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El Diablo in London.

Sauser wins

Zabel wins

Dominguez nails the final stage

Nash makes a final charge to the line.

Kabush went head-to-head with JHK,

It looks like Petacchi is going to be fighting this for a while.

CSC powers to victory

Gould sweeps the series

Kabush: Hey, a win's a win

The top two. Landis finished less than two minutes down on Weins

"Maybe I ain't funny no more, you know? Like, maybe I ain't angry at nothin', for real, in my heart. I'm just not mad about it. I don't get it. You mother(bleep)ers want to kill yourselves, that's your business. Just don't do it on my porch." — Richard Pryor, “Live on the Sunset Strip” Cycling’s been good to me. When I first started working for VeloNews back in the late Eighties, I thought I had finally fused profession with passion. Two years later, when I quit newspapering for the tenuous career of a free-lancer, I was certain of it. Cover the occasional bike

Contador has launched an effort to protect his reputation.

Tour winner Alberto Contador was fending off doping allegations in Madrid, as Discovery was folding up its tent in Austin.

Hincapie visits with T-Mobile manager Bob Stapleton at this year's Tour of California.

Förster gets the win

Kurt Vonnegut's picture of cycling

Tour de France winner Alberto Contador publicly declared he’s a clean rider in the face of increasing suspicions about his alleged links to the Operación Puerto blood-doping ring. On Friday, Contador took the extraordinary step of making a public statement to try to counter growing media antagonism in the wake of his impressive Tour victory. Contador declined to take questions from reporters. “I have never doped and I have never participated in an act of doping,” said Contador, reading from his prepared statement Friday. “I won the Tour clean. I cannot understand the attacks against me by

The Mailbag is a regular department on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have read in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writers are encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month. The letters published here contain the opinions of the submitting authors and should not be viewed as reflecting the opinions, policies or positions of VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company,

Tom Ritchey

Ready to ride in Rwanada

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the latest edition of The Prologue, the weekly summary of the news from the world of competitive cycling by your friends at VeloNews.com.

The professional peloton is in post-Tour mode and turning its collective attention to the rest of the season and there's still plenty going on out there.

Manager Bob Stapleton will continue to lead the T-Mobile program.

Frommert fields questions at a Thursday press conference in Saarbrücken.

Gerdemann took the yellow jersey.

Gerdemann on stage 7 of the Tour de France.

Taylor Phinney, the new world junior TT champion

Bobby Julich will take aim for the U.S. national championships next month to earn the Stars ‘n’ Stripes jersey for what will likely be his final year as a pro. The 35-year-old said he’s close to penning a one-year contract extension that will keep him in a Team CSC jersey through the 2008 season. And he’d love nothing better than to win the national title, which has eluded him in his otherwise successful 15-year pro career. “I’d like to try to win a national jersey finally. Either the time trial or the road race, I don’t care. I’d take anything,” Julich said. “It would be fun to have the

Tour de France winner Alberto Contador has scheduled a press event this Friday in Spain, but says he will decline to answer reporters’ questions after he reads a prepared statement. Contador issued a release Wednesday notifying media of his plans to read a statement at the offices of Spain’s national sports council – the Consejo Superior de Deportes - in Madrid. Contador will be accompanied by Discovery Channel team director Johann Bruyneel. Since winning the 2007 Tour de France, Contador has been the subject of heightened scrutiny regarding his possible involvement with Eufemio Fuentes,

The Astana cycling team announced Wednesday that Kazakh Andrey Kashechkin tested positive for homologous blood doping following an out-of-competition test in Belek, Turkey on August 1. Kashechkin was suspended by the team pending the outcome of his B sample, should he request that the follow-up test be conducted. Kashechkin's teammate, Alexander Vinokourov was suspended following his own positive for homologous blood doping - the use of a donor's red blood cells to enhance endurance - during the Tour de France. "The positive test by Kasheckin is another blow to the credibility of

Julich wants to end his career in a slightly different kit.

Ask the Doctor: Ryan Cox and iliac artery endofibrosis

Vande Velde rode a solid Tour and is aiming to ride the Vuelta, too.

Fresh ‘Korn: The romance and adventure of the open road

Di Luca celebrated a win by teammate Leonardo Bertagnolli at the Clásica San Sebastián.

The Mailbag is a regular department on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have read in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writers are encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month. The letters published here contain the opinions of the submitting authors and should not be viewed as reflecting the opinions, policies or positions of VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company,

Our latest reader-submitted Photo Gallery is now ready for your viewing pleasure. Of course, a new gallery also means the naming of the winner of our most recent contest. This last round of photos offered up some exceptional images and you really need to take a look, but we have to celebrate the sheer cheekiness of the man in the black t-shirt in Brandon Dwight’s “The Message is Delivered.” Yeah, yeah, we could go on and wax poetic about the message and how we're not making any accusations and yada, yada, yada… but, bottom line is that it’s a great shot and it made a lot of us

The Message is Delivered

Troubles or no, some of us can't help but love the Tour

Bertagnolli exults after outsprinting his breakaway companion

The Clásica

Di Luca, only recently returned to competition after taking a break following his Giro d’Italia victory in May

Lopez, De Walle and Albasini

Garate and Bertagnolli have a go

Française des Jeux chases

Bertagnolli pops his cork

The men's podium

The women's podium

London provided a unique - and popular - setting for this year's Grand Départ

Police estimate that 2.1 million fans turned out for the ride to Canterbury

In splendid isolation for three weeks, sometimes journalists miss the big picture

Fans turned out throughout the Tour.

Van Avermaet takes the win

The Mailbag is a regular department on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have read in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writers are encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month. The letters published here contain the opinions of the submitting authors and should not be viewed as reflecting the opinions, policies or positions of VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company,

Xavier Florencio surprised a strong field to win in 2006.

Florencio dons the traditional

Eatough

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the latest edition of The Prologue, the weekly summary of news from the world of competitive cycling by your friends at VeloNews.com.

Dear BobI live and bike in Texas. A few weeks ago friends in a cycling club were stopped and cited for failure to stop at a 4-way stop sign. Having ridden a few times with the group, I believe the officer to be correct, as the group rarely stopped at 4-way stop signs. However, a few cyclists were also cited for failure to carry their driver's license. I am a little confused as I seem to recall biking for 12 years or so before I qualified by age for a driver's license. I personally carry a RoadID strapped to my ankle in the event of an unfortunate incident. The officer insisted

Bettini will have the chance to defend his rainbow jersey in Stuttgart next month.

Contador says he would have preferred to win another way.

The Mailbag is a regular department on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have read in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to webletters@insideinc.com. Please include your full name, hometown and state or nation. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writers are encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month. The letters published here contain the opinions of the submitting authors and should not be viewed as reflecting the opinions, policies or positions of VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company,

Cox's win at Genting in 2005 sealed his overall victory at Langkawi that year.

Leipheimer made it to the podium in Paris

South African Ryan Cox died Tuesday weeks after doctors performed surgery to repair a constriction in his iliac artery, a problem common in cyclists. The 28-year-old Cox, who had reported numbness, weakness and other problems with his left leg earlier in the year, had been diagnosed with a problem similar to that experienced by CSC’s Stuart O’Grady in 2002. Cox, with financial assistance from Barloworld teammate Robbie Hunter, underwent surgery in early July. Cox’s coach Clint Curtis told Bicycling South Africa that the rider showed classic symptoms of an arterial constriction. "He

The T-Mobile cycling team has fired Patrik Sinkewitz, the rider who failed a drugs test in the run up to the Tour de France, after he decided not to have a second urine sample analyzed. The 26-year-old's decision means he accepts the test's result and concedes that he violated T-Mobile's Code of Conduct after he was found to have abnormal levels of testosterone following an out-of-competition test taken on June 8th by the German anti-doping agency (NADA). the 2004 Tour of Germany winner said he had been using widely-available gel Testogel - a replacement therapy for low

Officials with Kazakhstan’s cycling federation on Tuesday expressed staunch support for Alexander Vinokourov who was excluded from the Tour de France following a positive test for blood doping. "We are going to support the position that the results of the A and B samples were a direct result of the violent fall Alexander suffered during the fifth stage of the cycling race," said the executive director of the federation, Aleksandr Antychev. He also added that the federation would dispute, in the courts, the exclusion from the Tour of the entire Astana team, of which Vinokourov was team

Scheirlinckx’s World Star UL Team equipped with Campagnolo’s prototype electronic group.

The right shifter.

The left shifter, with a good view of the thumb button.

The system’s brain

The computer is hard wired to the rest of the parts.

The integration of the battery is seamless.

A view of the battery’s connection on Stéphane Augé’s Time bike.

The front derailleur.

The rear derailleur.

A rear view.

Mayo finished 16th in this year's Tour de France