Tour de France 2025

Long before he was winning Tour de France stages, Mark Cavendish was formed into a professional cyclist by British Cycling’s Rod Ellingworth. As research for the current cover story on Cavendish, VeloNews interviewed Ellingworth. Mark Cavendish credits British Cycling coach Rod Ellingworth with kick-starting his career. Ellingworth created an innovative youth cycling program in 2004 to nurture under-23 talent into the stars of the future.

Silence-Lotto's Thomas Dekker will miss the Tour de France after testing positive for the banned blood-booster EPO, his team announced on Wednesday. The sample was originally taken on December 24, of 2007, when Dekker was a member of the Rabobank team. The sample was re-tested using new techniques, which resulted in a positive test for EPO. "He found out on Wednesday morning that fresh analysis, carried out in May at the behest of WADA, on urine samples from a random doping control had turned up positive for EPO," the team said in a statement.

Weather is often the unnamed enemy at the Tour de France. Heat, wind, rain and cold can turn what would otherwise be a routine stage or climb into pure hell. A quick look at short- to mid-range weather forecasts calls for seasonable but unsettled conditions the first week or so of racing in the 2009 Tour. Forecasters are predicting moderately warm temperatures into the upper-80s for Saturday’s opening time trial in Monaco, but with a 20 percent chance of afternoon showers.

Seven Americans and one Canadian are among the 189 starters from 21 teams lining up for the individual time trial Saturday in Monaco to click the 2009 Tour de France into gear. U.S.-registered Garmin-Slipstream boasts the strongest North American representation, with Christian Vande Velde, Dave Zabriskie, Danny Pate and Tyler Farrar starting from the United States and Ryder Hesjedal as Canada’s lone representative.

The Cervélo TestTeam has received UCI permission to reverse the colors on its nearly all-black kit in time to use a largely white version at this year’s Tour de France. The team has proposed changing its colors so that the black and white portions of the jersey are reversed.

Tom Boonen's bid to overturn a bar him from competing in the Tour de France has hit another snag with the decision by a French court not to hear his case. The former world road race champion from Belgium was barred from the Tour by its organizers Amaury Sports Organisation (ASO) following his positive test for cocaine in April, even though the test was taken outside the sporting calendar.

The 2009 Tour de France hasn’t even started yet, but it’s already clear what the main story line will be. Come the grand tour’s crucial stages, who will be Astana’s team leader? Will it be pre-race favorite, 2007 Tour champion, and the widely regarded best stage racer in the world right now, Alberto Contador? Or will seven-time Tour winner and worldwide sports icon Lance Armstrong get the nod? VeloNews.com doesn’t have the answer just yet, but we do have an exclusive interview with Armstrong where he addresses this weighty topic.

Tyler Farrar will be something of an oddity when he lines up Saturday for his Tour de France debut – an American sprinter. For the first time in several years, since Fred Rodriguez lined up at Mapei and later at Silence-Lotto, an American will have a legitimate shot at winning a bunch sprint in the Tour. And unlike Rodriguez, who rode his last Tours in support of Robbie McEwen, Farrar will see strong support from his Garmin-Slipstream teammates. Veteran lead-out man Julian Dean will be Farrar’s guide through the high-speed duel of nerves and speed.

Team sport directors are rallying their opposition to plans to ban race radio during two stages during the upcoming Tour de France. Representatives from some of the top teams Monday criticized efforts by Tour officials to ban the use of earpieces and radio links between sport directors and racers during two stages at this year’s race, calling the measure “outdated and inappropriate.”

With the addition of a mobile phone company co-sponsor, Team Columbia is now Columbia-HTC. Team owner Bob Stapleton announced the new sponsor and his squad’s Tour de France lineup Monday. Mark Cavendish, who won four stages in the 2008 Tour, will be joined by Michael Rogers, Kim Kirchen, George Hincapie, Tony Martin, Maxime Monfort, Mark Renshaw, Bernie Eisel and Bert Grabsch at the start of the 2009 Tour in Monaco on Saturday. Rogers, Kirchen and Monfort are the team’s GC hopes, with world time trial champion Grabsch a clear favorite for the individual events.

Quick Step has eight of its nine riders ready for the Tour de France, but the Belgian team is waiting to learn the fate of Tom Boonen. Boonen’s immediate future lies in the hands of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which is expected to decide Tuesday if the recently crowned Belgian national champion can start the Tour.

With Damiano Cunego giving the Tour de France a skip to prepare for the world championships, Lampre-NGC will instead focus on trying to win stages and leave the fight for the GC to the other teams. The Italian team brings a nine-man squad full of stage-hunters, with the lone exception of veteran Marzio Bruseghin, who will do what he can to try to finish among the top 10 overall. The improving condition of reigning world champion Alessandro Ballan, who missed the spring classics with poor health, gives Lampre a shot to fight for a stage in the breakaways and transition stages.

French veteran Christophe Moreau will headline Agritubel in what’s expected to be his final Tour de France. The 38-year-old Moreau will anchor an Agritubel team that brings a mix of youth and experience that will be on the hunt for stage victories and perhaps a spell in one of the jersey for Moreau’s exit.

It’s almost July and you know what that means – it’s time to bet on the Tour de France. Bookies across Europe ? where betting on the Tour and other cycling events is quite popular ? have anointed their favorite. Alberto Contador leads the odds across all the major European betting houses, outstripping seven-time Tour champ Lance Armstrong and defending champion Carlos Sastre. In fact, Contador is so heavily favored by the bookies, that it would be hard to make much money on the Spanish climber.

Note: This interview was conducted several days before Cervélo TestTeam announced its 2009 Tour de France roster, which did not include Simon Gerrans. The Aussie was very surprised, writing on Twitter, “I’m still digesting the news. I’m pretty disappointed.”

Riccardo Riccò – Italy’s bad boy of racing – already has a team for next season when his 20-month ban for doping ends in 2010. Italian second division team Ceramica Flaminia has confirmed it has signed Riccò to a two-year contract and is expected to officially announce the news in a press conference this weekend.

Australian Cadel Evans has been given scope for a more promising tilt at the Tour de France yellow jersey with a reinforced team for the July 4-26 event. Silence-Lotto on Friday named the two-time runner-up as team leader, with his compatriot Matthew Lloyd joining Belgian Jurgen Van den Broeck and Dutchman Thomas Dekker on duties of helping Evans in the mountain stages. Germany's Sebastian Lang, who has recovered from a crash at the Dauphine Libere stage race last week, is also included.

Liguigas is betting on youth for the Tour de France overall, with improving youngsters Roman Kreuziger and Vicenzo Nibali selected to head the Italian team’s hopes. With star rider Ivan Basso skipping the Tour to focus on the Vuelta a España later on this season, Kreuziger and Nibali will be aiming to slot into the top 10 overall.

Chris Horner won’t be starting the Tour de France after he was overlooked as part of the nine-man squad revealed Wednesday by Astana. The veteran Horner crashed out of the Giro d’Italia in May and was hoping to be back in top shape to earn a Tour slot, but he was not awarded one of the nine spots on the loaded Astana team. Another surprise name missing from roster was reliable Spanish workhorse Benjamin Noval, a veteran of Tour-winning campaigns of Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador.

Gert Steegmans ? the Belgian sprinter who’s refused to sign an anti-doping charter that includes hefty penalties for violations ? has been left off Katusha’s nine-man Tour de France team. Steegmans was put on “non-active” status and not included in the Russian team’s nine-man roster. “All I can say is it’s too bad, I can’t say much more on the topic,” Steegmans told the Belgian daily La Derniere Heure. “I cannot answer anymore questions. I am not even sure I am going to be able to race the Belgian championships (Sunday).”

The Cervélo TestTeam named an experienced team on Wednesday to support Spanish reigning champion Carlos Sastre in this year's Tour de France, which begins in Monaco on July 4. Sastre, 34, will be notably supported by his 40-year-old compatriot Inigo Cuesta. Norway's Thor Hushovd, 31, will be the other leader in the team, along with Germany's 25-year-old Heinrich Haussler, who finished second in Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Flanders this year. Australia's Simon Gerrans, who won one stage in last year's Tour and another at the Giro d'Italia in May, was not selected.

The Caisse d'Epargne cycling team on Wednesday released a short-list of 10 riders from which the team will select nine to start the Tour de France, which runs from July 4-26. Six of them, the Spaniards David Arroyo, Ivan Gutierrez, Luis Pasamontes, Luis Leon Sanchez, Xabier Zandio and 2006 Tour winner Oscar Pereiro are assured of their places on the start line in Monaco. The three final places are being contested by Portugal's Rui Costa, Frenchman Arnaud Coyot, Spain's Jose Joaquin Rojas and the Colombian Rigoberto Uran.

The Versus cable network will broadcast the 2009 Tour de France in high definition for the first time. The network will begin its coverage on July 4 and 8:30 a.m. Eastern with a one-hour feature on Lance Armstrong. The race coverage will start at 9:30. The network says it will broadcast an average of 13 hours of Tour coverage each day. A complete schedule is available at Versus.com.

Garmin-Slipstream brings back some familiar faces with a few new ones for the 2009 Tour de France. The squad released its nine names for next months’ Tour, with Christian Vande Velde as the team captain and Tour debutante Tyler Farrar the man for the sprints. Returning with Vande Velde from last year’s Tour team are David Millar, Ryder Hesjedal, Danny Pate, Dave Zabriskie and Julian Dean. New riders for the team’s Tour hopes this year include Farrar, Irish national champion Dan Martin and Olympic gold medalist Bradley Wiggins.

Don’t tell Alessandro Ballan that there’s some sort of curse that goes with the world champion’s rainbow jersey. Most world champions are highly marked in races, making it even harder to win, but at least they’re racing. Ballan’s world champion season has been short-circuited by illness, but the gangly Lampre-NGC rider is hoping to get things back on track for the Tour de France. “I am about 60-70 percent my condition, nothing more, I must rebuild,” Ballan told L’Equipe.

In 1999, Lance Armstrong came into the Tour de France as a cancer survivor, not a favorite for the overall. In this exclusive video series, VeloNews takes a look back at how he won what was to become his first of seven consecutive Tour de France titles. VeloNews.tv will release segments of this 15-video series daily right up until the eve of the 2009 Tour de France.

PRESS RELEASE

Controversial Spanish rider Alejandro Valverde will not take part in this year's Tour de France, his Caisse d'Epargne team announced on Tuesday. His absence removes a potentially embarrassing stand-off as the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) last month banned Valverde from racing in Italy for two years due to his alleged involvement in the Operation Puerto blood doping scandal. That ostensibly ruled him out of the race in any case, as this year it passes through Italy's Val D'Aosta region on July 21.

Milram, the peloton’s lone German team starting the Tour de France, will place its trust and hopes on a pair of young talented but untested riders. Linus Gerdemann and Gerald Ciolek headline Milram’s nine-man Tour squad that includes six German riders.

France’s Française des Jeux team has narrowed its Tour de France list down to eight. The team will largely forget about challenging for the GC, and instead hope to earn some headlines through attacks, perhaps a spell in some of the jerseys early on or, ideally, win a stage or two. “We want to be in breakaways, add a spark to the race and give something for the fans to cheer about,” said team manager Marc Madiot. “Casar will be our top man, but is it better for him to try to win another stage or finish in the top 15 again?”

The Schleck brothers will carry Saxo Bank’s hopes for a podium finish into next month’s Tour de France. The Luxembourg tandem of Fränk and Andy Schleck led the nine-man team selection released Monday by Saxo Bank. The brothers are the team’s best bet to finish among the top three at the Tour following the departure from the squad of last year’s winner, Carlos Sastre.

Organizers of the Tour de France said Friday they will conduct “a safety experiment” in next month’s race by banning the use of rider radios on two stages. The measure will affect the Limoges-Issoudun stage on July 14 and the Vittel-Colmar stage on July 17. The steps mean that team managers will have to revert to communicating with racers by relying upon more traditional methods.

The Belgian Quick Step team announced Friday that it is reviewing its legal options in a final-hour bid to overturn a decision by Tour de France race organizers to ban classics specialists Tom Boonen from the 2009 edition. Tour officials announced Thursday that Boonen would not be allowed to start the 2009 Tour on July 4, citing Boonen’s recent troubles with a second out-of-competition test for cocaine.

Astana named six of its nine riders who will battle for overall and stage wins in next month's Tour de France, where Alberto Contador of Spain will start as a yellow jersey favorite.Contador, the 2007 champion, will be joined by seven-time winner Lance Armstrong, Andreas Klöden, Levi Leipheimer, Yaroslav Popovych and Haimar Zubeldia. The remaining three riders will be picked from a group that includes Jani Brajkovic, Chris Horner, Benjamin Noval, Dmitriy Muravyev, Sergio Paulinho, Gregory Rast and Tomas Vaitkus.

Euskaltel-Euskadi will be hoping for big performances at the Tour de France following relatively lackluster spring campaign.The Basque Country-based Euskaltel team will ride this year without the services of consistent top-10 threat Haimar Zubeldia (who’s already punched himself a ticket back to the Tour with Astana), so the team will look to Igor Antón and Mikel Astarloza to fill the void.Astarloza has already finished in the top-10 and rode well to a top-5 finish at the Dauphiné Libéré.

Quick Step's Tom Boonen has been banned from competing in the Tour de France due to his positive drug test for cocaine, organizers ASO (Amaury Sport Organisation) announced on Thursday. The 28-year-old tested positive for cocaine in April, less than a year after he first tested positive for the drug in May 2008. The three-time winner of Paris-Roubaix may also face disciplinary proceedings by UCI. Boonen's team have backed him and previously promised to provide legal support if he was refused entry to the Tour.

Rabobank will bring a strong and balanced team to the 2009 Tour de France, with a quiver full of stage hunters and podium contender Denis Menchov. It will be interesting to see how Menchov performs in the Tour after being pushed to the limit by Danilo Di Luca to claim a thrilling victory at the Giro d’Italia in May. Third last year at the Tour (after Bernhard Kohl's results are negated), Menchov will be one of the favorites for victory, especially if he can ride as consistently and strongly as he did at the Giro.

The Astana team announced Thursday that it has reached an agreement with its Kazakh sponsors that will ensure its continued operation through the year. In a release issued Thursday, the team credited productive meetings between Johann Bruyneel and intermediary Rinus Wagtmans, who served as a representative of Kazakhstan’s government for an accord, “which gives riders and staff of the Team sufficient guarantees for the operation and functioning of the Team for the remainder of the season.”

Luis León Sánchez says he’s ready to lead Caisse d’Epargne if star Alejandro Valverde isn’t allowed to race. Valverde is appealing a decision by Italian authorities to ban him for two years for what they say is clear evidence linking him to the Operación Puerto blood doping scandal. If Valverde isn’t allowed to race the Tour, his Caisse d’Epargne team will lean heavily on the 25-year-old León Sánchez during the season’s most important race.

It’s looking more likely that a Japanese rider will be at the Tour de France for the first time in more than a decade. Bbox Bouygues Telecom has named Yukiya Arashiro as one of the riders assured to start the 2009 Tour on July 4 in Monaco. The others include Thomas Voeckler, Pierrick Fédrigo, Pierre Rolland and William Bonnet. Bouygues team boss Jean-René Bernaudeau had high praise for Arashiro, a former Japanese national time trial and road champion who’s racing in Europe for the first time this season.

Alejandro Valverde could barely enjoy his victory Sunday at the Dauphiné Libéré when the questions started again: will he or won’t he be at the start line in Monaco on July 4 for the 2009 Tour de France? Since May, Valverde is banned for two years from racing in Italy for what authorities say is clear evidence linking him to the Operación Puerto blood doping scandal. The year’s Tour dips into Italy for about 80km during stage 16, enough to likely torpedo Valverde’s hopes for a shot at the Tour podium despite being arguably in the best form of his career.

Bike racing is quite unlike the mainstream “stick-and-ball” sports that most Americans grew up playing, and can often be confusing, or a even a complete mystery. Even other endurance sports, such as marathon running or triathlon, lack the complexities and tactics of professional road cycling. In those sports, the person that is in the front of the race is usually the one that wins. That’s seldom always the case in cycling. In fact, it’s possible to win the Tour de France without crossing the line first on any of the 21 stages.

Potential drugs cheats at the 2009 Tour de France will face the biggest anti-doping army ever seen at a major sports event next month, UCI president Pat McQuaid warned on Wednesday. McQuaid, speaking at an anti-doping conference in Paris, also officially welcomed the French National Anti Doping Agency (AFLD) back to the race after their muddy relationship last year.

Quick Step’s Tom Boonen has been given the green light from the UCI to compete in next month's Tour de France despite a recent, second positive test for cocaine. Boonen, the winner of major one-day classics and Tour de France stages, sparked controversy last month when it was revealed he had tested positive for cocaine for the second time in a year. It led to immediate calls for him to be banned from this year's showcase event, and the UCI is set to launch disciplinary proceedings against Boonen for bringing the sport into disrepute.

PRESS RELEASE Each July millions of cycling fans head to France to experience the world’s greatest bike race or dream of the day they’ll make the trip. Unless they’ve planned carefully, they’ll arrive to find full hotels, blocked routes, overpriced food, chaotic roads, and endless frustration as they try to get close to the race they’ve come to see.

Belgian cyclist Tom Boonen still hopes to ride in the Tour de France in July, contradicting officials who said he would not race after he tested positive for cocaine earlier this year. "I hope to take part in the Tour and we are attempting to reach agreement with the organizers as we want to avoid legal proceedings," the 28-year-old told reporters at a cycling festival at Gullegem in Belgium on Tuesday.

British rider Mark Cavendish wants to make amends for his premature exit from last year's Tour de France by claiming the green sprint jersey in Paris next month. Cavendish pulled out of the 2008 Tour after the 14th stage after four stage wins because of a combination of fatigue and his desire to concentrate on the Beijing Olympics. But the 24-year-old Columbia-Highroad sprinter regrets that decision and wants to become only the second cyclist from Great Britain to win a jersey in the Tour following the King of the Mountains title won by Scot Robert Millar in 1984.

Belgian rider Tom Boonen could still take part in the Tour de France despite his recent positive test for cocaine, according to UCI president Pat McQuaid. "There is no reason to ban Tom Boonen from the Tour. From the point of view of sporting regulations, nothing can stop Boonen. He has committed no fault in his capacity as a rider," McQuaid told Belgium’s De Standaard newspaper.

Twenty teams have been selected for the 2009 Tour de France, but Fuji-Servetto won’t be among them. 20 teams for 2009 Tour de France France: Ag2r-La Mondiale, Agritubel, Bouygues Telecom, Cofidis, FDJeux Belgium: Quick Step, Silence-Lotto Spain: Caisse d’Epargne, Euskaltel-Euskadi USA: Columbia-Highroad, Garmin-Slipstream Italy: Lampre, Liquigas

Garmin announces Mac compatibilityThe Garmin Forerunner 405 is now compatible with Apple computers, so Mac users can now wirelessly download to Garmin Connect. The Forerunner 405 is a watch-sized GPS unit that in addition to tracking routes, has 35 customizable data fields including heart rate, speed, time, cadence, and more. [nid:88233]It also has a touch-sensitive bezel around the face of the unit, so that most functions can be accessed without having to find buttons. For more information, visit www.garmin.com.

The French Anti-doping Agency AFLD on Thursday handed German cyclist Stefan Schumacher a two-year ban from racing in France after failing a doping test at the 2008 Tour de France, his lawyer said. The decision issued by the AFLD applies only to events contested on French soil, said Schumacher's attorney Michael Lehner. That ruling, however, may be extended globally if the German cycling federation or the UCI pursue the case. Schumacher said he would fight the ban.

The 2010 Tour de France will open with a nine kilometer individual time trial through the streets of Rotterdam, race director Christian Prudhomme announced in Rotterdam on Thursday. It will be the first time that the Tour will have started from the Dutch port city, but four other cities in the country — Amsterdam (1954), Scheveningen (1973), Leiden (1978) and 's-Hertogenbosch 1996) have previously enjoyed the honor. The 2009 race kicks off from Monaco.

Spanish cyclist Manuel Beltran has been banned from racing in France for two years after testing positive for the banned blood booster EPO at this year's Tour de France. France's national anti-doping agency (AFLD) made the announcement Tuesday.

Alejandro Valverde has won just about everything he’s wanted in his productive career, except a grand tour. Prolific in one-day classics and smaller stage races, Spain’s “Balaverde” has struggled in GC in three-week grand tours. With two podium finishes in the Vuelta a España, Valverde still believes he can win a major tour.

The Tour de France is heading back to Holland in 2010. Tour officials announced Thursday that the 2010 Tour will start in Rotterdam. More details will be provided in an official ceremony on Dec. 11 in the Dutch port city, officials said. “Rotterdam is an important metropolitan area with assurance of success,” Tour director Christian Prudhomme told AFP. “It’s doing everything so that people can get around on the bike. It’s in this spirit that the city wants the grand départ.” The Dutch city was picked ahead of Utrecht, Holland, and Dusseldorf, Germany.

Leonardo Piepoli, one of seven riders to fail drug tests at the Tour de France, has demanded a counter-test, according to the French national anti-doping agency (AFLD) on Wednesday. Piepoli, one of four who tested positive for a new strain of a banned blood booster EPO called CERA, will be controlled in the coming weeks AFLD said, without giving further details. Last month Austria's Bernhard Kohl became the seventh positive doping case after being controlled retroactively for CERA, joining Italians Piepoli and Riccardo Ricco and Germany's Stefan Schumacher.

German public broadcaster ARD has been told it has no basis on which to bring a premature end to its contract with Tour de France organizers to televise the race during 2009-11. A spate of recent doping scandals, some of which involved German and Austrian riders, prompted ARD and fellow German broadcaster ZDF to announce their intention to stop broadcasting the world's biggest bike race.

Levi Leipheimer couldn’t be in Paris last week to watch the official unveiling of the route of the 2009 Tour de France, but he was certainly following the news. Like just about everyone, the Astana captain was keenly waiting for details of the 96th Tour. VeloNews caught up with Leipheimer while he was in Utah this week to gauge his reaction to the route. Here are excerpts from the interview: VeloNews: What was your first impression after seeing the route?

Mont Ventoux could play judge, jury and executioner in the 96th Tour de France in what some are already calling a climber’s course. For the 2009 Tour, officials saved the best and hardest for last, with the mighty Ventoux poised in the penultimate day of the 21-stage, 3445km route from Monaco to Paris. Tour officials, who unveiled the course to rave reviews in a ceremony in Paris on Wednesday, are hoping the race will be so tightly packed that almost anything could happen on the storied steeps of the géant de Provence.

What’s most clear from Wednesday’s announcement of the 2009 Tour de France is that the winner will have to maintain top form from the very first day in Monaco on July 4 to the finish in Paris on July 26.

Lance Armstrong says the 2009 Tour de France route, unveiled Wednesday, is "innovative and very interesting" and he said he looks forward to negotiating with Tour officials about "a mutually beneficial future together." In the statement released Wednesday afternoon, Armstrong appeared to be a bit ambivalent about whether he would ride the Tour next year.

Call the 2009 Tour de France a race of innovation and originality. Unwinding like a corkscrew from Monaco on July 4 to the finale into Paris three weeks later, the 21-stage race will be one hard to control and full of room for riders who dare to defy traditional tactics. Mont Ventoux is back, and so is the team time trial, but what makes the 2009 Tour route so interesting is that organizers were not afraid to throw convention to the wind.

The men favored to contest for the yellow jersey in the 2009 Tour de France applauded the route revealed in Paris on Wednesday, calling it “difficult, but interesting.” The 96th edition of the Tour de France will begin on July 4 in the Mediterranean Principality of Monaco, race director Christian Prudhomme announced at the Palais des Congrès of Paris on Wednesday.

VeloNews.com will live stream Wednesday's presentation of the 2009 Tour de France route. The presentation will begin at 11:30 a.m. Paris time (5:30 a.m. EST). You can watch the stream here.

Tour de France organizers will finally end months of waiting on Wednesday by unveiling the route that they hope will provide another exciting, albeit cleaner, race for the famous yellow jersey. In the months since Spaniard Carlos Sastre claimed overall victory, seven riders - including KOM winner Bernhard Kohl and stage winners Ricardo Riccò, Leonardo Piepoli and Stefan Schumacher - have been exposed as drugs cheats. However a bigger question on the minds of some fans will be whether seven-time champion Lance Armstrong will take part.

Austria's Bernhard Kohl will be the "seventh and last" positive doping case from this year's Tour de France, according to sports daily L'Equipe on Tuesday. Kohl, the best climber at this year's race where he finished third overall, has become the fourth rider to test positive for CERA, a new generation of the banned blood booster EPO (erythropoietin). In all seven riders tested positive at this year's race, which was won by Spaniard Carlos Sastre of the CSC team.

Former Saunier Duval climber Leonardo Piepoli is facing a ban from the sport after the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) announced Monday he had tested positive for banned substances twice at this year's Tour de France. Piepoli, who won a stage and helped former Saunier Duval teammate Riccardo Ricco win two stages at the race, will now come before a CONI commission on Friday in connection with the failed tests on July 4 and 15.

During last week’s press conference at Interbike in Las Vegas, in revealing details of his comeback to racing, Lance Armstrong blurted out that he was “looking forward to the Mont Ventoux” stage in the 2009 Tour de France.

Prosecutors at the anti-doping tribunal of the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) have asked that rider Riccardo Ricco be handed a 20-month ban after he tested positive for a new variant of EPO during the Tour de France. Ricco, 24, was suspended from riding by CONI in July after admitting to using the banned blood-booster. He was kicked off the Tour de France and sacked by his Saunier Duval-Scott team after testing positive following the fourth stage time-trial. The team itself subsequently lost both of its title sponsors.

Next year's Tour de France is set for a two-stage incursion to Barcelona, according to the Catalan city's Mayor Jordi Hereu on Tuesday. "This is important for the city, but also for the Tour, for cycling and sport in general," said Hereu. The city's top sports coordinator, Pere Alcober, said Barcelona would host a stage finish on July 8 and the start of a stage on July 9. Dates for next year's race, which is scheduled to start in the principality of Monaco, have yet to be confirmed by race organizers.

Whatever the reasons for Lance Armstrong deciding to make a comeback to the Tour de France after a three-year absence — whether to raise awareness of a worldwide cancer initiative, to lay to rest the decade-old doping accusations that still hound him or simply for the heck of it — he knows that the eyes of the world will be on him.

The second sample provided by Spanish rider Manuel Beltran, who tested positive for erythropoietin (EPO) during the Tour de France, has also tested positive for the blood booster, a source close to the dossier said Tuesday. The test on the second sample, known as the "B" sample, was carried out by French anti-doping agency AFLD which also tested the first sample back in July, the source, who does not want to be identified, told AFP. The anti-doping agency is expected officially to announce the results of the testing on the "B" sample shortly.

Neal Henderson is the Sport Science Manager at Boulder Center for Sports Medicine. He is a USA Cycling certified coach and works with a diverse clientele at BCSM. He has been Taylor Phinney’s personal coach since 2006 and will is traveling with Phinney and his family in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics. "Votre hard-drive ne marche pas ... c'est morte" is something that I didn't want to hear today.

Shortly after the official result sheet of last Saturday’s Tour de France time trial was dropped on my table at the pressroom in St. Amand-Montrond, I made an interesting discovery. All but one of the riders who had just taken the top 15 places in the challenging 53km test either represent teams that have a strong internal anti-doping program (CSC-Saxo Bank, Garmin-Chipotle and Team Columbia) and/or are members of the Movement for Credible Cycling (Gerolsteiner, Rabobank, Garmin and Columbia).

A video clip showing Australian Cadel Evans snap at a broadcast journalist following the Tour de France’s stage 10 finish at Hautacam has become a minor YouTube sensation, with the clip garnering near 100,000 views and hundreds of comments by race’s end. After taking the yellow jersey, Evans was walked through customary post-stage TV interviews when a microphone windscreen tapped his injured left shoulder, wounded in his race threatening stage 9 crash.

Now that the champagne has lost its fizz and the podium girls are back to their day jobs, the cycling world now waits with bated breath until that last anti-doping control winds through the labyrinth of syringes, gyroscopes, laser prisms and other weapons in the arsenal at the labs. Until the final sample comes back clean, no one can afford to breathe easy. Anyone who loves the Tour is desperate to avoid that final-hour “worst-case scenario” that could once again send cycling to its knees.

Increased suspense, a boom in television ratings and happy sponsors left Tour de France chief Christian Prudhomme in a buoyant mood two days prior to the end of this year's race. But with the ever-present threat of cheats lingering, the Frenchman knows it is far too early to talk of a definitive turnaround for the sport. After years of controversy the reputation of the race was tarnished by a minority of drugs cheats. But compared to recent scandals, this year's Tour got off comparatively lightly.

Tour de France runner-up Cadel Evans (Silence-Lott) dismissed as “unfounded rumor” speculation he has suffered a knee injury that could threaten his participation in next month’s Olympic Games in Beijing. Evans, 31, finished second in Tour de France for the second straight year and on Sunday night joined his Silence Lotto team mates for the traditional post-Tour dinner in Paris. Evans said he did slip on a wet floor but it was no more than that.

For Australia's Cadel Evans, the Olympic road race in Beijing is already too far on the horizon. For the immediate future, the 31-year-old wants to concentrate on winding down at the one-day criteriums which follow the end of the Tour de France — and then put his bike to rest. Evans' overriding feeling was one of "relief" on Sunday after he finished his fourth Tour campaign with an impressive fourth top ten finish. Yet his second consecutive runner-up spot, a year on from losing the yellow jersey by 23 seconds to Spaniard Alberto Contador, must have hurt.