Road

Having a group to head out with each morning at our team training camp in Mallorca last week was a change after having spent six winter weeks either riding alone or with just one other rider.

A storm blew across the Qatari desert Monday, but it wasn’t one of the sirocco winds that can scour this flat desert wasteland. Instead, it came in the form of a super-motivated Quick Step team that left the Tour of Qatar peloton flayed like a lonely flag tattered in the wind. Coming a day after its team time trial victory, QuickStep didn’t miss a step and hammered through stiff crosswinds in Monday’s 137.5km second stage from Al Zubarah to the Doha Golf Club to shatter the race into pieces.

Doping scandals aside, the Tour de France is doing very well, merci beaucoup. Earlier this month, the French stage race signed a contract extension through 2013 with French public television worth a reported 23 million euros per year (about $34 million). Despite back-to-back editions wracked by doping scandals, Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme told VeloNews would-be host cities are clamoring to be a part of cycling’s marquee race.

Slipstream-Chipotle came within two seconds of a Hollywood ending in Sunday’s opening team time trial at the seventh Tour of Qatar in the first race of what will be an ambitious 2008 campaign. Anchored by big engines Magnus Backstedt and David Millar, Australia’s Chris Sutton crossed the line first for the argyle gang in 6 minutes, 37 seconds, and looked to have the win in the bag with only defending champion Quick Step still on the short but fast 6km out-and-back course along Doha’s palm-lined corniche.

The likelihood of a Tour de France bid for Slipstream-Chipotle was already looking good before Sunday’s impressive second-place showing in the opening team time trial at the Tour of Qatar. With Tour de France boss Christian Prudhomme quietly looking on, the team missed victory by just two seconds to powerhouse Quick Step to show Tour brass and everyone else that the team has the on-bike brawn to back up its mantra of clean racing.

Never did the man who came to the 2008 Tour Down Under with aspirations of winning a sprint or two believe it was possible to win the race overall. But on a picture-perfect Sunday in Adelaide, that's exactly what happened to Andre Greipel.

It was a hat trick, but not quite the hat trick some might have predicted at the beginning of the year. Dutchman Lars Boom scored his third world cyclocross title Sunday, adding an elite gold medal to the junior title he earned in 2003 and the U23 rainbow jersey he scored at last year’s world’s in Belgium. His Rabobank teammate, Sven Nys, however, had to settle for third, missing out on an impressive triple of his own — a world title to add to his World Cup crown and the Belgian national championship — losing a sprint for second to Czech rider Zdenek Stybar.

If women’s cyclocross racing has just one rule, it has to be “never, never, never count out Hanka.” Germany’s Hanka Kupfernagel racked up an impressive win at the world cyclocross championships on Sunday after a season of insisting that her training was focused entirely on qualifying for the road and time-trial events at this summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing.

Lycra and burkhas are the unlikely companions this week as the seventh Tour of Qatar cranks up Sunday in this oil-rich state protruding into the Persian Gulf like a thumb. There’s nary a mountain, but plenty of sand and wind in what’s become a popular season-starter for riders — 130 of them this year, representing 24 nations on 17 teams from the United States, Europe and Asia.

Rock Racing rider Kayle Leogrande is the anonymous rider filing a lawsuit against the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, charging that it planned to test his B urine sample after his A sample tested negative for performance-enhancing drugs, several sources told VeloNews Friday. Sources with intimate knowledge of the case confirmed that Leogrande is the unnamed cyclist suing USADA, and verified that sworn affidavits have been filed with the agency as it tries to build a case against the 30-year-old rider.

Niels Albert had just one question heading into the world cyclocross championships in Treviso, Italy, this year: Whether to jump into the elite category or ride his final year as an under-23. He now says he made the right choice. “I’m glad I did what I did,” said the 21-year-old Belgian. “I had considered making the jump, but now I can add this to the junior title (he won in 2004) and set my eyes on getting the third one.”

It appears Andre Greipel is a man who can do no wrong. Before this week, the palmarès of the 25-year-old from Rostock amounted to five wins in much smaller stage races. But all of a sudden, he's stepped up to the ProTour level in a very, very big way. And after a third stage victory Saturday in Willunga, he finds himself the likely champion of the 2008 Tour Down Under with just one stage remaining.

Arnaud Jouffroy lined up as the odds-on favorite on Saturday at the world junior cyclocross championship in Treviso, Italy. He didn’t disappoint, but he had to fight to live up to expectations. Based largely on the strength of his sixth-place finish at world’s last year, the fact that the five men who finished ahead of him had graduated to the U23 category, and his stellar results all season, the 17-year-old Frenchman was the pick of many in a sport often dominated by Belgians.

The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency faces a lawsuit claiming that it overstepped its own rules by intending to test a cyclist’s B urine sample after the A-sample test came back negative. Associated Press sportswriter Eddie Pells reported Thursday that an anonymous professional cyclist has filed a lawsuit against USADA on behalf of “John Doe,” seeking an injunction to prevent the anti-doping agency from ever testing the B sample.

Belgian police this week questioned former world cycling champion Tom Boonen and searched his parents' home as part of a drugs investigation involving another cyclist. The Tour de France green jersey winner's name came up during a police inquiry into Belgian cyclocross rider Tom Vanoppen. On Wednesday, Belgian police carried out a search of Boonen's parents' home in the northern town of Retie, a move described by prosecutor Marc Rubens on Friday as routine.

The stage has been set for a showdown of epic proportions. In searing heat, a highly animated fourth stage of the Tour Down Under had the potential to impose time gaps, but the finale in Strathalbyn saw the fourth bunch gallop in as many days. High Road's Andre Greipel took a convincing win over race leader Mark Renshaw, who kept his ochre jersey, thus leaving the door to overall honors wide open for Saturday's stage in Willunga.

It’s rather comical how meticulously I pack my bikes and gear for a big race trip, such as this recent adventure to Belgium. Everything is cleaned, wrapped, folded, and hermetically sealed, then put in its perfect place. However, on the return leg of trips such as this one, it’s a different story.

Could Levi Leipheimer and defending champion Alberto Contador be left out of the 2008 Tour de France because of the bad-news legacy of the Astana team? That’s what French and Spanish media reports are suggesting as the Tour de France organization mulls its invitations for the upcoming edition. Sources say lingering questions over whether Contador is linked to the Operación Puerto investigation and Astana’s scandalous legacy from 2007 might prompt Tour organizers to leave the team out of the season’s most important race when invitations are announced in the coming weeks.

The finish may still be three days away, but there's every possibility the 10th edition of the Tour Down Under will come down to the wire. And get this: The winner may well be the sprinter who can climb best.

AT&T Inc. has signed on as the presenting sponsor for the 2008 Tour de Georgia, race organizers announced Wednesday. As presenting sponsor, AT&T will own exclusive rights for communications services during the race, scheduled April 21-27. Last year, AT&T was one of the race’s “founding partner” sponsors. Its support included naming rights to the overall leader’s jersey awarded after each stage. That will continue in 2008. “AT&T is pleased to continue its involvement with the Tour de Georgia this year,” said Sylvia E. Anderson, president of AT&T Georgia.

So far, it's a Tour Down Under like we've never seen before. In years past, after two stages there's been only a handful of riders left in contention. But this year is clearly different: After Andre Greipel's scintillating stage victory in Hahndorf, three riders have the same time overall - all of them sprinters.

Four-time former Belgian champion Tom Steels begins what will be his last season before retiring at the end of this year with Landbouwkrediet. A winner of nine stages at the Tour de France, the 36-year-old Steels was the top draw in the team’s official presentation Tuesday in Brussels. The Belgian continental team is hoping Steels can go out on a winning note and will include a heavy spring schedule for Steels, once one of the most fearsome sprinters in the bunch.

Italian racer Eddy Mazzoleni could be slapped with a two-year racing ban for his role in the “Oil for Drugs” doping investigation if Italian authorities have their way. Prosecutors from the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) also recommended a life ban for journeyman rider Domenico Quagliariello in what are the toughest disciplinary rulings to come down surrounding the doping probe that dates back to 2004. The 34-year-old Mazzoleni -- third overall in the 2007 Giro d’Italia -- was dropped by the Astana team last summer after links to the ongoing investigation were revealed.

It seems Frank Vandenbroucke has more cycling lives than a cat. The oft-injured, often scandalized “enfant terrible” of cycling is making yet another comeback, this time with the small Mitsubishi team that was born out of the former Jartazi squad. Now 33, the once-mighty Belgian is determined to keep racing even if the small team is a far cry from Europe’s most important teams he once ruled with victories in the 1998 Paris-Nice and the 1999 Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

Dear Lennard,
I'm interested in buying the Deda Zero 100 stem you recently reviewed. However I noticed that the clamp size is listed as 31.7mm. The bar I wanted to use is the FSA K-Wing Carbon which has a clamp size listed as 31.8mm. Will the 0.1mm difference in size make this combination incompatible?
Steve Dear Steve,

It's been four years coming, but on a baking hot Tuesday in Angaston, Mark Renshaw finally delivered on what he'd long set out to do. Maybe it was the hours spent behind a motorbike over the Australian summer, paced by his father over the dead roads of Bathurst in country New South Wales. Maybe it was the added strength that comes with three full seasons as a professional, under the wise-old wings of team manager Roger Legeay.

Sprinter ace Robbie McEwen says he won’t be jealous come July about Cadel Evans’ rising prominence on Silence-Lotto for the 2008 season. With Evans bucking for the Tour de France overall, McEwen will take a back seat on the Belgian team where he’s enjoyed marquee status for the past decade en route to winning three green points jerseys.

The UCI is putting a positive spin on its beleaguered ProTour series as the 2008 racing season starts Tuesday with the six-day Tour Down Under just as some heavy hitters are calling it a “failure.” Now in its fourth year, the ProTour series makes its first foray beyond Europe this week in a move that’s being hailed by UCI leaders as the first of a “gradual globalization” effort that could include major stage races in Russia and China as soon as next year.

American Jenny Reed owns a trophy case full of World Cup medals — 17 to be exact. But before Sunday night, only one of them was gold. The 29-year-old Reed doubled that Sunday night by winning the keirin, holding off a hard charging Willy Kanis of the Netherlands in the finals. “With the keirin I’ve always had a good level of confidence,” said the Momentum Cycling ace, who took her other World Cup gold in the keirin at the Manchester World Cup in 2004. “But when I know my sprint is going good, that bumps my confidence up even more.”

Pat McDonough has faced his share of ups and downs since taking control of the U.S. track program after the 2004 Olympics in Athens. The lowest of the low came at the 2005 world championship, where the U.S. earned no medals at its home track, the ADT Event’s Center in Los Angeles. That failure was followed by another loss, when Australian coach Gary West — whom McDonough had chosen to rebuild the program — quit after only a few months on the job.

Hanka Kupfernagel and Lars Boom (Rabobank) won the mud-splashed eighth round of the UCI cyclocross World Cup on Sunday in Hoogerheide, the Netherlands. Coming just one week before the world championships in Treviso, Italy, the race was an important benchmark for checking who is on form — and two riders definitely not up to snuff were U.S. champions Katie Compton (Spike Shooter) and Tim Johnson (Cannondale-Cyclocrossworld.com). Compton was a non-starter, reportedly suffering from jet lag after returning to Europe. And Johnson was a DNF, thanks to an untimely cold.

Former sprint king Mario Cipollini will indeed race for Michael Ball’s Rock Racing team this season, his lawyer confirmed Sunday. Cipollini spent last week at the U.S. team’s training camp in Malibu, California. But on Thursday, he threw some doubt on whether he would be joining the team. "It's not an easy transition," he said in a telephone chat with Rai television. "We'll see. We're still in talks. But compared to two days ago, things are a bit more difficult. Something has happened."

It was an unpredictable precursor to the Tour Down Under as Germany's André Greipel, a relative unknown to most, upstaged his more fancied local talent to claim first blood among the sprinters in the Down Under Classic. The fourth-year pro, not quite as muscled as his Australian counterparts Robbie McEwen and Mark Renshaw - the two riders he convincingly beat to the line Sunday evening in Glenelg - patiently waited for Graeme Brown's Rabobank train to tire before his High Road crew placed him in the hot seat two-and-a-half laps from home.

American continental professional team Slipstream-Chipotle has received an invitation to compete at this year’s Giro d’Italia, Slipstream team manager Jonathan Vaughters confirmed with VeloNews Saturday. Vaughters got the news last week from RCS director Angelo Zomegnan, who is expected to announce the full list of teams invited to the Giro in coming days. In addition to the May 10-June 10 Giro, Vaughters said Slipstream would compete in other RCS events such as Milan-San Remo, held March 7, and Tirreno-Adriatico, held March 12-18.

Scott Sunderland’s ride of a lifetime in the men’s 1000 meter time trial netted the young Australian his first-ever World Cup gold medal, and smashed his existing personal best time by nearly one second. The effort also sent the hulking 20-year-old back to the Australian team pits with a trash can in-tow. Sunderland, whose massive legs and enormous neck appear better suited for a football game than a bike race, spent the next 15 minutes buckled over, losing his lunch after his winning ride.

Defending champion Martin Elminger will be one of five past champions contesting the 10th edition of the Tour Down Under, which begins in the South Australian beachside town of Glenelg on Sunday, January 20. Stuart O'Grady (1999, 2001), Mikel Astarloza (2003), Luis León Sánchez (2005) and Simon Gerrans (2006) make up the rest of the past winners back for another crack at the title. However, they may well face their biggest challenge yet.

Seventeen-year-old Taylor Phinney can pen another page in his quickly growing book of cycling successes. Riding just the seventh individual pursuit of his career, the high school senior rode with the calculated panache of a veteran to grab his first-ever World Cup victory, defeating Dutchman Jenning Huizenga in a winning time of 4:26:09. “I just suffered through it. I think the person who can suffer the most wins this race,” Phinney said. “I didn’t expect to win when I was six or seven laps in.”

Think back to your first impressions of Floyd Landis. Possibly they trace back to his days as a scrappy pro mountain biker. Perhaps you first took note of him when he was a bleached-blonde star of the sea foam-green Mercury domestic road squad. Or maybe you came to know Floyd as Lance Armstrong’s lieutenant at U.S. Postal Service, or as he developed into the underdog GC rider at Phonak who broke through to win the 2006 Tour de France. Remember the permanent grin, the cunning observational comments, and the sarcastic laughter? Those days, at least for the time being, are over.

American Sarah Hammer, the two-time defending world pursuit champion, posted the fastest time of the day in the women’s pursuit at the opening day of the UCI track World Cup at the ADT Events Center in Carson, California. Unfortunately for Hammer, her 3:38:00 in the 3000-meter event took place in the bronze medal round rather than the gold medal final.

When American Mike Friedman takes to the ADT Event Center Velodrome in Los Angeles for the qualifying round of the men’s World Cup scratch race Saturday afternoon, he’ll do so with the confidence that comes with winning a gold medal at the previous round in Beijing, China, in December.

...previous NR: You’re not the first to suggest there’s a bit of vigilantism on the side of the anti-doping agencies, all in the name of protecting clean athletes. FL: Honestly, in my heart, I don’t believe they are trying to convict innocent athletes. I don’t think they have the wrong intentions. But when you look at it in a black and white context, the way they are doing things, no one could know. How could you know if they have the right intentions or not? What are they trying to do?

...previous NR: I think the reason people still hold the suspension against Tyler is because he denied having doped, and even had a campaign to believe in him, and

Former world champion Mario Cipollini could be back in the saddle as a professional at next month’s Tour of California as the long-rumored comeback with Rock Racing looks closer to being a done deal. According to La Gazzetta dello Sport, the 40-year-old colorful Italian has signed a contract to join the U.S. domestic team in a dual role of manager and racer. A formal announcement could come as soon as today at the opening day of the team’s training camp in Malibu, California.

Team CSC, ranked No. 1 in the world, heads the list of 17 squads slated to race this year’s Amgen Tour of California, organizers AEG announced Thursday. The 650-mile stage race starts February 17 in Palo Alto and ends seven days later in Pasadena. The field includes teams that compete on the UCI ProTour as well as U.S. domestic squads. Hoping to defend his 2007 title will be Levi Leipheimer, riding this season for the newly reformed Astana team.

North America’s only stop on the 2007-08 UCI track World Cup kicks off Friday at the continent’s premier velodrome, the ADT Event Center Velodrome at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California, just south of Los Angeles. As the third of only four World Cup rounds on the 2007-08 calendar, the LA World Cup stands as an important stepping-stone in Olympic qualification for the 2008 Beijing Games. Series winners will earn automatic qualifications for the Games. USA Cycling is to name its track Olympic long teams on Tuesday.

I just crawled out of bed after two days of racing and for some funny reason I’m sore. Back, legs, triceps, ego. They all tingle with a slightly bruised sensation. Now, unless you consider repeated swigs of beer followed by swallowing fat-laden hors d’oeuvres a unique type of interval training, I haven’t done much to keep myself in race shape since U.S. cyclocross nationals, and let me tell you, I could feel the burn. Although I suffered like an American cross racer in Belgium (hey, wait a sec’) it felt great to have my tubies rolling on foreign soil.

Early season European races keep adding top names to their start lists as the 2008 campaign nears closer to opening. Spain’s Vuelta a Murcia, a longtime favorite for Tour de France challengers to kick-start their respective season, will once again see its fair share of marquee riders in 2008. Euskaltel-Euskadi announced this week that Vuelta a España podium man Samuel Sánchez and top-10 Tour de France finisher Mikel Astarloza will both be among the starters for the orange-clad Basques.

A Spanish judge has ordered the French daily Le Monde to pay a fine of 300,000 euros ($440,000) to FC Barcelona after it reported that the soccer team was linked to the Operación Puerto doping scandal. The ruling stems from stories published December 7 and 8, 2006, when the paper reported that several of the top soccer team’s stars were working with controversial Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, the ringleader of the alleged blood doping ring. The paper couldn’t back up the claims and was subsequently sued by the club, one of the most powerful in European soccer.

Team CSC had already closed out its lineup for 2008, but 24-year-old Lasse Bøchman was so impressive at the team’s training camp this month in Mallorca that team boss Bjarne Riis decided to offer him a contract.

Thomas Voeckler knows he’ll never win the Tour de France, but he’d sure love to win a stage someday. Voeckler rose to prominence with his brave run in the maillot jaune in the 2004 Tour de France. Since then, he’s been trying to confirm that scrappy performance with a stage victory. Despite some daring attacks and close calls, he’s come up empty in the hunt for the rare Tour stage win. Voeckler, 28, enters the 2008 campaign as one of the top riders at Bouygues Telecom, the French team lacking GC contenders but packed with riders eager to make a mark on the race.

Paolo Bettini already has back-to-back world titles, so why not aim for a repeat with the Olympic gold medal? Better yet, why not go out big and shoot for the double-gold and bag the world title and Olympic title in one final blaze of glory? That’s the Italian’s thinking, at least, as he rattles off top goals for the 2008 campaign.

Gerolsteiner enters what will be its swan-song reason getting attention for all the wrong reasons. Following the departure of T-Mobile from the German cycling landscape, the team can expect to move up as Germany’s most important team. But the squad faces an uncertain future with title sponsor water-bottler Gerolsteiner closing its sponsorship at the end of the season as well as some lingering questions about star rider Stefan Schumacher.

The wires were crackling Tuesday with headlines of another possible illicit blood bank after a German television station went public with a long-whispered story that as many as 30 elite athletes were using a Vienna-based laboratory to dope. ARD reported that dozens of top biathletes and cross-country skiers and a trio of Rabobank riders were part of an elaborate blood-doping ring, but provided few details. All those involved vehemently denied the story.

The new year is just days old and cycling is already looking head-on at another potentially explosive doping story.

The German public television station ARD reported Tuesday that Michael Rasmussen, along with his former Rabobank teammates Denis Menchov and the now-retired Michael Boogerd, were among 30 elite athletes said to have used an Austrian-based laboratory for banned blood-doping practices.

ARD also alleged that biathletes and Nordic skiers used the Humanplasma lab, which has facilities in Vienna.

It was a rocky 2007 season for the three ProTour Spanish teams. Inconsistent results and nagging questions over the Puerto doping investigation overshadowed many of the highlights for the Spanish Armada during last year’s campaign. None of the three Spanish squads – Caisse d’Epargne, Saunier Duval-Scott and Euskaltel-Euskadi – managed to win a major tour or classic, though Samuel Sánchez saved what was an otherwise lackluster season for the Basque team with a late-surge in the Vuelta a España to finish third.

Questions about torque wrenches, torque and threadloc

Tour de France champion Alberto Contador and 2006 ProTour winner Alejandro Valverde are to be called before the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) prosecutor Ettore Torri over their implication in the infamous Operación Puerto doping scandal. Torri said on Monday that he wanted to speak to certain foreign-based cyclists, as well as the man central to the whole sorry scandal, Dr Eufemiano Fuentes.

Australia’s Sports Anti-Doping Authority Monday announced anti-doping initiatives to be used at this month's Tour Down Under. The new rigorous program is being implemented in partnership with the UCI and Events South Australia, where the tour will be held, ASADA said in a statement. The 2008 Tour Down Under, from January 22-27, is the first stop on the UCI-sanctioned world professional cycling calendar and the first time that a UCI-sanctioned ProTour event has been held in Australia.

José Rujano, the diminutive Venezuelan climbing sensation who almost rode away with the 2005 Giro d’Italia, hopes he can return to form in 2008 following two second-rate campaigns when he failed to live up to expectations. Caisse d’Epargne is the latest European team to give Rujano a chance following below-par runs at QuickStep-Innergetic in 2006 and Unibet.com last year. Rujano didn’t finish either the Giro or the Tour de France in 2006 and didn’t race a grand tour last year as his Unibet team was excluded from all ProTour events.

Johan Bruyneel, the eight-time Tour de France winning directeur sportif, will be in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the end of the month with two of his new projects: Astana and the Johan Bruyneel Cycling Academy.

Floyd Landis's appeal of the doping ban that cost him the 2006 Tour de France title is scheduled to be heard by a Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) panel in New York on March 19. "We are really looking forward to appealing the (U.S.) decision and optimistic the CAS panel will view favorably for Floyd," Landis attorney Maurice Suh told Reuters. The hearing represents Landis’s final opportunity to overturn a two-year doping ban. Last year, a U.S. arbitration panel upheld findings by a French laboratory that Landis had used synthetic testosterone in winning the 2006 Tour.

Dutchman Lars Boom (Rabobank) won the seventh and penultimate round of the UCI World Cup of cyclocross on Sunday, scoring his second win of this year’s series in a race in Léivin, France. Last year’s winner of the world under-23 cyclo-cross and road championships has enjoyed a solid year in his first year in the elite ranks, winning a World Cup round in Pijnacker, in the Netherlands, in November. Boom said the win puts him in solid position for a podium spot at the world’s in Treviso, Italy, later in the month.

Just when you thought it was safe to start clearing your mind of tubulars, tire pressure, mud, sand, dismounts, remounts, clipping in, clipping out and all things ‘cross, I’m back. That’s right, now you can waste more time at work while reading Chocolate, Waffles and ‘Cross in the next few days coming straight at you from the motherland of cyclocross. I’m back in Belgium to get my butt kicked again. I can feel the pain – and taste the beer – already. [nid:71232]For the past year, Greg Keller, a buddy of mine and the brain child of

Former world champion Mario Cipollini has been ordered to pay 1.1 million euros in back taxes for the years 1998 and 1999, the Italian news agency Ansa reported on Sunday. An Italian tax court found that Cipollini owed taxes despite claims that he was a resident of Monaco for the years in question. Cipollini, whose 42 stage wins at the Giro d’Italia appears to be an almost unassailable record, won the world championship in 2002 and retired in 2005.

Former Astana rider Matthias Kessler has been handed a two-year ban after testing positive for testosterone, the Swiss Olympic authorities said Friday. The 28-year-old German will be suspended until July 26, 2009 following the positive test for the banned male sex hormone during a random doping control in April 2007. The day after the test Kessler finished fourth in the Belgian one-day classic Fleche Wallonne. In 2006 Kessler won a stage on the Tour de France while racing for T-Mobile, which has since pulled out of sponsoring cycling due to a series of doping cases.

Happy New Year! 2008 is here and it’s time to capitalize upon your 2007 training files and training log entries. For those of you who didn’t keep a training log in 2007, this is your chance to get started.

Former world road race champion Tom Boonen is reported to be launching an audacious bid for an Olympic medal as part of a new Belgian team-pursuit squad in Beijing this summer. According to La Derniere Heure newspaper, the one-day specialist, one of cycling's best-known faces, will team up with Gert Steegmans, Sebastien Rosseler and Wouter Weylandt in a bid to score what would be a major upset. Australia holds the Olympic team-pursuit title, having won gold in Athens ahead of Great Britain and Spain.

Disgraced German cyclist Patrik Sinkewitz intends to appeal a one-year ban for testing positive for testosterone, the German cycling federation (BDR) said on Friday. Sinkewitz crashed out of the Tour de France in 2007, and days later it was disclosed that he had tested positive for the banned male sex hormone during a test taken in June. In November the BDR's disciplinary commission banned Sinkewitz, formerly of T-Mobile, for the reduced sentence of one year because of his tell-all confession about doping methods.

Disgraced Kazakh cyclist Andrey Kashechkin has pleaded for a team to sign him despite facing a ban over a positive test for blood doping following the Tour de France. Kashechkin was sacked from the drug-tainted Astana team after he tested positive for homologous blood doping at an out-of-competition control in Turkey last August. Although he has contested the validity of that test, Kashechkin is facing a ban from the sport, a fate that seems likely to befall his former teammate, compatriot Alexander Vinokourov, after he too tested positive for blood doping.

After more than a year of waiting for Spanish authorities to complete their work, Italy's anti-doping authority announced this week that it intends to take action against suspected offenders in the Operación Puerto doping scandal. Spanish judicial officials dropped charges against several riders in October of 2006, noting that use of performance-enhancing drugs was not illegal at the time of the alleged infractions. Other riders, including Alejandro Valverde and 2007 Tour de France winner Alberto Contador were cleared after a review of documents in the case.

Earlier this week, I wrote a piece about controversial domestic team Rock Racing, discussing the departure of Frankie Andreu, the signings of Oscar Sevilla and the relationship between team owner Michael Ball and suspended 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis.

German sprint ace, Erik Zabel, said Thursday the 2008 season could very well be his last in the professional peloton. Zabel, a record six-time consecutive winner of the Tour de France's green jersey, discussed his future plans as his Milram team unveiled a significantly restructured squad for the upcoming season. The 37-year-old German, who hit the headlines last year when he admitted to having "briefly" used the banned blood booster EPO early in his career while he raced with Deutsche Telekom, said he is already thinking about life away from the bike.

On the heels of FSA's introduction of its BB30 bottom bracket system, Van Dessel has announced that its new BB30 Rivet frames are in now production, with delivery slated for late March. Built around the BB30 bottom bracket shell, Van Dessel’s Rivet will also feature a 1.5-inch lower headset bearing, in keeping with the recent trend of manufacturers moving to larger diameters at both bottom bracket and head tube.

Rubber has yet to hit the road in ’08, but second-year continental road team Rock Racing continues to generate considerable attention, this time because of reports that owner Michael Ball has been courting Floyd Landis to fill an unspecified team advisory position. Word of the deposed 2006 Tour de France champion’s involvement with the team came in the wake of director sportif Frankie Andreu’s departure based on “differences” in philosophy with Ball.

You may not have ever heard of Giovanni Pelizzoli, but it’s likely you have seen his work on Ciöcc or Guerciotti frames, either one of which would be sufficient introduction of this small, graying, bespectacled framebuilder and frame painter. Pelizzoli’s shop is located in Curno, the village on the outskirts of Bergamo in north-central Italy that has long served the finish for the final classic of the season, the Tour of Lombardy.

Spain’s national cycling federation announced Monday that it has no plans to pursue further action against Iban Mayo regarding an alleged positive for EPO during the 2007 Tour de France. The Saunier Duval climbing specialist was cleared of charges that he used EPO during the Tour after a B sample test, analyzed by the Belgian national anti-doping lab in Ghent last October, apparently came back negative. However, the UCI said it questioned the outcome of the test and had the sample re-tested at the French national anti-doping laboratory at Châtenay-Malabry.

Citing differences “with business strategies and the direction the team is headed,” director Frankie Andreu has ended his contract with Rock Racing.

Editor’s note: Tech editor Matt Pacocha is on vacation in Belgium racing cyclocross for two weeks. Upon his return, he will be buried in producing the 2008 VeloNews Buyer’s Guide. I won’t spill the beans about what he is working on, but I will say it involves thousands of dollars of product, highly calibrated tools and a band saw. Until the Buyer’s Guide ships in early February, I will be filling in for him on Tech Reports. — Ben Delaney

Two of Lennard's favorite new products.