Road Racing

This year’s Sea Otter was better than ever with regards to new product roll-outs. There was too much to see during the short four days I was in Monterey, but we caught the vast majority in the hottest new stuff category. I’ll cover the rest of the best in this final photo gallery, but look for a few more stories from the Otter that go deeper than these galleries have. You should expect a rundown of Shimano’s new Saint group online tis week, while reports on Tomac, Yeti and FSA will pop up in future pages of VeloNews and VeloNews.com.

The 2008 Tour de Georgia couldn’t have ended better for Team High Road on Sunday, as Kiwi sprinter Greg Henderson won the final stage and Belarusian Kanstantin Sivtsov secured his overall race lead by four seconds ahead of Slipstream-Chipotle’s Trent Lowe.

A new climb with 20km to go lived up to expectations, breaking Liège-Bastogne-Liège wide open, but Alejandro Valverde relied on tactical savvy and his fiery finish-line punch to win La Doyenne for the second time in three years Sunday. After working into the decisive four-man move, Spain’s “Green Bullet” collaborated with Davide Rebellin (Gerolsteiner) to fend off searing attacks from the Schleck brothers on the Saint-Nicolas climb with 5.5km to go only to relegate the Italian to bridesmaid status with his winning sprint.

Gregorio Vega (Team Tecos) won his second consecutive stage of La Vuelta de Bisbee on Saturday morning, then finished eighth in the afternoon’s time trial to hold a 21-second lead going into Sunday’s final stage, the Tombstone Road Race. In women’s racing, Marisa Russell (Procon-FNBA) won the Sulphur Springs Road Race and Kelly McDonald (Touchstone Climbing) the Warren Time Trial; McDonald took the yellow jersey from Chloe Forsman (Luna).

Despite a recently diagnosed injury that has kept him in near-constant pain, Rock Racing’s Rahsaan Bahati roared across the line at the Athens Twilight Criterium to capture his first major victory of the 2008 season. In a race that featured a relentless pace throughout in front of thousands in downtown Athens, Georgia, Bahati was able to beat a charging field to the line with enough time to lift his arms to the sky in tribute to a fallen friend.

Kanstantin Sivtsov (High Road) attacked Levi Leipheimer (Astana) and race leader Trent Lowe (Slipstream-Chipotle) in the final 500 meters to win the sixth stage of the Tour de Georgia and move into the overall lead on Saturday. Sivtsov, the under-23 world champion in 2005, started the day six seconds down on Lowe in eighth place, but well off most people’s radars.

If Friday’s prologue time trial is any indicator of what the weekend has in store, La Vuelta de Bisbee will come down to Team Tecos vs. the rest of the field. Tecos riders posted seven of the top 10 times in the 2.8-mile hill climb, which began on Main Street in Old Bisbee and ascended through Tombstone Canyon to the top of the Mule Pass Tunnel. The Guadalajara-based team brought nine riders to the 30th installment of the three-day race.

Acqua e Sapone's Stefano Garzelli won his second stage of the Trentino stage race in Italy on Friday, a mountainous 178.6km stage from Lavarone to Pejo Fonti. Liquigas' Vincenzo Nibali took the overall win in the four-day stage race; Garzelli finished second overall. Nibali took the overall lead after winning Thursday's stage from Torri del Benaco to Folgaria.

After sitting behind a ProTour engine over 133 hilly miles, Bissell’s Richard England timed his sprint right to take stage 5 of the 2008 Tour de Georgia on Friday. Slipstream-Chipotle’s Trent Lowe finished in the select front group of 22 riders to take the yellow jersey from High Road’s Greg Henderson, who had a hard day and came off the group on the second KOM climb.

Kona Bicycle has a new line of gloves with models for mountain biker, freeriders, roadies and kids. The men’s Chevron glove ($25) is intended for cross-country. It features a Chamude palm for increased durability, silicone grip finger tips for better braking control and a terry snot wipe thumb. The women’s XC glove offers an air-mesh palm with Chamude overlays for added durability and circulation, 4mm gel palm pad and gripped finger tips.

Stage 4's team time trial featured a short, hilly, twisty course. Although race officials banned the use of time trial bikes, disc wheels and aero helmets, equipment choice was still a factor. The teams used their standard road bikes, though many used the deepest-section wheels in their inventory. Race winner Slipstream-Chipotle pushed the limits the furthest, using deep section Zipp wheels and even trying to sneak aero helmet covers past the commissaires.

Starting the day one man down after Timmy Duggan’s frightful crash on Wednesday, an inspired Slipstream-Chipotle won the Tour de Georgia’s stage 4 team time trial Thursday at the Road Atlanta automotive raceway. Slipstream rode four laps of Road Atlanta’s rolling 2.5-mile racetrack in 19:36, 3.41 seconds faster than Astana, at an average speed of 29.14 miles per hour.

Fairwheel Bikes makes colored hoods for recent Campagnolo and Shimano's Dura-Ace, Ultegra and 105 shift/brake levers. Hoods for SRAM levers will be available later this year. The company says the hoods are exact replacements and are available in six colors. Suggested retail is $25.

Highroad’s Greg Henderson went pretty quick to win Wednesday’s stage 3 sprint — 81.3 kph to be exact; that’s more than 50 mph. We were able to take a look at the maximum values on Hendy’s SRM after the stage. Assuming he was putting out his hardest effort of the race in the final sprint it took 1250 watts to win.

J.J. Haedo isn’t the only rider toughing it out at this year’s Tour of Georgia. Team Type 1’s Matt Wilson, too, has a broken wrist and is racing in a soft cast. While pain isn’t too much of a problem, the cast on his right hand and wrist doesn’t allow him enough freedom of movement to easily operate his right Double Tap shifter.

After two slight misfires, High Road’s heavy artillery got its coordinates dialed Wednesday, firing Greg Henderson into the yellow jersey with an explosive win on stage 3 of the Tour de Georgia. Toyota-United’s Ivan Dominguez, winner of stage 1, lost the leader’s jersey when he came off the group in the hilly closing circuits of Gainesville.

Stefano Garzelli (Acqua e Sapone) won stage 2 of the Giro del Trentino on Wednesday. The Italian took the 178km leg from Torbole to Torri del Benaco ahead of compatriots Mauro Finetto (CSF) and Riccardo Chiarini (LPR). Jure Colcer (LPR) took the leader’s jersey from Volodymyr Zagorodny (NGC Medical-OTC Industrial), the winner of Tuesday’s opening time trial, a 9.7km race against the clock from Arco to Riva del Garda.

Dutch phenom Marianne Vos outgunned her challengers on the painfully steep slopes of the Mur de Huy to take a repeat win at the Flèche Wallonne women’s World Cup. Vos scaled the brutal kilometer-long pitch the fastest, dropping Marta Bastionelli (Italian National), Judith Arndt (High Road) and three-time winner Nicole Cooke (Great Britain) near the summit to take the fourth World Cup round of 2008. The victory was reminiscent of her 2007 victory, which saw Vos ride a tiring Cooke up the 25 percent pitch, then sprint to victory in the closing meters.

Sea Otter is over, but this year’s expo was bigger than ever and the overflow of what we saw there can and will go on for the rest of the week. In this edition we’ll look at brakes from Magura, Ridley frames, Rotor cranks and accessories from Lezyne.

SRAM trickles down its technologies rather quickly. It was two years ago that the company launched its road line at the Sea Otter Classic. That initial introduction included both the Force and Rival groups. Early last fall at the Eurobike tradeshow, SRAM unveiled Red. And now SRAM introduced improved Force and Rival groups, by incorporating the most pertinent shifting technologies of the Red group; namely Zero Loss and its adjustable reach levers.

It was a mur too far for Cadel Evans (Silence-Lotto) as Kim Kirchen (High Road) sprang past the attacking Australian on the final ramps of the knee-busting steeps up the Mur de Huy on Wednesday to win a wet and wild Flèche Wallonne.

Joy Industrial's Novatec hubs may become a popular item among wheelbuilders, because they allow relatively easy swaps between four different front hub/fork drop out standards. Riders with multiple wheels and forks in their garages also might find these hubs convenient. The 4in1 front hubs can interchange — without tools — to fit standard quick releases, or 9mm, 15mm or 20mm thru axles.

You don’t need to tell J.J. Haedo to harden up — he’s tough enough; he’s racing in Georgia with a broken wrist. He’s got a little extra tape on his bars to soften the ride as well as on his wrist as a brace, but that’s it. He’s a tough guy. As for his bike, it’s a pretty standard issue. VeloNewsTechnical Editor Matt Pacocha checked it out Tuesday.

A tender hand didn’t slow CSC’s J.J. Haedo in the sprint finale of the second stage of the Tour de Georgia. Haedo took a convincing win in Augusta ahead of High Road’s Greg Henderson, stage 1 winner Ivan Dominguez (Toyota-United) and Tyler Farrar (Slipstream-Chipotle). Just a week out of a cast, Haedo is riding Georgia with his left hand heavily taped. Tuesday’s flat to rolling stage from Statesboro concluded after two, 5-mile laps of Augusta that ventured across the Savannah River into South Carolina.

People constantly ask me, “What do you see as the next big innovation coming with road bikes?” Their eyes tend to glaze over if I reply with any of the incremental improvements that every bike show or exhibition, like last week’s Sea Otter, is rife with. A new oversized bottom bracket standard will only briefly hold their interest. No, they want the goods, the “Next Big Thing.” It looks like the third coming of electronic shifting may be here soon, so mentioning that will no longer placate them. But what else is coming around the bend?

Kenda showed a 650B (also known as 27.5-inch) John Tomac Nevegal at the Taipei Cycle show last month. The company showed the new tire diameter in a 2.35-inch width and said a 2.1-inch width will be available soon. The diameter splits the difference between traditional 26-inch mountain bike sizes and the fast growing 29-inch hoops, said Kenda's Jim Wannamaker. "From a design standpoint, this new wheel size makes sense. It allows a bigger wheel to be

Rather than sitting on their hands after a couple of years of furious product development, SRAM engineers have been hard at work coming up with more new stuff for road, mountain and triathlon bikes.

Avid Elixir

Ivan Dominguez won stage 1 of the 2008 Tour of Georgia on a unique bike, built with Fuji’s Aloha CF1 carbon fiber time-trial frame mated to the brand’s standard FC-330 road fork. VeloNews technical editor Matt Pacocha managed to check out the bike before Dominguez launched it to victory.

The sixth Tour de Georgia began Monday with a short and — for Toyota-United — sweet stage from Tybee Island into Savannah. Ivan Dominguez battled his way through the well-orchestrated lead-outs of Gerolsteiner and High Road to take a commanding sprint win on the 70.4-mile flat stage ahead of Jelly Belly’s Nic Sanderson and Gerolsteiner’s Robert Förster.

Fox has a slew of improvements to its product line for 2009, but two stand apart: A remote lockout for the F80, 100, 120 RL forks and a new thru-axle standard called 15QR, which is an option for all of its 32mm stanchion forks.

The Everti 29R is a hardtail titanium 29er frame, designed and built in British Columbia. Kurt Knock of Everti said the frame has been in development for about a year. It features 3/2.5 titanium, with double-butted top and seat tubes, and straight-gauge elsewhere. The downtube is oversized and ovalized at the head tube, and the head tube is longer than most 29ers to distribute the extra stress created by a longer fork, Knock said. The frame also features a mini-gusset at the head tube/downtube juncture and full length cable housing.

Technical writer Lennard Zinn is canvassing Sea Otter for tidbits — today he comes back with (among other things), three different ways on one team to devise a 2X9 system on a cross country bike.

Julien Absalon can cross Houffalize off his list. Before his victory at Sunday’s World Cup opener in Belgium, the Frenchman had won on every classic World Cup course save this one. In 2007 he came close, but had to settle for second behind a streaking Jose Antonio Hermida.

It might surprise you to find out just what it takes to build a one-off bike. Travis Brown can sure tell you. The Trek test rider and product developer lost one after last year’s early fall single-speed world championships. Trek built Brown a custom polished one of a kind 69er single speed for the event in September. After a pre-ride, derby and race, Brown UPS’d his bike back to the U.S. and the men in brown promptly lost it.

The Cauberg climb was the scene of a stunning finale Sunday of a wild, action-packed Amstel Gold Race that saw Damiano Cunego (Lampre) score a huge victory against the attacking Frank Schleck (CSC). Realizing his only shot against faster rivals such as Cunego and third-place finisher Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne) was to attack, the Luxembourger surged away with a vengeance with 500 meters to go to drop everyone out an elite group of nine riders except Cunego. Schleck’s raid almost worked, but Italy’s “Little Prince” had another ending in mind.

Powerful gusting winds didn’t sway 19-year-old Tiffany Cromwell (Colavita Olive Oil-Sutter Home) or Michael Grabinger (Successful Living), who took NRC victories on the Laguna Seca Raceway Saturday at the Sea Otter Classic. The men’s and women’s events played out very differently. Cromwell rode solo off the front of a break for the final few laps. Grabinger, however, made it into an unusual four-man breakaway with two teammates and David Clinger (Rock Racing). The men lapped the field — twice — before Successful Living lined up a leadout in the stiff crosswind.

Near-record setting temperatures sent dust, gravel and rocks flying at the Tour of the Battenkill Valley on Saturday, but racers from the Great White North, perhaps the least adjusted to the heat, managed to dominate the event. Bruno Langlois, racing for Team Volkswagen, pipped five-time Canadian national champion Mark Walters (Team R.A.C.E.), following an 82-mile event that sent racers over a combination of dirt and paved roads in a quiet corner of New York State.

As the Sea Otter Classic swings into full force in addition to people pouring in for the festival and the races kicking into gear, there proved to be no shortage of new stuff to see. The weather is holding, which is always a question in April on the Monterey Peninsula, so without further ado let us dive right into it.

Giant Bicycles gets to add one more Super D win to go with the two it picked up last year in the debut event at the Sea Otter Classic. Carl Decker succeeded in overpowering former World Cup downhill pro Jurgen Beneke (Marin/Mercury Rev) on a short climb near the top and managed to stay away from Beneke for the remainder of the three-mile race. "I wanted to be up over the top before Jurgen, who is very strong in the downhill," said Decker.

Trek development rider Travis Brown was at the Trek team truck at the Sea Otter Classic sporting a never-before-seen set of white and red Bontrager mountain bike shoes. The shoes have a large RXL logo on the middle strap that threw many for a loop. "People keep asking me if they’re from Polo Sport," said Brown. Ralph Lauren was a common sight at Sea Otter in previous years with his now dissolved RLX Polo Sport mountain bike team.

With the world’s best racers descending upon Houffalize, Belgium, for the World Cup opener, the Sea Otter Classic needed to supplement this year’s world class downhill races with something extra to keep the event growing. For the Sea Otter, now in its 18th year, the answer was to bolster the festival and promote the tradeshow aspect of the event. It’s a trend that has been building for the last few years as more and more manufacturers are using the Sea Otter as a launching point for new product coming down the pike.

A Nevada court has delayed ruling on a request by the owners of Lew Racing to bar competitor Edge Composites from displaying or selling products that Lew alleges were made using a “secret process” it developed.

High Road's Edvald Boasson Hagen won in a sprint between four breakaway companions to prevail in the GP Denain on Thursday. The 20-year-old Hagen took a commanding win over AG2R's Jimmy Casper and Credit Agricole's Jimmy Engoulvent. FDJ's Fredric Guesdon trailed by 10 seconds. Hagen was part of a day-long break of 15 that was then whittled down to six riders on the last lap.

High Road's Mark Cavendish won the 207km Grand Prix de l'Escaut (also known as the Scheldeprijs Vlaanderen) for the second successive year on Wednesday just ahead of top sprinters Tom Boonen of Belgium and Australia's Robbie McEwen. Germany's Eric Zabel took fourth place but it needed a photo-finish to separate Cavendish and former world road race champion Boonen.

Dear Lennard,
I've just read your article article about the SRAM ceramic bottom bracket and its maintenance. We at CeramicSpeed have been working with ceramic bearings for the past 11 years, introducing systems for bicycle applications eight years ago.

Kyle Gritters (Health Net-Maxxis) broke free from a large break to take first at the Garrett Lemire Memorial Grand Prix Sunday in Ojai, California. He was followed closely by teammate John Murphy and Toyota-United’s Hilton Clarke. Australian Tiffany Cromwell (Colavita-Sutter Home) soloed across the line in the women’s race, well ahead of teammate Iona Wynter-Parks, who also finished alone, before Rachel Tzinberg (Bicycle John’s) took the bunch sprint just seconds later.

The nasty rain didn’t show up for the 106th Paris-Roubaix, but a superb Tom Boonen sure did. On a Sunday of cool sunshine and favorable winds, the Quick Step team leader took his second Roubaix victory, three years after the first, with an unstoppable sprint over his final breakaway companions Fabian Cancellara (CSC) and Alessandro Ballan (Lampre).

Spain's Alberto Contador overcame toothache to add the Tour of the Basque Country to his triumph in last year's Tour de France after success in the sixth and final stage here Saturday. The Astana ace, who has dominated the week since taking the first stage, beat Australian Cadel Evans by 20 seconds in the 20km individual time trial to wrap up the ProTour event. Evans (Silence-Lotto) finished second too in the overall standings, 30sec adrift.

Team High Road's Chantal Beltman won the Ronde Van Drenthe race on Saturday, notching the team's second consecutive World Cup win. World champion Marianne Vos was second and High Road's Ina-Yoko Teutenberg was third at the race held in Drenthe, The Netherlands. The route includes several cobbled sections. Beltman took off in a three-woman breakaway after the second section of cobbles and broke away from the group with five kilometers left in the race. She built up a maximum lead of just 20 seconds, and finished 6 seconds ahead of the chase.

Italy's Damiano Cunego, riding for Lampre, won Friday's penultimate fifth stage of the Vuelta al Pais Vasco (the Tour of the Basque Country), a 162km run between Vitoria and Orio. Spain's Alberto Contador crossed the line in second in the same time as Cunego to retain the overall lead he's held since the first stage. Cunego lies second, eight seconds adrift. The day's ride was held in hostile weather and was marked by numerous falls just before the finish triggered by a near-the-line collision between Ricardo Ricco and David Herrero.

Nick Nuyens proved he could ride as a classics contender with his second-place finish at Sunday’s Tour of Flanders. Nuyens, Cofidis’ newest strongman, bridged to a surging Juan Antonio Flecha in the final kilometers of Belgium’s most famous single-day race in an attempt to bring back Quick Step’s streaking Stijn Devolder. While Devolder took the win, Nuyens took the sprint for second, as well as his best-ever classics result.

In this four-part video tutorial, VeloNews Tech Editor Matt Pacocha walks us through the procedures involved in properly gluing tubular tires.

• Part 1: Tools, preparation & removing the old tire
• Part 2: Cleaning the rim & stretching the tire
• Part 3: Prepping the tire and applying the glue

Team High Road's Kim Kirchen won Thursday's fourth stage of the Pais Vasco in a sprint finish, while Astana's Alberto Contador retained the overall lead. It was Kirchen's second stage victory in this year's event, and left him in fifth place in the overall standings. Contador came in 20th with the same time as the stage winner to retain his overall lead, three seconds ahead of compatriot Ezequiel Mosquera. Kirchen covered the 171 kilometers between Viana and Vitoria-Gasteiz in four hours, 17 minutes and 33 seconds to edge his teammate Morris Possoni of Italy at the line.

You’re saying there’s a chance? Well, when there was, Mario was ready to turn some heads. Carbon Sports, the manufacturer of Lightweight wheels, was commissioned to build Rock Racing's Mario Cipollini something special for Milan-San Remo, but when Cipo and Rock Racing didn’t get an invite, then parted ways, this special wheelset became obsolete — to Cipollini anyway.

Our annual Buyer's Guide features several tours of bicycle and bicycle accessory factories and labs. Here are some outtake photos from VeloNews' photo editor Brad Kaminski's visit to the Bell Sports headquarters in Santa Cruz, California. To read Fred Dreier's complete article on Bell Sports, along with other factory tours and in-depth product reviews, you'll have to grab a copy of our Buyer's Guide.

Spain's David Herrero of the Karpin team won the 195km third stage of the Tour of the Basque Country on Wednesday between Erandio and Viana while Astana's Alberto Contador retained the overall lead. Herrero had finished third in the first two stages of the race, and now lies third overall, eight seconds behind Contador. The 28-year-old Herrero beat out compatriot Luis Leon Sanchez and Italy's Olympic champion Paolo Bettini in a sprint finish for a time of 4:54:24.

Oscar Freire’s knack for winning chaotic sprints made him a favorite to win the 70th edition of Ghent-Wevelgem as a huge 77-rider pack thundered toward the finish line in this small Belgian town. And while the cagey 32-year-old did emerge victorious to become the event’s first Spanish champion, Freire and his Rabobank teammates earned the win the old-fashioned way.

Kim Kirchen (High Road) drove a fierce sprint up a rising finish to upset two-time world champion Paolo Bettini (Quick Step) in Tuesday’s attack-riddled second stage at the Vuelta al País Vasco. Riders went down in the middle of the pack in the final surge to the line as teammate Michael Barry gave Kirchen a perfect lead-out to spring the Luxembourg all-rounder to a morale-boosting victory ahead of the Ardennes classics later this month.

Are longer cranks 'harder to push'?

Alberto Contador’s “Revenge Tour 2008” continued Monday as the Astana rider uncorked a blistering acceleration on the last of seven climbs to bolt away from a soggy and cold peloton in the 137km opener at the Vuelta al País Vasco. Contador won the stage three seconds ahead of Ezequiel Mosquera (Karpin-Galicia) and takes an unexpected eight-second lead on his main adversaries in an exciting opening day of the six-day Basque Country tour.

When it’s a hard day in the Tour of Flanders, the home riders nearly always come out on top. And Sunday’s 92nd edition of the gnarly Belgian classic was one of the hardest, with hail showers, even some snow, and long bouts of heavy rain blasting the riders through the middle part of the 264km race, which started and ended in spring sunshine. So it was fitting that the reigning champion of Belgium, Stijn Devolder of Quick Step-Innergetic, emerged with a gutsy solo triumph.

Alex Wrubleski (Webcor Builders) and Santiago Botero (Rock Racing) wrapped up the overall titles at California's Redlands Classic on Sunday. Wrubleski not only won the Beaver Medical Group Sunset Road Race in a bunch sprint, just ahead of Leigh Hobson (Cheerwine) and Kim Anderson (Team High Road), but took just enough bonus time in Sunday’s final stage of the Redlands Cycling Classic to take the overall from Mara Abbott (Team High Road) by a mere second.

German ace Judith Arndt out-kicked American Kristin Armstrong to win the women’s Tour of Flanders, the third round of the 2008 UCI women’s World Cup. It was the fourth career World Cup victory for Arndt, the silver medalist from the 2004 Olympics, and the first for her team under its new High Road label. “It was a perfect victory; a perfect day for us,” said Arndt. “It was a team victory.”

Emilia Fahlin (Team High Road) and Jeff Louder (BMC) won Saturday’s 1st Centennial Bank-KWB Wealth Managers Criterium, the second stage of the 2008 Redlands Classic in California. Fahlin, a 19-year-old Swede, took the bunch sprint ahead of a hard-driving women’s peloton in Saturday’s 1st Centennial Bank-KWB Wealth Managers Criterium. Hot on her wheel was Canadian Alex Wrubleski (Webcor Builders) and Advil-Chapstick’s Brenda Lyons.

The Absa Cape Epic stage race wrapped up Saturday with the Bulls team — comprising the German riders Karl Platt and Stefan Sahm — capturing the final stage while the overall title goes to the Cannondale Vredestein duo of Denmark's Jakob Fuglsang and Belgium's Roel Paulissen. With a nine-minute time advantage built up of over the last couple of stages, the Cannondale Vredestein team solidified their position by finishing in the lead bunch. The Bulls team secured second place overall.

Liam Killeen (Specialized) and Sarah Kaufmann (Roaring Mouse) won the NOVA Marathon as the second leg of the National Mountain Bike Series kicked off on Friday at McDowell Mountain Regional Park outside Fountain Hills, Arizona. Killeen won his 70-mile race in 4:00:43, five minutes up on Evan Plews (Scott USA). Tinker Juarez (MonaVie-Cannondale) finished third in 4:13:09.91. Kaufman won the women’s race in 5:14:53, nearly an hour ahead of runner-up Kristen Hayden Phillips (Red Rock), who finished in 6:09:56. Caroline Goulard (Sho-Air) was third in 6:19:09.

Colombian Santiago Botero (Rock Racing) took the win in Friday’s Beaumont Circuit Race, the first stage of the Redlands Cycling Classic — and his first win in America. After working in a break with five other riders beginning in the second of five 17-mile laps, he attacked in the final lap and powered across the finish line a resounding 52 seconds ahead of Sebastian Haedo (Colavita-Sutter Home) and Burke Swindlehurst (Bissell) in second and third.

In the penultimate stage of this year's Absa Cape Epic, some new faces competed for the men's stage win, while the overall standings were largely unchanged for the men and women's events. In a surprise stage finish, the Full-Dynamix Rsm team — Sweden's Fredrik Kessiakoff and Italy's Massimo Debertolis — took top honors for the first time during this year’s event. Hot on their heels was the USN/adidas team, Brandon Stewart and Max Knox, who arrived seven seconds later.

Under a dreary Southern California sky that made for nearly ideal time trial conditions, Mara Abbott (Team High Road) surprised few by winning the Redlands Cycling Classic prologue — The Sun Time Trial — by a resounding 25 seconds over second placed national team member Katharine Carroll (Aaron’s). Abbott’s teammate, Kim Anderson, rounded out the podium less than 1 second behind Carroll.

For the first time since winning the prologue, the MTN Energade team of Kevin Evans and David George won Thursday's 130km Absa Cape Epic stage in a sprint with two other teams. The previous day's stage winners, the Bulls team of Karl Platt and Stefan Sahm, were second, followed one second later by the Cannondale Vredestein team, Roel Paulissen and Jakob Fuglsang, who aggressively defended their overall lead. On stage 5 Paulissen had to ride the final 18km on a bare rim and the team finished in fifth position, losing about half of its overall lead.

The winners of the 2007 Absa Cape Epic, the Bulls squad of Stefan Sahm and Karl Platt took their first victory of the 2008 race, winning the fifth stage from Swellendam to Bredasdorp. The two out sprinted the Alb-Gold team of Hannes Genze and Joschen Kaess for the win. The victory took a sizable chunk out of the overall lead of the Cannondale-Vredestein squad of Jakob Fuglsang and Roel Paullissen, who crossed the line in 5th place, nearly eight minutes down.

Mark Cavendish (High Road) charged to victory in Wednesday’s second stage of the Three Days of De Panne in Belgium, while Enrico Gasparotto (Barloworld) retained the overall lead. Cavendish, who notched 11 wins in his rookie season last year, unloaded an electrifying sprint to relegate Francesco Chicchi (Liquigas) to second with Sebastien Chavanel (FDJeux) coming across the line for third.

The Dolphin-Trek squad of Alban Lakata and Bart Brentjens took the fourth stage of the Absa Cape Epic, winning the 121km journey from Riversdale to Swellendam in 4:28:38. The duo finished 23 seconds ahead of MTN Energade and race leaders Cannondale-Vredestein.

As a companion to our annual Buyer's Guide we are featuring some behind-the-scenes photos, taken by VeloNews photo editor Brad Kaminski during his visit to the Specialized headquarters in Morgan Hill, California. To read Fred Dreier's complete article on the Specialized factory, along with an array of other factory tours, you'll have to grab a copy of our Buyer's Guide.

The lead has again changed the men’s division at South Africa’s 2008 Absa Cape Epic as the Cannondale-Vredestein squad of Jakob Fuglsang and Roel Paulissen won the stage 3 journey from Calitzdorp to Riversdale, and assumed the yellow leader’s jersey after the Songo.info team of Burry Stander and Christoph Sauser abandoned.

David Salomon (P&S-Specialized) and Leda Cox (America's Dairyland) were crowned the champions of the 22nd Tucson Bicycle Classic after the third and final stage on Sunday. Brian Forbes (RideClean) and Clare Vlahopoulos (America's Dairyland) won their respective races during the finale, the Artisan Prosthetics Circuit race, run on a rolling, 5.6-mile loop with 300 feet of climbing per lap.

Barry Wicks’ transition from top-tier cyclocrosser to mountain bike strongman appears to be going well. The 26-year-old Kona rider, already a household name on the domestic ‘cross scene, took his first-ever NMBS victory at Sunday’s short-track in Fontana, California. Wicks out-sprinted breakaway companion Adam Craig (Giant) to take the STXC win and then followed up the victory with another win, again out sprinting Craig to take the Super D title.

If Jennie Reed couldn't quite believe her world title, then neither could the home crowd at the Manchester velodrome. Reed's jubilant gold medal in the women's keirin, the climactic event in five days of racing, was greeted with stunned silence by the British fans who had become drunk on the success that Team GB had claimed in the 2008 World Track Championships. "This is the first world championship of my career and I have got a gold medal so I am just elated," Reed said, as she came off the track.

God has indeed saved the queen, judging by the number of times we heard the British national anthem during the world track championships in Manchester. I don’t know the lyrics, so I kept singing our domestic knockoff, “My country ’tis of thee. . . .” I was dying to hear the American national anthem.

Day three of the 2008 Absa Cape Epic produced a third stage winner in the men’s category, as Jakob Fuglsang and Roel Paulissen (Cannondale-Vredestein) took top honors. The two, runners-up in 2007, gapped race leaders Christoph Sauser and Burry Stander (Songo.info) on the grueling 137km journey from George to Calitzdorp. Stander and Sauser, however, retained their overall lead.