didn’t have the legs… Garzelli didn’t do too badly, finishing like three, three-and-a-half minutes down. It wasn’t brilliant but still pretty quite good. It was a strange day. I mean here everyone was talking

Bike fans...

Stage 10 - Grenoble to Courchevel >192.5KM

Are you ready, Freddie?

Stage 10 - Grenoble to Courchevel >192.5KM

We wonder what country these guys are from.

Valverde celebrates

Welcome to LanceLand

Valverde nicks Armstrong at the line

Room with a view

Hammer time

A little Bocce Ball to pass the time

Course: After a long transfer and rest day in Grenoble, therace heads into the Alps with the usual excitement and expectation swirlingthrough the peloton. With almost 100km of flat roads preceding the firstof two Cat. 1 climbs (the picturesque Cormetde-Roselend), there will beplenty of time to contemplate the task ahead, particularly the long (22km)haul to the 6561-foot summit finish at Courchevel. History: Only two Tour stages have finished at Courchevel. In1997, Richard Virenque was “gifted” the win by race leader Ullrich at theend of a difficult day that saw Virenque’s Festina team attack

Ullrich crosses the line more than two minutes later

Horner held his own on the climb to Courchevel

Lance Armstrong might be getting older, but he’s still strong enough to put some serious hurt on the world’s best climbers when the Tour de France is on the line. The 33-year-old Texan surged back into the yellow jersey on Tuesday’s decisive climbing stage across the French Alps to Courchevel. And while he couldn’t drop everyone — Michael Rasmussen, Alejandro Valverde and Francisco Mancebo rode his vapors — he opened up important time gaps on just about everyone else. “I tried to get rid of those guys, but maybe it’s not like the old days when you make one attack and you ride them off to

Discovery on the job

At the start in Grenoble, Moreau was still the great French hope. The climb to Courchevel put an end to his yellow jersey hopes, for now.

Australian cyclist Mark French has had a two-year ban for doping overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), the international body said Tuesday. Australian Olympic Committee officials said the ruling also meant a lifetime ban on competing at the Olympics had been lifted and that French would be eligible for a place at the 2008 Beijing Games. A three-man CAS panel found there was no evidence that drug vials found in a bucket in French's room at the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) in Adelaide contained the banned substance glucocorticosteroid. While there was equine

Armstrong gives Popo the word

Ullrich had Klöden for company, but not where either man wanted to be.

1. Alejandro Valverde (Sp), Illes Balears 192.5km in 4:50:35 (36.65kph)2. Lance Armstrong (USA), Discovery Channel, s.t.3. Mickael Rasmussen (Dk), Rabobank, 00:094. Francisco Mancebo (Sp), Illes Balears, 00:095. Ivan Basso (I), CSC, 01:026. Levi Leipheimer (USA), Gerolsteiner, 01:157. Eddy Mazzoleni (I), Lampre, 02:148. Cadel Evans (Aus), Davitamon-Lotto, 02:149. Andréas Klöden (G), T-Mobile, 02:1410. Andrey Kashechkin (Kaz), Credit Agricole, 02:1411. Floyd Landis (USA), Phonak, 02:1412. Leonardo Piepoli (I), Saunier Duval, 02:1413. Jan Ullrich (G), T-Mobile, 02:1414. Jorg Jaksche (G),

Vino' cracked on the second climb

Liberty's custom-painted Record levers

Cadel`s secret inspirationBesides the comic book character TinTin being Australian climber Cadel Evans' biggest inspiration, top-10 Tour de France contender has another force pushing him. It is a blue wristband from his Italian girlfriend Chiara who is a classical pianist. “She gave it to me to make my more aggressive on the bike,” Evans(Davitamon-Lotto) told VeloNews. “She said I needed to be more aggressive and every time I see it to think about that.” The band, which he received on the rest day at Grenoble, seems to be working. Evans, riding his first Tour de France, was eighth at

Voight kisses the jersey goodbye

Another angle

All around Grenoble on Monday’s rest day at the Tour de France, team directors, riders and race followers were speculating what will happen in the crucial stage 10 through the Savoy Alps on Tuesday. There are two schools of thought: Either Lance Armstrong’s team will take control and deliver the Texan to the mountaintop finish at Courchevel in perfect shape; or there will be so many attacks, especially by Jan Ullrich’s T-Mobile squad, that they will stretch Armstrong’s Discovery Channel team to its limit and completely open up the race. “Somebody has to attack,” said Bjarne Riis, the

One reason why Bjarne Riis is so fond of Jens Voigt, is that the man from East Germany is very clear in his analysis and very firm in his decisions. Voigt possesses what one would call leadership qualities, the sort that only few people in cycling have. It’s a characteristic that Riis had in his day and Lance Armstrong shows so well today. Just as Riis and Armstrong made the assessment one day that they can win the Tour and did everything necessary to accomplish this goal, Jens Voigt has made a clear decision about his career. “I am a mediocre sprinter, a bad climber and an okay time

Organizers of cycling's three grand tours, of France, Italy, and Spain appear to be standing firm against a perceived "ultimatum" delivered by the sport's governing body over their adhesion to the UCI's ProTour calendar. The ProTour, the brainchild of UCI president Hein Verbruggen, was introduced in the autumn of 2004 to help modernize and better organize the often-hectic professional cycling calendar - and its global image. The UCI has throughout the reforms met with resistance from the respective organizers of the Tour de France, Giro d’ Italia and Vuelta a España, who felt

Georg Totschnig was slouching through the lobby of the Hotel Mercure in Grenoble on Monday morning, not looking all too happy. The Austrian Gerolsteiner rider, from the picturesque mountain village of Zillertal, was not feeling great, just a day before the Tour enters the Alps. “I have no idea why, but I can’t keep up even with a medium speed in the climbs this year,” the 34-year-old Totschnig said. “I am realistic enough to know that this is not gonna change overnight.” Last year Totschnig made a splash when he came in third in the big Pyrénées stage to Plateau de Beille, dropping

Ullrich emerges from a Grenoble-area hospital after a rest day check-up

Armstrong takes a look at what's ahead during a training ride in Grenoble on Monday.

Stage 10: Up, up and away!

For Voigt the risk of an early attack paid off

Ullrich had a longer-than-expected wait at the airport

CSC's FSA-SRM crank

CSC's nifty new Cervélo Soloist Carbons

Hello,It’s been quite a few days here at the Tour, hasn’t it? To start with, we all felt for "Klödi" at the end of stage 8 on Saturday. He rode spectacularly and really earned a stage win, only to be denied by the smallest margin I’ve ever seen. To say the least, he deserves congratulations for a superb effort. The team, too, performed beautifully on Saturday. First off, our guys put in a big effort to cut the advantage of the break as we came up to the Col de la Schlucht and then you saw what happened with Vino’ and Klöden on the climb. Vino attacked, then Andreas as I stayed right on

The first rest day of this year’s Tour found the three strong men of T-Mobile in utterly different states of mind. Jan Ullrich, still the designated leader of the team, was happy to have the day off to nurse his wounds from his crash on Sunday. Andreas Klöden was vacillating between relief that his form is improving after a difficult spring and frustration about the narrow loss to Peter Weening at the end of Saturday’s stage. Alexandre Vinokourov on the other hand could just as soon have skipped the day: “I guess a rest day is okay,” he said eagerly, “but I want to go to the Alps. I am

Spare a thought for... Andre Kivilev, the deceased best friend of Tour de France hope Alexandre Vinokourov (T-Mobile) who was killed in a race crash during Paris-Nice in 2003. “Kivi,” says the Kazakhstan national champion, will be with him throughout the Tour as the race enters the Alps and then the Pyrénées over the next two weeks. “It remains a turning point in my life,” said Vinokourov of Kivilev's death in an interview with the French sports daily L`Equipe. “I have understood since that day what are my real priorities. My outlook on my job has also changed a lot. I have especially

Course: With four Cat. 3s, a Cat. 2 and this Tour’s first Cat.1 climb (the 9km, 7-percent Ballon d’Alsace) through the Vosges, the climberswill finally get some terrain to their liking. But on completing the lastdownhill from the Ballon, there are still 43km to ride in the valley beforereaching the finish in Mulhouse. History: This is the 100th anniversary of the Ballon d’Alsacebecoming the first major climb included in the Tour. The last time a climbingstage through the Vosges ended in Mulhouse was in 1992, when a soon-to-retireLaurent Fignon broke clear on the Grand Ballon climb to score a