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Why does my Campagnolo hub have only eight ball bearings?

Mountain Khaki's Daniel Ramsey didn’t think much of his chances in a field sprint in Sunday’s Riverview Criterium. So he attacked with five laps to go in the NRC event and held off a hard-charging field to win ahead of Rahsaan Bahati (Rock Racing) and Bernard Sulzberger (Fly V Australia). "I just went off of instinct," said Ramsey after winning the third round of Oklahoma’s Tulsa Tough criterium series. "I don't think I've ever placed top 20 in a field sprint before, so my best option was to attack.”

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.

Editor's Note:Jeremy Powers is a pro road racer with the Jelly Belly team, and races cyclocross for the Cannondale-Cyclocrossworld.com team. Powers provided VeloNews.com readers with an inside look at the cyclocross scene last fall and winter, and now, after a few months' vacation, he's back to provide a look at his season on the road. Last time you heard from me I was finishing up my cyclocross season in Belgium, trying to conquer the world championships.

Editor's note: VeloNews Technical Editor Zack Vestal visited Zipp Speed Weaponry's Indiana factory this spring and reported on the company's history in part 1 of this article. In part 2, Vestal gets behind some of the company's philosophy and practices in product development and production.

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Price remembers Larsen

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Rather than aiming for a win, Shawn Milne (Team Type 1) started Sunday’s U.S. Air Force Classic in Arlington, Virginia, planning to spend the day working for his team’s sprinters, Kenneth Hanson, who’d been second at the Clarendon Cup the day before, and Serbian Aldo Ino Ilesic. A few laps of the 7.8 mile circuit later, he wasn’t sure he could even do that. But by race’s end, it was Milne throwing his hands up at the line.

After racing from the north to the south to the center of the boot, we finally reached Rome and completed the last fourteen kilometers of the Giro. In the flamboyant, dramatic fashion that we have now become accustomed to after three weeks of racing in the circus, we whizzed by Rome’s historical sites, snaked through the cobbled city streets and, finally, turned our last pedal strokes in front of the coliseum. The course provided drama for the television audience but also put many riders on edge due to its technical aspects.

Lance Armstrong said his 12th-placed finish in the Giro d'Italia was "promising" ahead of this year's Tour de France. Armstrong came into the Giro insisting that he was not there to contest for the win. "I came in open-minded. I did not know what to expect, obviously because of the crash in Castilla y Leon, the time off the bike and the trip over here," Armstrong said. "In my view it has been a hard three weeks. In the second half of the race I showed that I was certainly getting better and I think we can take that away from here. It is promising for June and July."

American Taylor Phinney (Trek-Livestrong) won the Paris-Roubaix Espoirs on Sunday, emerging first from a group of 11 that entered the Roubaix velodrome together. Phinney, 18, becomes the first American to win the race for riders under 23. The 170km race has been held since 1967 and has been won by budding professionals including Yaroslav Popovych, Thor Hushovd, Stephen Roche and Frédéric Moncassin.

Rabobank's Lars Boom finished second in the final time trial of the Tour of Belgium Sunday to clinch the final overall victory. Quick Step's Sébastien Rosseler won the stage in 20:53, followed by Boom at six seconds. Brent Bookwalter (BMC) was the top American on the stage and overall, coming in 13th at 41 seconds in the final stage, and 19th on the GC. Boom, 23, said he hasn't raced much since the end of cyclocross season. He was the 2008 cyclocross world champion.

Race leader Denis Menchov won the Giro d’Italia on Sunday despite suffering a fall in the last kilometer of the final stage, a 14.4km time trial through Rome. Menchov, now the third Russian to win the Giro, added the title to his two Vuelta a España victories in 2005 and 2007. The 31-year-old Menchov beat 2007 Giro champion Danilo Di Luca (LPR) by 41 seconds over the course of the three-week tour, with Liquigas’ Franco Pellizzoti rounding off the podium finishers a further 1:18 adrift.

On the Evening of June 17, downtown Flemington NJ will host the first stage of the second annual Giro Di Jersey Stage race.

It isn’t often that a 100-mile mountain bike race is decided by who has the strongest legs at the end. But that’s exactly what happened in the open men’s division at Saturday’s Mohican 100, the second stop of the National Ultra Endurance mountain bike series. Reigning marathon and short track national champion Jeremiah Bishop (Monavie-Cannondale) took the win after outfoxing his five breakaway companions in the final three miles. “It was pretty nerve racking,” Bishop said. “I was on the edge of cramping the whole time. My attack was kind of a Hail Mary pass.”

First seen in public at Sunday's Bump n’ Grind event in Alabama (round three of the Pro XCT Tour), Sam Schultz’s pre-production Gary Fisher full suspension bike is full of new features. The team ventured south to participate, and tucked in the race trailer alongside the team-spec Superfly hardtails and Procaliber 26-inch-wheeled, full-suspension bikes was a completely new, full-suspension 29er that incorporates the lightweight carbon of the Superfly, big wheels from the HiFi 29er, plus flagship design elements pioneered in the Trek line.

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Tulsa, Oklahoma, has everything you’d want in a National Racing Calendar criterium series: historic downtown districts filled with old brick buildings and freshly paved streets; immense amounts of prize money (making the event the second highest pro payout in the nation); and lax open container laws, leading to an especially enthusiastic local fan base.

Alejandro Borrajo (Colavita-Sutter Home) nipped Kenneth Hanson (Team Type 1) by just inches to win the U.S. Air Force Clarendon Cup criterium in Arlington, Virginia, on Saturday, extending the squad’s ownership of the title after Luca Damiani’s win last year (when the race was known as the CSC Invitational). In the women's race, BMW Bianchi's Erica Allar showed how to race without a team, taking a last-lap flyer that paid off.

Britain's Emma Pooley (Cervelo TestTeam) won in a solo break in Saturday's women's World Cup road race in Montreal, finishing 1 minute, 14 seconds ahead of the pursuers. Pooley attacked on the first of 11 laps through the city and rode alone for most of the 110.7km race. Sweden's Emma Johansson (Red Sun Cycling Team) took the field sprint for second, and Germany's Trixi Worrack (Nurnberger Versicherung) was third. Johannsson also took over the lead of the World Cup rankings. The previous leader, Holland's Marianne Vos, did not race.

Belgium's Bert De Waele (Landbouwkrediet - Colnago) won the fourth stage of the Tour of Belgium in a sprint Saturday, finishing ahead of compatriot Greg van Avermaet (Silence-Lotto) and Dutchman Lars Boom (Rabobank), the new overall leader. Boom is the Dutch national road and time trial champion, as well as the 2008 world cyclocross champion. He took the black leader's jersey from Slovenian rider Borut Bozic, who couldn't keep pace with the leading pack over the race's many picturesque peaks in south-east Belgium.