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Marco Pantani admits his best days could be behind him, in an interview in the French sports daily L’Equipe published Tuesday. Pantani, who won both the Giro d’Italia and the Tour de France in 1998, said he’s hoping for a solid, but not spectacular 2003 season. “I will probably never be the great Pantani again,” the 33-year-old Italian said. “But it’s irrelevant now. I’m looking to establish a new relationship with my job, to find new serenity.” Pantani was on top of the cycling world when he was kicked out of the 1999 Giro while leading the race when tests revealed a high hematocrit level.

Pantani: setting modest goals for '03

Degroot

Bettini

The escapees

Manitou's new technology must be ridden hard to be fully appreciated

Lennard gets dwarfed by Coach Cartwright

Technical Q&A with Lennard Zinn

Technical Q&A with Lennard Zinn

Mario Cipollini said he wasn't ready to race for the upcoming Tour deMediterranean (see preview below), so that was enough for the organizers to kick his Domina Vacanze team out of the race. Cipollini said during a press conference Saturday at the team presentation in Egypt he simply wasn't in form to commit to a stage-race so early in the season. Instead, the world champion will make his season debut at Luis Puig (Feb. 23 in Spain). When race organizers heard the word, they decided not to allow his Italian team to the start line. "Cipollini waited at the last minute to tell me

Technical Q&A with Lennard Zinn

SHARM EL SHEIHK, Egypt -- Mario Cipollini never does anything half-bore. So it was no surprise when his new team - Domina Vacanze - decided to unveil its new sponsorship deal with the world champion, it would be done with typical Italian style and flash. Cipollini and the boys enjoyed a weekend in the warm Egyptian sun, pressing the flesh so to speak with the locals and sponsors and going on two light training rides in the Sinai Peninsula. VeloNews' European correspondent Andrew Hood sat down with a handful of other English-speaking journalists for an audience with the Lion King on

Euro (Egypt) file - Cipollini never does anything half-bore

A view for a (Lion) King on Egypt's Red Sea.

Things got a little crazy at the end of a wild weekend in Egypt with Super Mario

Cipo getting down during the team presentation in Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt

SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt - What do you get when you combine sun, sand and sea with a strong dose of Mario Cipollini? One bizarre and very Italian -- with a faux Arab touch - team presentation. Domina Vacanze - an Italian time-share and resort company -- is the new title sponsor for Cipollini's team. This weekend, company president Ernesto Preatoni filled a Boeing 737 with the world champion, seven other teammates, about 40 journalists and a gaggle of VIPs, hanger's-on and friends and flew them down to the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula to formally introduce the team's one-year

The final podium.

Brown and Bongiorno battle in the sprint...

...before having a few words afterwords.

Danielson was quick to credit the work of his teammates.

Saturn started at the front, but didn't have to stay there long.

Cipollini looking like a rock star

Mario Scirea, left, Giovanni Lombardi, center, and Cipollini, meet the locals

One of the girls 'Dances like an Egyptian'

Danielson and Munoz battled all the way to the finish.

Danileson shows the strain of the day.

Green (left) lost touch with less than 3km to go.

Horner was on bottle duty all day.

Saturday's podium.

Stage 10 route

Stage 10 profile

Fukushima (center bottom) heads up the day's last climb.

O'Grady got his second TdL win.

Fukushima's face tells the story.

Danielson with team manager Andrzej Bek.

The Telekom Malaysia building.

This long-tailed macaque was one of many seen along Friday's route.

The stage 9 route

The stage 9 profile

Friday’s foaming rant: Our ’cross to bear

I’m stoked.After a weekend of watching the Winter X Games, I’m stoked to learn that, "Dude, great run. Are you stoked?" is apparently a journalistically acceptable interview question. All I can say is, "I’m stoked."I’m just glad the X Games weren’t around when we were kids. Who among us would have survived a childhood of trying to copy those moves? I don’t know how the kids do it. It was bad enough trying to ride no-hands and running into the trunk of a parked car. How can you not watch the Winter X Games, though? Fourteen-year-old kids hucking themselves through the air, all the while

International cycling chief Hein Verbruggen has branded the world sports drug agency as "incredibly weak" and accused it of discrimination in its fight against doping in North America. In a confidential letter addressed to World Anti-Doping Agency president Dick Pound and obtained by The Australian, Verbruggen calls on WADA to lobby the U.S. government and demand it make all of its professional sports fall in line with WADA's doping laws. Verbruggen believes WADA is being soft on pushing the US government to bring its professional ice hockey, tennis and basketball players into line with

"I firmly believe that cyclo-cross is a sport that has a hard core of fans in eight Western European countries. But therefore we must not want to make it a worldwide spectacle." – Hein Verbruggen, the UCI’s Luddite-in-chief, quoted on www.cyclingnews.com I couldn’t agree more. We should leave the worldwide-spectacle thing to Hein, who has been making one of himself for years, with his perverse longing for scratchy wool garments, five-speed friction shifting and shiny steel rims, and keep cyclo-cross where it belongs - in the hands of the deluded little people with their yellow slickers,

Brown was untouchable at the finish.

The break that broke at the end.

O'Neill gets cleaned up.

The stage 8 route.

The stage 8 profile.

The bike room at the Garden Hotel in Kuantan.

A small fruit market along the stage 7 route.

A member of the ever-present police force keeps an eye on things.

Kicked out a day earlier for towing on a team car, iTeamNova’s Ronny Assez checks out the South China Sea during a training ride.

Hawker stall with squid for sale.

South Africa’s team car has seen better days.

The unofficial race mascot.

Figuring out the day’s route.

Jan Ullrich seems to be taking baby steps in his long road back to the elite levels of racing. Ullrich hasn't raced since last year's Tour of Qatar but won't be able to race until March 23, when his racing ban is lifted from his positive for amphetamines last summer. Ullrich has been training with Rudy Pevenage and Tobias Steinhauser in Tuscany, riding up to four to five hours per day. So far, the German wires report, there's no major pain in his knees, the Achilles heel that brought Ullrich all his problems last year. According to reports, he's not riding very hard,

Danielson is now in yellow.

Several minutes have passed since the conclusion of the second stage of the 2003 Tour de Langkawi, but Stuart O’Grady’s motor is still redlined. Moments ago two ugly crashes in the last kilometer of the stage left at least a dozen riders bumped, bruised or worse. Among them are several of O’Grady’s Credit Agricole teammates. Normally O’Grady isn’t one for drama, but the cause of all this carnage has been placed on one of his competitors, a young ambitious Argentinean who rides for the Italian Ceremiche-Panaria team. “It was the most ridiculous sprinting I’ve ever seen,” O’Grady recalls.

Italian sprinter Fabio Baldato spoiled the Frenchies' party Wednesday in the opening stage of the five-day Etoile de Besseges in southern France. Alessio rider Baldato covered the 153.5km stage from St. Cannat to Sainte Tulle in 3 hours, 47 minutes and 6 seconds, edging French rider Franck Bouyer (Brioche La Boulangere) and Mickael Skelde (EDS-Fakta) to score the win. The race continues Thursday with a 150km circuit course in Marseille. Galvez scores second victory in Mallorca Challenge Kelme's Isaac Galvez snagged his second victory in Wednesday's mass sprint in the fourth

I was injured in an accident with a driver who pulled out in front of me while I had the “right of way”. I was unable to avoid the car and ran into the driver’s side door breaking my arm. I missed 6 weeks of work and my bike was totaled out. The driver was ticketed for “failing to yield” and his insurance company accepted liability. I received an offer from the insurance company that seems too low to fully compensate me. I discussed this with the adjuster and she agreed that the broken arm was severe, but that I contributed to the accident by not wearing a helmet and that I was therefore

O'Grady, Brown and O'Neill gave the Aussies a big presence on the podium.

The break that almost stuck.

A dejected Green waits for the KoM jersey presentation.

The stage 7 route

The stage 7 profile

O'Grady before his first Tour de Langkawi win.

Baldato

The police motorcycle line-up before the start of stage 4.

Cycling is getting big-time in Malaysia.

Rear wheel puncture on stage 4.

Although it's no monkey from Malaysia, it is a flying squirrel from Colorado

The French racing season opened Tuesday with Ludo Dierckxsens (Landbouwkrediet) winning the GP d'Ouverture La Marseillaise, 150km from Gardanne to Aubagne near Marseille. The race was marked by a long breakaway by nine riders that took advantage of favorable winds to build an insurmountable lead that was more than half-an-hour by the finish. In the closing kilometers, Magnus Backstedt (Credit Agricole) attacked, only to be joined by Dierckxsens, who beat the Swede to the line. Most teams who competed on Tuesday will stay on for the 33rd Etoile de Besseges, which enters the Bouches region

Brown upped his Langkawi stage total to three.

Stage 6 route

Stage 6 profile

Australian Nathan O’Neill shows off his tan after another hot day in Malaysia.

The scenery softened the blow of a two-hour transfer between stage 3 and 4.

Two members of the Palmans-Collstrop team catch up on the news of the day.