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But for a single mishap, the Posties had a near perfect ride.

Maybe spiked hair tests out better in a wind tunnel than an aero' helmet?

The ONCE team did a stellar job keeping Beloki in the race for GC

Zipp wheels and GT frames brought American technology to Lotto.

Moreau is still in the mix on the strength of a great TTT

US Postal got concerned about the wind and exchanged its HED3 front wheels for Mavic Cosmics.

Credit Agricole's goal was to only lose a minute on the day. Surprise.

Freddy's new ride

O'Grady hangs on to the jersey one more day

Cofidis

Ready for the pre-race warm-up

Bobke doing a stand-up for OLN's U.S. broadcast

Verdun -- Jan Ullrich’s Deutsche Telekom squad has played things very smart so far in this year’s Tour de France. With the minimum of effort, it has kept Ullrich nicely placed in the top 10 on GC and has taken two of the first four stages with Erik Zabel. And on Wednesday’s stressful stage from Huy to Verdun, Telekom placed Alex Vinokourov in two early breaks, and then Udo Bölts in the day’s main nine-man move that blew the race apart. So while Lance Armstrong ’s Postal troops and Joseba Beloki’s ONCE riders were leading a long 50-kph chase, Telekom was able to follow wheels until it was in

Sentinals marked each kilometer along the Voie Sacree today -- the supply route in WWI to the Verdun front

5:37 p.m. local timeSo a few of you have asked that we not reveal the winner in the headline or first paragraph, so if you don't want be surprised as you work your way through our now-not-so-live updates click HERE to work up from the bottom and follow the race from the start. For the rest of you today's winner was ... 5:37 p.m.(local time) Here are the preliminary results of the top five teams. 1. CREDIT AGRICOLE 67km in 1:21;32; (49.3kph)2. ONCE, at 31 seconds;3. FESTINA, at 54 seconds;4. U.S. POSTAL, at 1:26;5. KELME, at 1:38; And we have some major changes in the overall

Ah, a steaming cup to start the day

The pursuit of the Yellow is the hot topic of the month, but today's stage rolled past reminders of bigger matters and sadder times. On the approach to Verdun, there were numerous memorials and thousands of crosses in honor of the hundreds of thousands soldiers who died in this region of northern France in World War 1. The first photo on this page is of a memorial along today's route, and contains the remains of 150,000 unknown soldiers killed in the Battle of Verdun in WWI.

First Steve Peat went down with a shoulder injury. Now Chris Kovarik is out with … visa problems. Word out of the Intense camp is that the American INS boys up in Vancouver wouldn’t let the young Aussie downhiller back into the States after he’d finished up competing at the World Cup race at Grouse Mountain because he had the wrong kind of visa. "He’s got a five-year visitation visa, but what he needs is a work visa or an athlete’s visa," said Intense owner Jeff Steber, Kovarik’s primary sponsor. "We’ve got all the right paper work going now, but at minimum it’s going to take two

The television coverage of today's 210km stage from Huy to Verdun probably didn't do justice to the level of racing going on. It doesn't get much more difficult than a day like we had. Any way you slice it, working at the front all day at full speed is a hard day at the office. An attack went at the 15 kilometer mark that included Vinokourov from Telekom so we made a point of chasing it down. If we let him get some time on the field he would have become one more rider we'd be forced to keep track of. And we don't want to have to worry about him when the roads start slanting up. When the

After 215km, this was a pleasant sight

Vande Velde: 'If we’re gonna do it, we’re gonna do it right.”

Heras, Armstrong and Beloki: That kind of firepower made everyone suffer.

Ossuaire Memorial for the unknown soldiers

Nardello after a spill

O'Grady

The Tour barbers are part of the traveling village that moves each day

Heras (with his soigneur)

Postie bikes ready to roll

There aren't too many flat roads on Wednesday's 215km stage 4 from Huy to Verdun that traverses the Ardennes range from north to south. And the stage won't be made any easier by a predicted three-quarter head wind gusting up to 25 mph and possible rain showers. The good news is that most of the day's climbing is in the first half of the stage, when the unfavorable wind should keep the peloton together.Despite that likelihood, there are bound to be early attacks. Half the field is now more than five minutes off the pace, and 40 of them are more than 10 minutes behind race leader Stuart

5:30 p.m. local timeSo a few of you have asked that we not reveal the winner in the headline or first paragraph, so if you don't want be surprised as you work your way through our now-not-so-live updates click HERE to work up from the bottom and follow the race from the start. For the rest of you today's winner was ... 5:12 p.m. (local time) Jalabert earns his fourth Tour de France stage win, but he will not make it into the yellow jersey. Stuart O'Grady managed to finish close enough to keep the overall lead. Dierckxsens earned second and Nazon edged out Fast Freddie Rodriguez for

Defending Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong of the U.S. Postal team remained tight-lipped as he arrived in Verdun, France after the fourth stage of the Tour de France, a 215km haul from Huy in Belgium on Wednesday. However the 29-year-old Texan, who has refused requests for interviews ever since he told an Italian newspaper of his links to Italian doping guru Michele Ferrari, had a few words for French television. Armstrong, who came in with a 75-man bunch seven seconds behind stage winner Laurent Jalabert of France, told TV reporters that this was the first time he'd been tested on

Our crack reporting staff is working hard to bring you these updates

Peat during happier times.

O'Grady: 31st in the stage, but a great jersey to pull on

Zabel does it again

Today's route through the Ardennes region of Belgium brought back memories of the Spring classics

Nicolas Jalabert and Frédéric Guesdon made the field suffer with their breakaway

The Wauters family: Waiting for the favorite son to stop by

The Armstrong (r) and Rodriguez (l) navigate the Wauters traffic jam

Antwerp fans

Road rations

Julich

5:16 p.m.(local time) Here is the unofficial top 20 list from stage 3 of the 2001 Tour de France. Stuart O'Grady is now officially the overall race leader with a 17-second advantage over Festina's Christophe Moreau, the man who first wore the jersey in Dunkirk. 1. ZABEL Erik GER TEL 198.5km in 4:5:7; 2. MAGNIEN Emmanuel FRA, FDJ; 3. GARZELLI Stefano ITA, MAP; 4. BALDATO Fabio ITA, FAS; 5. SIMON François FRA, BJR; 6. MIKHAILOV Guennadi RUS, LOT; 7. CAPELLE Christophe FRA, BIG; 8. BOUYER Franck FRA, BJR; 9. BAGUET Serge BEL, LOT; 10. ARMSTRONG Lance USA, USP; 11. MOREAU Christophe FRA, FES;

Hincapie's having fun at the start

Everyone knows that a potential Tour de France winner has to make climbing strength his No. 1 priority. An inability to ride fast uphill is a serious handicap. And there's plenty of climbing ahead in this Tour -- starting with Tuesday in the Ardennes of southern Belgium. This is the hilly region where the infamous Liège-Bastogne-Liège World Cup classic takes place every April. It's a race that showcases strong climbers. Five-time Tour de France winners Eddy Merckx of Belgium, and Jacques Anqutil and Bernard Hinault of France, all won the Liège classic. Among the event's most famous climbs

But the end isn't so pleasant

Steve Peat’s dream season has been put on the shelf for awhile. According to Peat’s GT team manager Dean Golich, the British downhill star will miss 3-4 weeks after suffering a third-degree shoulder separation in a training-run crash at the World Cup stop in Grouse Mountain outside Vancouver, British Columbia last Thursday. That means Peat will definitely miss the next World Cup race, stop No. 4 July 14-15 in Durango, Colorado, and is questionable for race No. 5 at Arai, Japan, July 28-29. Prior to the injury, Peat had been having the best season of career. He’d won five straight races --

Rather than have a VN editor in the States tell you what you're about to see, today you'll get the details straight from Casey B. Gibson's email: "Photos include the family of Marc Wauters as the race passed through his home town, the day he wears the Yellow Jersey. Very cool, and he rode right into their arms. Must have been every TV camera and photog in Belgium there as well, and there were so many in the street it almost stopped the peloton. "The shot of Lance and Freddie is as they swerve to avoid the mayhem. "The finish was very hard, and must have blown quite a few. George looked

If I think about it, the racing thus far has been about as I would have expected, but I forget how hard the first week of the Tour is. You remember all of the mountain stages, but this first week comes as a shock every time. And it’s not over yet. The Giro was hard the first week, too, and, like here, there were lots of crashes. But there were always times on each stage where the riders would all relax, and you knew nobody was going to attack. It just had a natural rhythm to it, and you would get 30-50K that was easy. In the Tour, though, there is never an easy pace where guys are just

Warm sunshine, a favorable breeze and a completely flat stage Monday are all the ingredients needed for a stage of record speed. And for Tour stages longer than 200km that means the 48.764 kph average of 1998’s stage of 205.5km from Tarascon to Le Cap d’Agde won by Tom Steels. The absolute Tour stage record speed is the 50.355 kph set by Mario Cipollini on the 194.5km stage from Laval to Blois in 1999. Cipollini is, unfortunately, not at this year’s Tour, but Steels is. Ordinarily, Mapei-Quick Step’s big Belgian would be the favorite to win Monday in his own country, but on Sunday he showed

5:10.m. (local time)Wauters is the man in yellow. A Belgian takes the day when the Tour finishes in Antwerp. Stay tuned for complete results of today's stage, a post-race wrap up story from VeloNews Senior Writer Bryan Jew and analysis and a preview of tomorrow's race from VeloNews's John Wilcockson. 4:53p.m. (local time)Wauters! He takes the stage (and that $22,000 diamond) as the leaders have indeed managed to stay away from the frantically chasing field. And the Belgian from the Rabobank squad is now also the new overall leader of the Tour de France. 4:49p.m. (local time)

The TV cameras may focus on the front of the race, but we all know that action isn't always up there. French and Belgian scenes today by Casey B. Gibson.

You hear people complaining about having one of those "days". Well, I think I might be having one of those "seasons". There's nothing more frustrating than working hard, sacrificing and staying dedicated only to find yourself at trapped under a pile of cyclists. And while there's no time within the moment to ask yourself how the hell you got there, the question does linger for a while afterward. Especially while you're standing around waiting for a wheel. The nagging gets especially annoying while you're on the rivet trying to catch the caravan. You can forget about catching the peloton

He's golden. Wauters earned the yellow jersey when the Tour came to Belgium

Jalabert

Vaughters

This way...no this way

The sponsor village

Freddy R and George H chattin' at the back of the group.

U.S. Postal Service general manager Mark Gorski, the 1984 Olympic sprint champion, said he was almost speechless when he read Sunday morning the accusations made by one of the team's early physicians, Prentice Steffen, in the London newspaper article authored by staff sportswriter David Walsh. Steffen told Walsh that "two of my riders approached me saying they wanted to 'talk about the medical program.'" Walsh then wrote, "Steffen is sure he was being asked to help two riders to dope." In commenting on those statements, Gorski said Sunday evening at the Postal team's hotel

U.S. Postal Service general manager Mark Gorski, the 1984 Olympic sprint champion, said he was almost speechless when he read Sunday morning the accusations made by one of the team's early physicians, Prentice Steffen, in the London newspaper article authored by staff sportswriter David Walsh. Steffen told Walsh that "two of my riders approached me saying they wanted to 'talk about the medical program.'" Walsh then wrote, "Steffen is sure he was being asked to help two riders to dope." In commenting on those statements, Gorski said Sunday evening at the Postal team's hotel 25 miles east of

Durand and Oriol stayed away for more than 100km

Durand and Oriol stayed away for more than 100km

Race officials forced the peloton to stop for a couple of minutes

Moreau

Millar, sporting the prologue abrasions

6:00p.m. (local time) Telekom's Erik Zabel is celebrating his stage win and Festina's Christophe Moreau retains the overall leader's yellow jersey. Today's top five:1. Erik Zabel (Deutsche Telekom)2. Romans Vainsteins (Domo-Farm Frites)3. Jimmy Casper (Française Des Jeux)4. Jens Voigt (Credit Agricole)5. Jaan Kirsipuu (Ag2R) Check back for complete results, a stage wrap-up from VeloNews Senior Writer Bryan Jew, commentary and preview from VeloNews editorial director John Wilcockson and compelling images from this first stage by VeloNews photographers Graham Watson and Casey

Freddy R's bike, with its post-Philly paint

Making history was the last thing on Rob Hunter's mind as he became the first South African to ride in the Tour de France in Dunkirk Saturday. The 24-year-old Lampre rider, who relocated to Europe three years ago in a bid to join the pro ranks, was pre-occupied with the demands of the opening 8.2km prologue than etching his name in the record books. Hunter could only manage a "disappointing" 68th from 189 riders on the first day of the 3454km race, 32sec behind French prologue winner Christophe Moreau. But despite that setback, his comments prior to becoming the first South African to ride

Festina ready to roll

Today's 194.5km stage from St. Omer to Boulogne-sur-Mer has started under cloudy skies and sporatic light rains. All 189 riders contesting the 2001 Tour de France have left St. Omer. Festina's Christophe Moreau is the man in yellow after winning yesterday's prologue time trial in Dunkirk. Be sure to check VeloNew's Tour de France page for up-to-the-minute news as today's stage develops.

Weather brought to you by the North Sea

U.S. Postal cycling team officials vigorously defended the team’s star rider Lance Armstrong over links to drug-tainted Italian sports doctor Michele Ferrari before the start of the Tour de France’s first stage proper in St. Omer on Sunday. Armstrong was quoted by Italian press on Saturday as saying he had sought the help of Ferrari - who has been charged with dope offences - with a view to an attempt on Chris Boardman's world hour record. The revelation was picked up by French media on Sunday, leaving U.S. Postal team officials to field questions as Armstrong gears up for his bid for a

U.S. Postal cycling team officials vigorously defended the team’s star rider Lance Armstrong over links to drug-tainted Italian sports doctor Michele Ferrari before the start of the Tour de France’s first stage proper in St. Omer on Sunday. Armstrong was quoted by Italian press on Saturday as saying he had sought the help of Ferrari - who has been charged with dope offences - with a view to an attempt on Chris Boardman's world hour record. The revelation was picked up by French media on Sunday, leaving U.S. Postal team officials to field questions as Armstrong gears up for his bid for a

Blatter tackles the tough finishing climb up Grouse Mountain.

The story of Stage 1 of this year’s Tour de France seems typical enough for an opening road stage: a slow early pace; a long, eventually unsuccessful breakaway; a mass field sprint; and a stage win by one of the star sprinters of the Tour, Telekom’s Erik Zabel. Routine enough, but the 194.5km stage from Saint-Omer to Boulogne-sur-Mer in the very north of France was anything but an ordinary, flat, sprinters stage. The stage began in the town of Saint-Omer, about 50km inland from the North Sea. Under gray skies and a light drizzle, 188 starters rolled out of town. Lotto-Adecco’s Fabian De