Road Racing

CSC has promised a repeat of the collective power that virtually eliminated Caisse d’Epargne’s Alejandro Valverde from contention once the Tour de France hits the Alps this weekend. But this time, it is Australian Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) and Denis Menchov (Rabobank) who will be in their sights. Evans took the race lead by a second over CSC's Frank Schleck after Monday's thrilling day of racing in the high mountains of the Pyrenees.

Australian rider Cadel Evans' tenuous grip on the yellow jersey is likely to be undone because of the "weakness" of his Silence-Lotto team, according to Spaniard Alejandro Valverde. The Caisse d’Epargne rider virtually dropped out of the running for the overall victory in the Tour de France on the 10th stage from Pau to Hautacam on Monday, when Evans took the race lead by a second from Luxembourg's Frank Schleck of Team CSC.

When Phil Anderson became the first rider from the Southern Hemisphere to wear the yellow jersey at the Tour de France back in 1981, the French called him “Le Kangourou” simply because he’s Australian. Almost three decades later, this Tour’s new maillot jaune, Cadel Evans, might well be named the “Boxing Kangaroo” after the courageous way he picked himself off the canvas Sunday and came back Monday to fend off his closest opponents and take the overall lead.

Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) seized the yellow jersey atop Hautacam on Monday as Leonardo Piepoli (Saunier Duval-Scott) won the mountainous stage 10 of the Tour de France, while Garmin-Chipotle's Christian Vande Velde solidified his third-place overall standing. "I can't believe it now and I couldn't believe it on the podium," said a tearful Evans, the first Australian to wear the yellow jersey since sprinter Robbie McEwen in 2004. "Yesterday was by far my Tour low and today it's definitely my Tour high. Only 26 hours have passed and it's been a bit of a rollercoaster."

Stage 10, Pau to Hautacam, 156km

An energy bar that tastes like food Flavors: Peanut Butter & Jelly; Peanut Butter & Dark Chocolate Chip Price: $1.99 Calories: 250 Web site: www.bonkbreaker.com Jason Winn created the Bonk Breaker after growing frustrated with his options for real food energy bars for racing and training. To dial in the Peanut Butter & Jelly formula, he called in the big guns: Mom. And as any mother would approve, the Bonk Breaker bars are all made from natural ingredients. Many ingredients are organic, too.

Christian Vande Velde had reason to smile following Monday’s summit finish up Hautacam. The Garmin-Chipotle captain remains within striking distance of the yellow jersey in third at just 38 seconds back. Vande Velde, however, believes his day could have turned out even better and quietly cursed a missed opportunity to make more of his great form. The 31-year-old Vande Velde rode impressively up the day’s hors categorie steeps to finish 10th at 2:17 in the five-man group that included new leader Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) and arch-rival Denis Menchov (Rabobank).

The paint job on Erik Zabel’s Colnago was originally used 25 years ago, but even that classic look can not hide the new form beneath it. Zabel debuted Colnago’s new EPS (Extreme Power Special) frame at this year’s and is the only rider using in the peloton.

Though not the French version he’d hoped to don this July, Levi Leipheimer (Astana) did appreciate the Oregonian yellow jersey he slipped on Sunday at the close of the Cascade Cycling Classic’s sixth and final stage, the Awbry Butte Circuit Race. Atop the podium alongside BMC riders Jeff Louder in second and South African Darren Lill in third, the two-time Tour of California winner smiled when handed the CCC trophy: “They didn’t even give me a trophy at the Dauphine!”

Riccardo Ricco (Saunier Duval-Scott) won the ninth stage of the Tour de France on Sunday in a bold solo assault, while Kim Kirchen (Team Columbia) finished safely with the bunch to retain the overall lead.

On a day when race leader Kim Kirchen of Team Columbia admitted he was suffering, and third-placed Stefan Schumacher of Gerolsteiner was dropped on the final climb, Garmin-Chipotle’s Christian Vande Velde rode as strongly as he has ever since the start of this 95th Tour de France — and he moved up to third place on GC. It’s already been a remarkable performance by the Chicago native, whose best previous Tour rides were 25th last year and 24th in 2006 when he was riding as a team player for CSC.

Not to minimize Stefan Schumacher’s surprising stage 4 time trial win, but the 2008 Tour de France saw its first truly amazing performance Sunday as Saunier Duval-Scott’s Ricardo Riccò rode away from the best riders in the world to take his second stage win in four days.

Schleck moving up

Stage 9, Toulouse to Bagneres-de-Bigorre, 224km

A thrilling two-up sprint, contested by 2008 Olympian Adam Craig (Giant) and Mathieu Toulouse (Maxxis), ushered in what will likely be the first of many NMBS races at Windham Mountain. After racing four laps of the newly constructed course at this first-time venue in New York’s Catskill Mountains, Toulouse took the win by a wheel over Craig. Both finished within a second of each other, stopping the clock at 1:35:10.7 and 1:35:11, respectively. Jeremiah Bishop (Trek-VW) was third.

After yesterday's stressful stage in the rain I woke up this morning feeling a bit groggy for the first time so far. Looking around at breakfast I wasn't the only one; I think there really is something about a day in the rain that wears on the body. As I walked upstairs from breakfast I got a call from a friend, quickly plural, still going strong on the town in Boulder. There was nothing better than some seriously entertaining drunken jibberish to lighten the mood and put a smile on my face — just in time to get kitted up and head down to the bus.

Moises Aldape (Team Type 1) and Kristin Armstrong (Cervelo-Lifeforce) proved victorious in their respective races in Saturday’s fifth stage of the Cascade Cycling Classic, the Pacific Power-Cascade Lakes road race, which ended in the parking lot of the Mt. Bachelor Ski Resort. After being in a break almost the entire day, Aldape outsprinted second placed Chad Beyer (unattached) and Bradley White (Successful Living) at the line.

American Taylor Phinney won a world junior championship title Saturday in the 3,000m individual pursuit in Cape Town, South Africa. In addition to collecting another world junior title to go with the world junior time trial mantle he picked up last year, the 18-year-old also received confirmation that his preparation for the Beijing Olympic Games is on track. Another American, Colleen Hayduk from Kutztown, Pennsylvania, scored a bronze medal in the scratch race in the first day of competition.

Sprinters who are capable of winning stages of the Tour de France rarely keep winning for long. They either burn themselves out (either mentally or physically) or soon lose the leg-speed that’s so essential for winning a highly charged field sprint at 40 mph. In view of the astounding finishing speed and dominant margins of victory shown by Team Columbia’s Mark Cavendish in his stage wins at Toulouse on Saturday (and in Châteauroux on Wednesday), I thought it was worth seeing where the 22-year-old Brit stacks up again great sprinters in recent Tour history.

You might call it greed or an addiction to victory. Team Columbia — simultaneously eager to protect Kim Kirchen's overall lead and set up sprinter Mark Cavendish for a stage win — controlled the peloton for most of Saturday's eighth stage of the Tour de France. The U.S.-based team kept an early break's lead to a manageable gap and then put the hammer down in the last 10k to reel it in and deliver its young British fast man to his second Tour stage victory.

Stage 8, Figeac to Toulouse, 172.5km

WHAT MAKES CAV SO FAST?
It looks like Mark Cavendish was born to win. Despite losing the wheel of his lead-out man Gerard Ciolek after riding cautiously through the final bend with just over one kilometer to go to avoid crashing on wet roads, Great Britain’s “Cannonball” was still able to blast across the line with apparent ease to win for the second time in a week. At 23, Cavendish is using his raw finishing speed and tenacious personality to make up for any lack of experience he might have in what is his third grand tour start.

CSC-Saxo Bank’s national Luxembourg champion Frank Schleck dismissed statements made by race leader Kim Kirchen Friday that there was no love lost between the compatriots. Following Friday’s difficult stage, which saw the CSC team of brothers Frank and Andy Schleck set a high tempo that nearly shattered Kirchen’s Columbia team, the race leader insinuated that the tactic had, at least in part, intended to shed the first Luxembourgian maillot jaune in 50 years.

One week. That’s all it took before a doping scandal erupted on the 2008 Tour de France. Photos of Spanish veteran Manuel “Triki” Beltrán doing a perp walk as French police hauled him away in handcuffs from the Liquigas team hotel Friday evening pushed the Tour back into the type of headlines the race is trying to avoid. Perhaps it was appropriate that clouds and rain greeted riders in Figeac before the start of the eighth stage as the pall of cycling’s troubled past reared its ugly head after a week of titillating racing seemingly pushed scandals off the headlines.

French police have taken Spaniard Manuel Beltran away for questioning in the wake of the first doping scandal to emerge at this year's Tour de France. Beltran, best known for helping Lance Armstrong to the last three of his seven Tour de France wins, tested positive for the blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) on the Tour's opening stage, according to top anti-doping officials on Friday.

Caisse d'Epargne's punchy climber Luis Leon Sanchez won the seventh stage of the Tour de France on Friday, attacking the lead group several times on the run-in to Aurillac, before finally establishing a solo break in the final two kilometers. Sanchez was followed in by Stefan Schumacher, who had hoped to score a stage win to soothe his wounds after losing the yellow jersey due to a crash in the final kilometer Thursday.

USA Cycling has added the final three names to its 24-member Beijing Olympic cycling squad. Roadies Amber Neben (Irvine, California) and Christine Thorburn (Sunnyvale, California) and mountain biker Mary McConneloug (Chilmark, Massachusetts) are the latest additions to the squad that will represent the United States in China next month. They join the 21 riders USA Cycling announced on July 1 (list below). The three earned discretionary selections and were nominated by a nine-person selection committee. A second Games for Thorburn[nid:79896]

The first skirmishes in the battle for the Tour de France yellow jersey left damage in their wake during the tumultuous seventh stage to here on Friday. But the biggest souvenir from the second day of climbing in the 'medium' mountain stages was the full exposure of the existing rivalry between three of Luxembourg's most talented bike riders. In one corner is Kim Kirchen, the Columbia team leader who has been wearing the yellow jersey since the end of Thursday's sixth stage.

After seven stages, the 2008 Tour de France is one-third over and starting to take shape, even with the Monday’s first high-mountain stage looming in the distance. Four of the first week’s six road stages have seen separation on the day’s final climb, with the race’s GC contenders coming to the fore to show their cards and limit their losses. And in an unusual twist, the race has seen only one field sprint, won by Columbia’s Mark Cavendish, and its first solo breakaway victory, won Friday by Caisse d’Epargne’s Luis-Leon Sanchez.

There are no easy days in this very different Tour de France. This was especially true on Friday when stage 7 was raced more like a one-day classic than a semi-mountain stage of the Tour. One man who knows a thing or two about the classics (and the Tour!), George Hincapie, had this to say about a stage where his Columbia was stretched to the limit in defending the yellow jersey of Kim Kirchen.

Stage 7, Brioude to Aurillac, 159km

As long as you move a rigid object in a straight line, it does not matter how its mass is distributed throughout it; the amount of work to move it will be the same. This is not true if you drive the object by rotating it; then how the mass is distributed does play an important role in how much energy it takes to move it. In the case of a wheel, it is probably obvious that it will take more work to accelerate it if the mass is concentrated out at its edge than at its center. But how do you quantify that?

Christian Vande Velde (Garmin-Chipotle) has been one of the revelations so far in the first week of the Tour de France. Through the first opening seven stages, Vande Velde has ridden with consistency and strength to slot into fourth overall at just 44 seconds out of the yellow jersey. After years in the service of others, Vande Velde is finally getting a crack at being a team leader, and he’s making the most of it. VeloNews spoke to Vande Velde ahead of Thursday’s stage to gauge his first week. Here are excerpts from the interview:

MILLAR TIME OVER David Millar officially gave up the chase for the yellow jersey after a give-all raid that ran out of air early in Thursday’s hilly course across Massif Central. Despite struggling up Super-Besse in Wednesday’s stage, the Garmin-Chipotle captain was still dreaming of the yellow jersey in one last, final shot. Milllar started the day fifth overall at 47 seconds arrears and worked into a promising five-man breakaway that also included German marauder Jens Voigt in the opening 50km.

“Phew! That’s not even one of my farts! I told you, I’ve got four farts. My Heineken fart, my broccoli fart, my rice-pudding fart and my dairy-creamer fart. And the fart I’m smellin’ right now is definitely not one of mine.”—the late, great George Carlin, from “Napalm and Silly Putty”

The agency charged with carrying out anti-doping controls at this year's Tour de France has played down a report that 10 riders are about to be issued warnings for "suspect" blood samples. A report in the French newspaper Le Monde on Friday suggested that the riders were being specifically targeted by the AFLD, France's national anti-doping agency, because of suspected doping. However a statement by the AFLD, later in the day, dismissed those claims as speculation.

Belgian-based frame builder Ridley has completed two new models in time for this year’s Tour de France with the goal of putting Silence-Lotto's top rider on the top step of the podium in Paris on July 27. Anyone can hope, of course, but Ridley has the technological chops to back it up. Aside from Team Columbia's prototype Giant, which we’ll look at in another piece, Ridley’s Dean and Noah are the big tech stories of this year’s Tour. And, unlike Columbia's new time-trial bike, both Ridley models are slated for 2009 production.

While the spectacular battle for stage 6 unfolded on the erratic climb to Super-Besse on Thursday, I was standing at the finish line next to Bob Stapleton, the owner-manager of Team Columbia. As we watched, we speculated whether his team leader Kim Kirchen could make up the 12 seconds by which he trailed Stefan Schumacher and take the yellow jersey. Right then, as Kirchen and the other race contenders were about to start their sprint for the line, Schumacher fell off his bike.

Team Type 1's Matt Wilson crossed the finish line just ahead of Garmin-Slipstream’s Tom Peterson to win Thursday’s second stage of the Cascade Cycling Classic, and also slipped on the yellow leader’s jersey. Most important to him, though, was dedicating the wins to Ben Brooks, his Aussie teammate who remains in a nearby hospital in stable condition after a serious crash in the first stage. [nid:79776]

Britain's David Millar has all but given up hope of finally ending his eight-year wait to wear the Tour de France yellow jersey again. However, the Garmin team leader said his encouraging performance on the race's first foray into the hills on Thursday can now boost his second objective of a stage win at this year's race. Millar began the first medium mountain stage of the race, a 195.5km hilly ride from Aigurande to Super-Besse in the Massif Central, in third place overall at 12 seconds behind Stefan Schumacher of Germany.

Saunier Duval’s Riccardo Riccò put his money where his mouth was on the summit finish of stage 6, sprinting uphill for the win ahead of overall race favorites Alejandro Valverde and Cadel Evans. Team Columbia’s Kim Kirchen finished just behind to take the yellow jersey, as race leader Stefan Schumacher (Gerolsteiner) crashed within the final kilometer and lost 30 seconds. (The final 3km mercy rule, which gives crashed riders the same time as the group they came out of, does not apply on summit finishes.) Ironically, it was Kirchen’s wheel with which Schumacher collided.

RICCO A LA PANTANI?
Will Riccardo Riccò pull a page from the playbook of his childhood hero, Marco Pantani, and surprise everyone at this Tour de France? Riccò insists he’s here only for stage victories, but his impressive pop in Thursday’s stage could betray his public declarations.

Stage 6, Aigurande to Super-Besse, 195.5km

Sponsoring a bike team makes good business sense, especially if you’re Garmin and one of the largest companies in the fast-growing, highly competitive GPS market. Garmin unveiled its high-profile deal with Slipstream sports at the start of the 2008 Tour de France as the first step of a title sponsorship contract that continues through the 2010 season. VeloNews spoke with Jon Cassat, vice president of communications with Garmin, about the details of how the sponsorship deal came about and why the company decided to bet on cycling. Here are excerpts from the interview:

Today was the first stage in this year's race where we hit some hills. After traversing Brittany we're now down into the heart of France and the mountains of the Massif Centrale.

Christian Meier (Symmetrics) made one of a professional cyclist's key transitions this week, swapping his U23 national title for the Elite men's road title. However, despite the support of the powerful Symmetrics squad, it was not an easy victory, with Bruno Langlois (VW-Specialized) surging back on the final climb to finish less than a bike length behind Meier. Meier's teammate Jacob Erker took the bronze medal, while David Veilleux (Kelly Benefit Strategies-Medifast) finished seventh to win the U23 title on Sunday.

With 10km to go in stage 5 of the Tour de France, Mark Cavendish’s Team Columbia teammates drilled it at the front of the chaotic peloton, burying themselves to set up their British sprint star. With 150 meters to go — and early breakaway rider Nicolas Vogondy of Agritubel still barely clear of the chase — Cavendish lit it up and repaid his teammates with a dominant win ahead of Oscar Freire (Rabobank) and Erik Zabel (Milram). Race leader Stefan Schumacher (Gerolsteiner) finished in the bunch to retain the yellow jersey.

CSC is not a Shimano-sponsored team. Instead, it buys the Shimano components it uses. You might be surprised that a team like CSC pays for its drivetrain components, but there are multiple reasons why it pays. The primary reason is because of other sponsor obligations, namely to FSA. But it has always been the team’s practice to pick and choose the parts its director Bjarne Riis feels are the best. A byproduct of not being tied to a certain manufacturer’s parts is the ability to experiment.

There’s no arguing that this year’s Cascade Cycling Classic is filled with world-class talent. Two world champion time trialists took the men’s and women’s wins in Wednesday’s stage 1 Prineville Road Race in Bend, Oregon: Colombian Santiago Botero (Rock Racing) and Kristin Armstrong (Cervelo Lifeforce). Both part of large breaks in their respective races – Botero in a group of 12 and Armstrong in a group of 7 – they each left their competition behind on the final climb to the finish on Pilot Butte.

The French fans finally saw a real sprint finish Wednesday — resulting in a superbly confident first Tour stage win for Team Columbia’s young Manxman Mark Cavendish — but his well-placed GC teammates, along with the other race favorites, are already looking ahead to the next three stages through the low mountains of the Massif Central. Besides heading into the hills Thursday, the riders will be racing into summer temperatures as the Tour now heads south before arriving in the Pyrenees on Sunday.

Sun and a screaming tailwind made for what was one of the easiest days on a bike this year. We'd all prepared mentally for a hour-plus head smashing today before the break would go clear, especially after the relatively quick launches the past few, but people once again seemed content to relax. Twenty minutes of flying down wide open roads and when a few guys got a small gap the field was quick to sit up, yells to chill all around. A few minutes slow, a huge "nature break" as they call it on the radio here, and we settled in for a long one.

Wednesday’s 232km stage from Cholet to Chatearoux might have been the fifth stage of this 2008 Tour de France, but in many respects it was a day of firsts. It was the first hot, sunny day of a Tour that began in the rain and cold winds of Brittany — weather that seemed to follow the peloton wherever it traveled. Stage 5 was the first day spent in the malliot jaune for Gerolsteiner’s Stefan Schumacher, an unlikely hero who seems as surprised as everyone else to find himself leading the world’s biggest bike race.

Stage 5, Cholet to Châteauroux, 232km Weather: Partly cloudy in the morning, warm and sunny in afternoon, moderate westerly breeze with 20kph, highs in the low 80s

Valverde scare: It looked innocuous on the medical report, just cuts and scrapes, but Alejandro Valverde’s Tour de France was nearly short-circuited Wednesday in a pileup. Valverde, 28, flipped over his handlebars and landed on the same collarbone he broke in the 2006 Tour when his front tire slipped on a small, cat-eye road reflector. It was too close for comfort for the stage-1 winner.

Photographer Casey Gibson has been given full access to shoot behind the scenes with the Garmin-Chipotle team at the Tour. He will share some of his best shots from the first four days.

Stefan Schumacher (Gerolsteiner) rode to a dominant — if surprising — victory in stage 4 of the Tour de France on Tuesday, taking the yellow jersey from overnight leader Romain Feillu (Agritubel). The German posted the fastest time by far in the 29.5km individual time trial, 35:44, some 18 seconds faster than green-jersey Kim Kirchen (Team Columbia) and David Millar (Garmin-Chipotle), and a further nine seconds quicker than overall contender Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto).

This Tour de France couldn’t be going any better for Cadel Evans. In four days of racing he and his Silence-Lotto team have ridden conservatively, largely out of the spotlight — just like the modest Aussie wants it. He showed his form was coming along nicely on opening day, losing by just one second to the explosive Alejandro Valverde on the uphill finish at Plumelec. On stages 2 and 3, his team kept him near the front of the peloton all day, well away from the crashes that were all too common.

Retail Price: $21.95 Web site: www.velogear.com The Tour Is Won on the Alpe: Alpe d'Huez and the Classic Battles of the Tour de France is a new book by cycling historian Jean-Paul Vespini. Each chapter covers one Alpe d'Huez stage, starting with Fausto Coppi’s victory in 1952. Vespini tells the story of the celebrated climb that so often determines the winner cycling’s biggest prize.

Garmin party: Garmin-Chipotle was in a good mood today. The riders raced with a yellow dossard because they stood atop the team GC while Will Frischkorn raced with a red background on his number after winning Monday’s most aggressive rider’s prize. Frischkorn said he felt Monday’s effort in his legs, but admitted he didn’t go too hard in Tuesday’s TT.

Stage 4, Cholet-Cholet, 29.5km (individual time trial) Weather:
Mostly sunny, with building clouds in afternoon, no rain. Strong SW winds up to 35kph, highs in upper 60s Stage winner:

While Gerolsteiner’s Stefan Schumacher scored an impressive ? and surprising ? win in Tuesday’s 29.5km individual time trial in Cholet, he’s still not ranked among the favorites to wear the yellow jersey in Paris on July 27.

Germany's Stefan Schumacher pulled on the Tour de France yellow jersey here Tuesday, and was then forced to defend himself quickly over a positive test for amphetamines last year and explain why he was invited to race the Tour, while Tom Boonen was not. Schumacher, who denies taking the stimulant, tested positive after a police stop while returning from a disco. The incident reminds some of Boonen's out-of-competition positive test for cocaine this spring, which resulted in Boonen being denied a Tour start.

Shimano’s electric time-trial shifters made their racing debut on Tuesday during the stage-4 individual time trial in Cholet. Ever since the “E-Dura-Ace” group showed up three years ago there was speculation that it might become a powerful time-trial tool. The system can be routed internally through a radically shaped time trial bike without hampering shifting performance. And the time-trial version sports shift buttons in both bar-ends and brake levers, which means a rider can shift regardless of whether he’s on the aero bars or the bullhorns.

You’ve already seen the new Bell Volt helmet, even if you didn’t recognize it as new. Thor Hushovd put the Volt in the spotlight of victory at the end of Sunday’s stage two. The new model will slot in as the top road and cross-country race helmet from Bell.

Oh so close. Garmin Chipotle’s Will Frischkorn, out ahead of the peloton in a four-man breakaway from the first 10 kilometers of the Tour’s third stage from Saint-Malo to Nantes, came within a wheel’s length of winning a stage in his first grand tour. Not a bad ride for a rider who only learned he was heading to the Tour de France a week before the start, on a team that earned a wildcard invitation to the world’s biggest bike race.