What a March it’s been for Sylvain Chavanel. Earlier this month, the Cofidis rider became the first Frenchman to win a stage at Paris-Nice en route to ninth overall in the Race to the Sun since 2002. On Wednesday, the 28-year-old soloed home in the 200km semi-classic to become the first Frenchman to win Dwars door Vlaanderen on a cold, grimy afternoon in Belgium’s Flanders region.
Fran Ventoso (Andalucía-CajaSur) won the third stage of the Vuelta a Castilla y León on a day that lived up to his name. “Ventoso” means windy in Spanish, but strong northern breezes couldn’t stop his explosive sprint atop a one-kilometer rising finish to snag the win in a perfectly timed acceleration past Samuel Sánchez (Euskaltel-Euskadi). Overnight leader Alberto Contador (Astana) retained his four-second lead over teammate Levi Leipheimer while Christian Vande Velde (Slipstream-Chipotle) slotted up to fifth and Slipstream retained the team classification lead.
Rapha’s pricy, chic line of retro-modern cycling clothing is built from a mix of technical and natural fibers including Merino wool, wool hybrids and synthetic fabrics by Swiss Schoeller. They’re then tested by an outfit of London bicycle messengers, the Rapha Continental test squad, and — not to mention — cycling legend Andy Hampsten.[nid:73678]
The world track championships begin in Manchester, England, on Wednesday with the host nation’s Great Britain team expecting to dominate the five-day event. As if home advantage wasn’t enough, Team GB can lean on the experience and talent of riders such as Chris Hoy, Bradley Wiggins, Mark Cavendish and Victoria Pendleton, as well as the fast-track progression of a clutch of young hopefuls.
The slippery slope of weight management.
The UCI and the organization representing professional cyclists met in Geneva on Tuesday to discuss the possible imposition of penalties on riders who recently participated in Paris-Nice. A delegation of riders representing the Cyclistes Professionnels Associés (CPA) asked for a meeting with the international governing body in order to clarify questions regarding the risks assumed by teams and riders who opt to participate in events not officially sanctioned by the UCI.
The heat is on in chilly Manchester. The British press says it was the coldest Easter in 40 years but inside the velodrome it is definitely starting to warm up. You can feel the heat pouring from the vents. A hot track is a fast track: the air is less dense. It’s physics — bodies hurl through space faster with less resistance. This storied Manchester track is the British national cycling center. It’s the home of SEVEN current world champs. And it is proven that, in the right conditions on this track, world records will fall.
World champion Paolo Bettini (Quick Step) admits he’s not in good enough shape to tackle the demands of the cobble-stoned climbs at the Tour of Flanders and is giving a pass on the Belgian monument along with E3 Prijs Vlaanderen. He will race instead in the Vuelta a País Vasco in Spain’s Basque Country ahead of the hillier courses at Amstel Gold, Flèche Wallone, and Liège-Bastogne-Liège that favor his riding style.
Liquigas went full bore in the double-stage opener of the Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali in Italy on Tuesday. The 2002 U23 world champion Francesco Chicchi sprinted to victory in the morning road stage and then the Italian squad won the 11.8km team time trial afternoon stage ahead of Acqua e Sapone and Tinkoff Credit Systems.
Karsten Kroon (CSC) wanted to win a stage at Paris-Nice earlier this month to demonstrate he’s on track for the upcoming spring classics. He could only manage second in a breakaway stage into Sisteron, but the 32-year-old Dutch rider made up for the close call with a tidy sprint finish Tuesday in the second stage of the Vuelta a Castilla y León to prove his point.
The organizer of next month’s three major spring classics named the 25 teams invited to participate in Paris-Roubaix, Fleche Wallone and Liège-Bastogne-Liège and Paris-Roubaix on Tuesday. As expected, the Astana team of defending Tour de France champion Alberto Contador was not included on the list issued by the Amaury Sport Organisation, the private firm that also organizes the Tour.
Our annual Buyer's Guide features some in-depth factory tours. You'll have to pick up a copy for the full story, but here are some photo outtakes from our tour of the Calfee factory in La Selva Beach, California, taken by VeloNews photo editor Brad Kaminski. Make sure to check out the Buyer's Guide to read Fred Dreier's full article on Calfee, as well as factory tours of Specialized, Masi, Primus Mootry and other builders, big and small, around the globe.
Going back to the drawing board won’t be an option for Team Australia at the end of the world track cycling championships this week. With the Beijing Olympics just around the corner, the Australians — and fellow track giants Britain and France - know it's now time to set down markers or forget dreaming about gold medal success in China this August. Australia set a blistering pace on the Athens Olympic velodrome in 2004, but for the past two years the Aussies have been playing catch-up to the new track pacesetters Britain.
Are ceramics that delicate?
Dear Lennard,
In your article on ceramic bearings in the recent VeloNews Buyers Guide I got the impression that these things were not only smooth but durable as well. As a result, I ordered a ceramic SRAM bottom bracket with the Red crankset on my new bike.
To say the least, I was surprised when I read the SRAM maintenance instructions that came with it and saw the recommendation that one should disassemble and lube the bearings after every 100 hours of use and immediately after riding in the rain or wet.
Briton Emma Pooley won the Trophee Alfredo Binda, the second round of the UCI's World Cup, soloing to victory by more than a minute in the 120-kilometer race from Cittiglio to Varese in Italy. Pooley finished 1:08 of the field sprint, which was won by the Netherland's Suzanne De Goede, who finished ahead of former world champion Diana Ziliute of Lithuania. Pooley is now tied for first in the World Cup standings with Katheryn Curi Mattis, winner of round one in Geelong, Australia, last month.
The first trial involving the BALCO steroid distribution scandal that rocked athletics and baseball began in San Francisco Monday with former Olympic cyclist Tammy Thomas facing perjury charges. Thomas, who was indicted while in her second year of law school in late 2006, pleaded innocent to charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. She is accused of lying in October of 2003 to a federal grand jury looking into the BALCO affair by saying she did not take performance-enhancing drugs.
Alberto Contador and his Astana teammates aren’t going to the Tour de France this summer, so they look intent on winning everything else instead. Just a day after Tomas Vaitkus sprinted to victory in Holland, last year’s Tour champ surged to an impressive time trial victory to open the Vuelta a Castilla y León on Monday in northern Spain. Contador stopped the clock on the technical 9.7km course in 11 minutes, 39 seconds, just 3.6 seconds faster than Tour of California champ and Astana teammate Levi Leipheimer.
Will Frischkorn had a front-row seat in Saturday’s Milan-San Remo. The 26-year-old Slipstream-Chipotle rider featured prominently in the day’s main breakaway in a four-man move that pulled clear for more than 230km in the season’s longest one-day race. It was a coming of age of sorts for Frischkorn, who is taking full advantage of Slipstream’s entry into Europe’s biggest races this season. The breakaway gave Slipstream some prime TV time and put Frischkorn in the European spotlight after banging through unglamorous French gutter races for the past few years.
Team Type 1's Matt Wilson will be out of competition for a couple of weeks following a training ride crash that left him with a broken wrist. Wilson was training last Wednesday on the Pacific Coast Highway with Toyota-United’s Heath Blackgrove and Hilton Clarke when the crash occurred. “We were coming up to an intersection and I didn’t see the guy in front of me stop and my bike went straight into him,” Wilson said. “It was a stupid nothing crash. I hit the ground at a bad angle and just broke it.”
The world’s premier female road racers will take to the tarmac this Monday, March 24th, for the second round of the 2008 UCI women’s World Cup, held at Italy’s famed Trofeo Alfredo Binda race, just north of Varese. The race marks the first time since 2005 that Italy has hosted a round of the women’s World Cup. The undulating 121km course includes two long and three short loops, and will run on roads just north of the route of this year's UCI world championships. The 2008 edition marks the 36th running of the Trofeo Alfredo Binda event.
It wasn’t a sprint or an attack over the Poggio that won the 99th Milan-San Remo. It was Fabian Cancellara's instinct for big drama in cycling’s biggest days.
Revising its original plan to reserve its Record Red Ergopower shifters for professionals, Campagnolo announced Thursday that it will offer a limited run of the special heavy-action shifters to the public. The pro Ergo levers incorporate stronger springs for a more tactile action. Campagnolo says that the change was made to appease elite riders who use the crisper action to “feel the shifts at the hardest moments of the race.”
The name on the team jersey is new, as are many of the riders wearing it. But the mission remains the same after nine years under the Jelly Belly banner — to provide a home for developing riders and win some key races along the way.
Agritubel went one-two in the ninth Classic Loire-Atlantique in France on Friday just a day after learning it was going back to the Tour de France. Mikel Gaztanaga, 27, slipped away in a 20km breakaway that held on until the end to keep the race trophy on the team’s shelf. Agritubel won last year with Nicolas Jalabert. Teammate Jimmy Casper came through second while Frédéric Finot (Differdange-Apiflo Vacances) took third at eight seconds adrift. Agritubel was one of three wild cards invited to the 2008 Tour. It will be the team’s third consecutive Tour appearance.
Australian rider Allan Davis, who finished second in the Tour Down Under in January, has joined Belgium's Mitsubishi team, which competes on the second-division Continental Pro circuit. Davis, 27, kicked off his professional career in 2003 under Manolo Saiz with the ONCE and then Liberty teams. Last year, the Australian rode with the now-defunct American team Discovery Channel, under whose colors he finished second at Milan-San Remo.
Fourteen junior cyclists were injured, two of them seriously, when a car plowed into their peloton during a training session Friday in Poland, police said. The youths were hit by the oncoming vehicle on a main road near Kalisz in central Poland, the home of their cycling club, KTK, local police told the country's PAP news agency.
The past week has been one Rock Racing’s Michael Ball would likely rather forget. On Tuesday the team owner and Italian star Mario Cipollini announced that they had parted ways, and on Thursday Tour de Georgia organizers Medalist Sports announced that Rock was not among the 15 teams invited to compete this year.
La Classicissimia, La Primavera – whatever you call it, Milan-San Remo is one of cycling’s most electrifying and prestigious races, one of the sport’s treasured “monuments.” Whoever wins San Remo is king of Italy for a day. Twenty-five eight-man teams line up Saturday in front of the Castello Sforzesco in Milan for the 298km run past the picturesque headlands jutting out of the Italian Riviera toward the finish in San Remo.
Shimano’s electric Dura-Ace is becoming more and more common in the ProTour peloton. Gerolsteiner rider Stefan Schumacher scored a podium placing on it at last year’s world championships. For three years now an electric prototype group has been raced in the spring classics and semi-classics. Last year it was also in cycling’s biggest show, the Tour de France.
Lausanne's Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) said Thursday that it would make a judgment on the doping case involving Italian Danilo Di Luca in 10 days time. Tour of Italy champion and former Pro Tour winner Di Luca served a three-month suspension for doping at the back end of last year. He had been implicated in the 'Oil for drugs' affair, accused of using the services of a tainted Dr. Carlo Santuccione, who is suspected of supplying doping products to athletes. But Di Luca took his case to the highest appeal body in an attempt to clear his name.
Organizers on Thursday announced the 15, 8-rider teams that will compete in next month's Tour de Georgia. A total of 120 professional cyclists will compete in the 600-mile, seven-day event to be held April 21-27. The final field:
Cyclists in the now defunct Team T-Mobile "probably" took doping products under the supervision of Freiburg university doctors, according to an independent report published on Thursday. And the 23-page interim report, published by the commissioned inquiry into the doping scandal at Freiburg's University Medical Clinic, has also named two more doctors involved in the scandal. The report sheds light on the doping practices of Team T-Mobile — who changed their name from Team Telekom in 2004.
Tour de France organiser ASO on Thursday named the 20 teams it has selected for this year's race. The line-up includes the American team Slipstream-Chipotle. Team director Jonathan Vaughters said the invitation was a relief. "I found out about 5 minutes ago," Vaughters told VeloNews Thursday morning.
Milan-San Remo is the season’s first big fish and cycling’s most important one-day race for sprinters never fails to deliver one of the most exciting battles of the year. Changes in both the finish area due to work on the Via Roma and the addition of a new climb called Le Manie with about 100km to go are sure to add new drama to one of the year’s most important contests.
This year's Tirreno-Adriatico featured classic Italian scenery, a string of blistering sprint finishes, and a key 26km time trial on stage 5 that largely determined the overall win for CSC's world champion, Fabian Cancellara.
Tour de Georgia organizers on Wednesday released details of one of the most anticipated stages at this year's race — stage 4's 10-mile team time trial, to be held at Road Atlanta, a race car track 50 miles outside Atlanta. At a media event at the track, race organizers spelled out the logistics for the event: four circuits on the hilly, 12-turn track for each 8-man team. Two teams will be on the track at at a time and the team's time will be taken from the fifth team member across the line.
Generalities — I’m heading deep into them here in the coming paragraphs. That said, the differences in racing styles from one country to another are pretty entertaining. Racing styles differ dramatically, and while some countries have an “international” feel, most manage to retain their individuality pretty well, even with a chunk of the field from afar. I’ve also noticed a little parallel between racing style, and the mentality of the country behind it (Warning: BIG GENERALITIES HERE).
Quick Step is so deep in talent on its classics team it can put up a half-dozen candidates for victory. With the team’s big stars Tom Boonen and Paolo Bettini resting their guns for Saturday’s Milan-San Remo, other riders are getting a chance to step into the spotlight. Last week, it was Gert Steegmans winning two stages at Paris-Nice.
Milan-San Remo will have an extra team after all, but it won’t be Rock Racing. Just a day after Mario Cipollini cut ties with the American team, race organizers of Saturday’s “La Primavera” announced that Miche-Silver Cross would fill the final slot for the classics season opener. Rock Racing and Cipollini were hoping for a last-minute bid to start Milan-San Remo, a race Cipollini won in 2002, but race organizers opted to go with the San Marino-based continental team instead.
Mario Cipollini’s relationship with the American team Rock Racing has ended, and the Italian is quashing rumors that he might jump into this weekend’s Milan-San Remo for a different team. “Unfortunately I've had to end my relationship with the American Rock Racing team that started a few months ago,” the former world champion said Tuesday. European papers had speculated that Cipollini would join the Tinkoff Credit Systems team for Milan-San Remo, but he said he was only interested in joining a team if he could be involved with its management and development.
The International Cycling Union says it will open discipline hearings on the French cycling federation and its president for their role in the UCI's spat with Paris-Nice organizer Amaury Sport Organization. And in a press release issued Tuesday, the UCI says it will meet with teams and rider representatives on March 25th to discuss "measures appropriate to the situation."
Dear Lennard, Question for you re: forks for long head tubes. I'm 6'4" and have a Seven Axiom with a roughly 30cm head tube and a Seven rebadged Reynolds carbon fork on it. It is a bit flexy when braking while cornering and I'd like to improve that. What options are out there and how do they rate vs. each other? I know Alpha Q makes one with a steerer long enough (as seen on your bike) as does Storck, but want to understand if they are better than the Reynolds vis a vis flex/rigidity. Ted Dear Ted,
CSC's Fabian Cancellara held on to win the 43rd edition of the Tirreno-Adriatico following Tuesday's seventh and final stage. Italian Francesco Chicchi of Liquigas won the 176km run around San Benedetto del Tronto. But the 26-year-old Swiss, the current double world time-trial champion, kept hold of the leader's blue jersey and set himself up as one of the hot favorites for Saturday's Milan-San Remo.
Bobby Julich (CSC) says cycling’s peloton gets the message when it comes to the doping issue. The 36-year-old veteran believes that the majority of riders support clean racing and realize the credibility gap facing the sport as it enters a decisive season. That’s not to say everyone is happy with new demands made by anti-doping agencies.
Team High Road's Linus Gerdemann will be unable to train for one to two months, his team says, after breaking his leg in two places in a crash at Tirreno-Adriatico Sunday. The 25-year-old says he hopes to back in time for this summer's Tour de France. "I will do my very best to be back on the bike as soon as possible and I will fight to become part of the 2008 Tour de France," Gerdemann said. Following the crash Gerdemann was flown to a Hamburg hosipital, where he was treated by a team physician.
Former professional rider, team director and television commentator Frankie Andreu is directing the ZteaM under-25 racing team at June's Tour of Pennsylvania, a U25 event. ZteaM is a national cycling club supporting the growth of masters, elite, and youth cycling through club riding and racing. The group is funded by national and regional sponsors, and its own members.
When a professional bike race rolls into town, it’s not that unusual for teams to visit local schools to talk to children about cycling and encourage them to attend the upcoming races and/or compete in the kids’ race. It’s a bit more unusual, though, for them to offer free helmets to 50 children.
Flanders is hell. Flanders is beautiful. The terrain and environment are terrible for cycling: the wind howls, the roads are bumpy, cracked or cobbled, the air is damp when it isn’t raining and rarely does the sun shine. But the roads are packed with cyclists. There is a race nearly everyday somewhere in Flanders that crisscrosses the bleak open muddy farm fields. The Flandriens know, feel, and live the sport.
Dede Barry’s 2002 win in Montreal stood as America’s sole women’s road World Cup victory before Katheryn Curi-Mattis out-sprinted breakaway companion Emma Rickards to take Australia’s 2008 Geelong World Cup last month. The two attacked with 75km remaining in the 120km race, then held off a hard-charging Team High Road — looking to set up sprinter Ina Teutenburg. The finished a minute ahead of the pack in the Feb. 24 race.
Rabobank's Oscar Freire won a sprint finish to the sixth and penultimate stage of the Tirreno-Adriatico race in Italy on Monday. Freire took the 196km stage from Civitanova Marche and Castelfidaro ahead of two Italians — Filippo Pozzato and Danilo Di Luca. Fabian Cancellara of CSC retained the overall lead ahead of Tuesday's final stage.
NEWS FLASH: I put Centaur Ergopower levers on my SRAM Red-equipped bike and have been riding it happily ever since with nary a hiccup in the shifting. I have a SRAM 10-speed chain, SRAM Red chainrings, SRAM Red front derailleur, SRAM Red rear derailleur, and SRAM Red 10-speed cogset mated with the Centaur 10-speed Ergopower levers. This means that Campagnolo and SRAM 10-speed road shifters, including their bar-end models, pull almost exactly the same amount of cable with each click.
In a hard, fast race full of attacks but few breaks, world-class German sprinter Ina-Yoko Teutenberg (Team High Road) triumphed in the final stretch of the Visalia Criterium on Sunday, pulling around Brooke Miller (Team Tibco), who took second just in front of teammate and lead-out, Lauren Franges. Rounding out the top five were Canadian Anne Samplonius (Cheerwine) and Meredith Miller (Aaron’s).
Marathon cross-country specialists Thomas Dietsch (Gewiss-Bianchi) and Pia Sundstedt (Rocky Mountain) grabbed wins at the 90km UCI marathon World Cup opener in Manavgat, Turkey on Sunday. American Monique “Pua” Sawicki (Ellsworth-Topeak) finished in seventh place in the women’s race.
Starting and finishing in Nice, the riders battled the local cat 1 climbs in the final stage of the 2008 Paris-Nice.
John Murphy relied on some savvy team work by his Health Net - Maxxis team to preserve his lead in the Tour de Taiwan Sunday. Murphy and his teammates successfully defended the lead against challenges from last year's winner Team Type 1's Shawn Milne, who started the stage 9 seconds behind Murphy on the GC.
A rash of new anti-doping controls and cycling’s tightening noose around would-be cheaters is ruffling some feathers in the peloton. Riders staged a protest before the start of Sunday’s final stage at Paris-Nice for what they characterized as unfair treatment of Kevin Van Impe, a Belgian rider who was forced to give urine samples for a surprise control Saturday as he was preparing the funeral of his infant son.
Health Net-Maxxis' John Murphy held onto the overall lead and the points competition lead following Saturday's penultimate stage of the Tour de Taiwan. The stage was a 58km criterium held outside the Taipei International Bicycle Show, a major industry event. Murphy held off a challenge from last year’s winner, Shawn Milne of Team Type 1. Milne won the event last years for the Health Net team and entered Saturday's stage seven seconds behind Murphy.
And welcome to the final day of VeloNews.Com's Live Coverage of the 66th Paris-Nice.
Our finale has three cat. 1 climbs packed into a short course in the mountains above Nice. This is no last day parade: it's a tough course and race leader Davide Rebellin has just a 3-second lead over Ag2r's Rinaldo Nocentini.
Swiss rider Fabian Cancellara (Team CSC) took the overall lead at Tirreno-Adriatico after winning Sunday’s fifth stage, a 26km time trial from Macerata to Recanati. The two-time world time-trial champion finished in 33 minutes and 41 seconds, with American David Zabriskie (Slipstream-Chipotle) second at at 0:22 and Thomas L?okvist (Team High Road) third at 0:53.
Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner) survived a flurry of attacks to win the 66th edition of Paris-Nice on Sunday after Luis-León Sanchez (Caisse d’Epargne) took the slimmest of victories in the final stage around Nice. Rebellin, who saw the leader's jersey slip away to Alberto Contador in the finale last year, was delighted to have held onto it this time around.
Tour de France organizer Amaury Sport Organization (ASO) said Sunday it would announce next week which teams it has selected for this year's race. ASO made the announcement after holding "constructive" talks with teams ahead of the final stage of Paris-Nice, which it also organises.
Kristin Armstrong (Cervelo Lifeforce) put the hurt on a world-class field of pro women Saturday, winning the 40km Yokohl Ranch Exeter Time Trial, with over four minutes separating her from second place Aussie, Alex Rhodes (Team High Road), and third place Canadian, Felicia Gomez (Aaron’s). Canadian national time trial champion Anne Samplonius (Cheerwine) came in fourth, followed by US National Team member, Katharine Carroll (Aaron’s).
Chavanel got his redemption as Gesink lost the yellow jersey to Rebellin during stage 6. Graham Watson was there to document it all.
Belgian cyclist Kevin Van Impe was taken for a routine drugs test just as he was at the crematorium filling in papers following the death of his baby son, media reported Saturday. The Quick Step rider was at Lochristi crematorium when a drugs tester turned up and demanded he provide a sample, warning that otherwise he could face a two-year suspension. "He wouldn't even come back later in the day. It was either do it right on the spot or it would be taken as if I had refused," Van Impe told Web site www.sport.be.
Italian sprint king Alessandro Petacchi gained revenge on Oscar Freire by claiming the fourth stage of the Tirreno-Adriatico over 166km from Porto Recanati to Civitanova Marche on Saturday. Three days ago Petacchi was edged out by Freire in the race's opening stage. But this time the Team Milram rider turned the tables on the Spanish Rabobank leader with Italian Filippo Pozzato of Liquigas in third. Those three are the big favorites for the important Milan-San Remo classic on March 22.
Welcome to Saturday Morning Live, from Paris Nice. It's the same as VeloNews's weekday live coverage, we're just dressed more casually.
Today's sixth stage is another tough one. The 206km journey from Sisteron to Cannes is the longest stage of the race. It features seven rated climbs, including the decisive cat. 2 Col du Tanneron with 20km to go.
Bright-eyed, 21-year-old Robert Gesink might have time on his side, but Davide Rebellin used all of the savvy of his 15-year career to snatch away the Paris-Nice yellow jersey Saturday in nail-biting sixth stage won by Sylvain Chavanel.
After a solid debut to the 2008 season, Slipstream-Chipotle can’t catch a break in Paris-Nice. Bad news keeps piling up just as the team was looking to impress ASO bosses this week and earn a ticket to the Tour de France. While optimistic it will earn an invite to July’s big dance, team insiders are hoping that Tour brass will consider the team’s strong anti-doping message and consistent early season results rather than how it’s stumbling through the season’s first major stage race.
Health Net-Maxxis rider Kyle Gritters followed course directions in Friday's Tour de Taiwan stage — even when the race officials didn’t — to win the stage. Gritters' teammate John Murphy retains the overall lead and the leads the points competition in the race, which concludes Sunday. The rolling, 127km stage was chaotic, according to team directeur sportif Mike Tamayo, due to the rainy, windy conditions. But he said things got really interesting in the latter part of the stage.
Graham Watson captured the action, including Barredo's narrow victory during stage 5 of the 2008 Paris-Nice.
Welcome to the VeloNews Live Coverage of the 66th Paris-Nice.
Today's we have the 172.5km fifth stage from Althen-des-Paluds to Sisteron, across the heart of Provence. The stage opens with a challenging Cat. 2 in the first 30km that's prime real estate for an attack.
Three more Cat. 3s await in the rollercoaster stage, which ends with an 18km loop around Sisteron.
Niklas Axelsson (PVC Diquigiovanni-Androni) slipped into the leader's jersey at Tirreno-Adriatico on Friday after finishing third in stage 3. Spaniard Joachim Rodriguez (Caisse d'Epargne) won the 195km leg from Gubbio to Montelupone with Italian Danilo Di Luca (Team LPR) second. An early escape by Jose Garcia Acosta (Caisse d'Epargne) and Lloyd Mondori (Ag2r) took a lead of more than eight minutes before being swept up in the final 20km.
Carlos Barredo (Quick Step) is one of those riders who can do just about anything. He chases down breakaways for the GC captains, goes on the attack to take off the pressure in the spring classics and even managed to finish 10th in last year’s Vuelta a España. Friday was payback time for the 26-year-old Barredo, who attacked late in the 172.5km fifth stage across Provence to drop the remnants of a 17-man breakaway and claim Quick Step’s third win in six days of racing at the 66th Paris-Nice.
UCI chief pat McQuaid on Friday promised to back reigning Tour de France champion Alberto Contador should he decide to take legal action over his exclusion from this year's race. The tour's organisers, Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), ruled on February 13 that Contador's Astana team would be barred from competing in this year's race as a result of doping scandals over the past two years. But International Cycling Union (UCI) president McQuaid said the decision is unfair.
Unibet.com, the ProTour team that disintegrated last year after being barred from most events, is back, with a new name and new sponsor. The UCI has granted a one-year "wild card" license to the Swedish UCI professional continental team Cycle Collstrop, sponsored by a timber company. Last year the team was granted a ProTour license while sponsored by Unibet.com, a Swedish gambling Web site.
American Shawn Milne (Team Type 1) won Thursday's fifth stage of the Tour de Taiwan, moving into second place behind Health Net's John Murphy. It was the first professional race victory for the team. Milne won the Tour de Taiwan last year while on the Health Net team. His victory on Thursday came in a field sprint at the end of the 92-mile Hsinchu City circuit race, the event's longest stage. Murphy was sixth, while also picking up three points and a two-second time bonus for his second place in an intermediate sprint. Murphy is leading the GC and the points competition.
Graham Watson was following the tough stage 4, finishing up the infamous Mt. Ventoux.
Italian Raffaele Illiano (Diquigiovanni-Androni) won the second stage of Tirreno-Adriatico on Thursday, edging out countryman Enrico Gasparotto (Barloworld) in a sprint finish. Niklas Axelsson (Diquigiovanni-Androni) was third. The trio, with German Linus Gerdemann (Team High Road) and Saunier Duval teammates Riccardo Ricco and Eros Capecchi, went clear of the peloton on the last climb of the day, about 25km from the finale of the 203km leg from Civitavecchia to Gubbio.
And welcome to VeloNews' Live Coverage of the fourth stage of the 2008 Paris Nice, a 176km day from Montelimar to Mont Ventoux.
Today's course combines tradition with something a little new: The course traces four Cat. 3 climbs before tackling Ventoux's "undiscovered" north face. The 17km final Cat. 1 climb finishes at the Mont Serein ski station, about 5km short of the observatory summit featured in the Tour de France.
Robert Gesink (Rabobank) couldn’t have picked a bigger stage to announce himself to the world. Holland’s first pure climber in a generation surged into the yellow jersey after Thursday’s summit finish on Mont Ventoux in a searing attack with 5km to go that left everyone choking on his fumes — except 2007 Tour de France runner-up Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto). While Evans slipped past to win the stage, Gesink proved he’ll be a man to reckon with as he took control of Paris-Nice with three tough stages to go.