Trek-Volkswagen’s Susan Haywood and Jenny Smith took the women’s category while Kevin Evans and David George (MTN-Energade) won the men’s in the opening prologue of South Africa’s 2008 Absa Cape Epic on Friday.
The two women completed the 17km course, which spun a hilly circuit around the port city of Knysna, in 42:51.2. The pair, both regulars on North America’s National Mountain Bike Series, crossed the line with a 40-second advantage on the Rocky Mountain team of Alison Sydor and Pia Sundstedt.
Crédit Agricole’s ace sprinter Thor Hushovd says he is prepared to boycott the opening ceremony to the Beijing Olympics in August to protest Chinese repression in Tibet.
"We sports people do not have any particular responsibility to take a stance over what is happening in China," he told Norway’s Faedrelandsvennen newspaper.
"But all the same we can have some influence by snubbing the opening ceremony in Beijing. That would be a valid form of protest and I am prepared to do it,” Hushovd said. "However, from there to boycotting the Games entirely is a huge step.”
You know the guy who couldn’t pass a calculus exam even if the fate of the human race depended on it, but who can count blackjack cards like one of those brainy MIT kids or Rain Man? Well, I guess don’t really either, but I do know I am not that guy.
After being put through my paces at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine testing lab, I did a similar battery of threshold and power exams outdoors a week later. Much to my chagrin — but not surprise — the outdoor results were very similar to the indoor ones. I remain average.
Bobby Julich is never afraid to speak his mind.
Like many inside the peloton, Julich is worried about the growing tensions between the UCI and the major race organizers led by the Amaury Sport Organisation, noting that the split may permanently damage the sport.
This weekend, the veteran CSC rider lines up for the Critérium International, a race he won in his big comeback season in 2005. Julich’s big goal of the year is to perform well in ASO’s flagship event, the Tour de France.
When newly crowned world women's pursuit champion Rebecca Romero first climbed onto a track bike, she fell off.
Any hardened trackie knows that such a tumble is not an unusual experience, but it is a measure of the former Olympic rower’s determination that two years to the day that the Team GB rider first made close acquaintance with the boards of Manchester velodrome, she became world pursuit champion.
Now in its ninth year, the San Dimas Stage Race opens Friday with a deep start list of pro men and women. Originally called the Pomona Valley Stage Race, San Dimas has served as the season opener for domestic racing for years.
Although not an NRC event this year, San Dimas still draws most of the teams who will line up at the Redlands Bicycle Classic on April 3.
American women have already had four NRC events — Santa Rosa Grand Prix, the Sequoia Cycing Classic time trial and criterium, and the Susan G. Komens Cycle for the Cure — but Redlands will be the first men’s NRC event.
Cadel Evans’ remarkable spring campaign continued when the Australian doubled Thursday at Italy’s Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali both winning the stage and claiming the overall leader’s jersey.
The Silence-Lotto captain, fresh off winning atop Mont Ventoux at Paris-Nice earlier this month, drove home a solo victory 32 seconds ahead of overnight leader Stefano Garzelli (Aqua e Sapone) and Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas), who came through second and third in the 189km stage.
The USA Cycling’s board of directors on Thursday elected collegiate cycling’s Mark Abramson as president of the organization, replacing Jim Ochowicz, whose term has expired.
Abramson takes office immediately and replaces Ochowicz who assumed the post in 2002 and served the maximum allowable three consecutive two-year terms.
Wayne Stetina was elected as the Board's vice president while United States Cycling Federation Trustee Jim Patton will serve as secretary.
World cycling chiefs said Thursday their athlete's 'passport' scheme will be maintained despite losing backing from the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA).
The World Anti-Doping Agency has withdrawn its endorsement for the Athlete's Passport project from the UCI after the cycling body launched a lawsuit against a former WADA chief.
The International Cycling Union (UCI) recently launched a 'biological passport', which records and charts athletes' blood and urine parameters, as a new and seemingly effective weapon in the fight against doping.
Alberto Contador (Astana) won a mountaintop duel versus Colombian condor Mauricio Soler (Barloworld) on Thursday to win his second stage and all but secure overall victory in the Vuelta a Castilla y León.
The defending Tour de France champion pointed to his Astana jersey and fired an imaginary pistol as he crossed the line 11 seconds ahead of Soler in the 160.8km stage from Carrión de los Condes to Collado de Salcedillo.
On or off the track, you don’t mess with Arnaud Tournant, the powerhouse French sprinter who remains one of the most feared sprinters in the world and perhaps the best kilometer rider ever to take to the track.
Reigning champions Britain defended their team pursuit title in a new official world record time of 3:56.322 at the world track cycling championships in Manchester England on Thursday.
Denmark finished second to claim the silver medal while Australia overcame some late race drama in their duel with New Zealand to claim the bronze.
Australia, the Olympic champions, had set the previous world record in the 16-lap 4km event in a time of 3:56.610 in Athens in 2004 and they were quick to congratulate their new world pacesetters.
Reigning world sprint champion Theo Bos says he will not shy away from his rivals when the blue-ribbon event of the world track championships gets under way Friday in Manchester, England.
And the flying Dutchman believes his main challenger, big Frenchman Kevin Sireau, lacks the necessary experience to battle his way through to the gold medal.
With only five months to go to the Beijing Olympics, and despite keeping a low profile in the World Cup this season, Bos is still considered the man to beat in the men's prestigious speed events.
He’s been talking about it for the past few seasons, now Damiano Cunego will finally do it. Italy’s “Prince” of cycling will skip the Giro d’Italia and focus on the Tour de France instead.
The 26-year-old Cunego likes the look of the 2008 Tour route compared to the more challenging Giro on tap for May. He was 11th in the Tour debut in 2006 and believes he challenge for the podium in July.
The world championships began with an unscheduled event, early morning blood draw from the UCI. The Holiday Inn was targeted at an ungodly hour for our teenage son (7am!) and no doubt, no one else was happy either. In any case, the Brits, Aussies, Dutchies and USA team were all tested. Welcome to the big leagues. Luckily, Taylor exercised his prerogative as a teenager and went directly went back to sleep after a little breakfast, of course (another prerogative of the teenager?
Until Wednesday morning, David Brailsford's ethical stance on Team GB's attitude to doping had been unquestioned.
The British team's Performance Director has long championed clean and fair competition and maintained that any deviation from that philosophy would not be tolerated.
Taylor Phinney continued his quest for a spot on the U.S. Olympic Team on Wednesday, lowering his personal best time in the men's individual pursuit by more than two seconds and recording a new world-record time for a junior.
His mark of 4:22.358 seconds placed him eighth in his first-ever UCI Track World Championships while his time of 3:17.523 at the 3-kilometer mark — the distance juniors typically race — surpassed the previous world record of 3:17.775 set by Michael Ford (AUS) in 2004.
Phinney's previous personal best over four kilometers was 4:24.364.
Olympic pursuit champion Bradley Wiggins lifted British spirits by successfully defending his
individual pursuit crown here at the world track cycling championships on Wednesday.
Wiggins overpowered surprise Dutch finalist Jenning Huizenga in a time of 4:18.519 to claim his second consecutive gold after his victory in Mallorca last year.
Huizenga, who had beaten Wiggins in qualifying, finished in 4:23.474 to claim the silver medal.
Russian Alexei Markov claimed the bronze after beating New Zealand's Hayden Roulston in their medal match-up.
Niklas Axelsson’s career looked dead in the water when he tested positive for EPO at the 2001 world cycling championships. He admitted his guilt and was later banned for four years by the Swedish cycling federation.
The 35-year-old then mounted a comeback in 2004, but was stricken with testicular cancer in 2007 only to reappear yet again with Serramenti PVC Diquigiovanni-Androni Giocattoli this season.
Persistence paid off Wednesday when he won the 175.6km second stage of the Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali in Italy.
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 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.
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.