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Euser in action at the 2009 Liège-Bastogne-Liège

Garmin-Slipstream’s American rider Lucas Euser was badly injured in a collision with a car during a training ride outside the team’s Spanish base of Girona on Thursday afternoon. Euser, 25, suffered a broken right knee, two broken ribs on his left side and a number of cuts and bruises.

The motorcycles, helicopters and stationary cameras of RAI Television bring you the Giro d’Italia up close — the video taken from right next to the riders and from the air and the long shots from the finish line.

Columbia-Highroad knew its young steed Edvald Boasson Hagen would probably win a stage in his Giro d’Italia debut, they just didn’t expect it so soon. Sport director Ralf Aldag thought Boasson Hagen, who turns 22 on Sunday, would be a factor in breakaways in the second half of the Giro. But just a day after sprinting to second, the tall Norwegian outfoxed a veteran group of five riders to hand Columbia-Highroad another stage victory.

Lawyers for top German cyclist Andreas Klöden on Friday spoke out to reject claims that the former Tour de France runner-up was involved in doping with his former team, T-Mobile. Experts who spent two years investigating the procedures of two Freiburg University Clinic doctors who worked for T-Mobile (formerly Deutsche Telekom) alleged Wednesday that Kloeden doped during the 2006 Tour de France.

Despite the turmoil surrounding the Astana team finances, manager Johan Bruyneel assured VeloNews on Friday that the squad will be at the Tour de France in July. Astana rode with new jerseys Friday that virtually fade the team sponsors from view, a gesture that the team is hoping will trigger a reaction from the Kazakh sponsors.

As the 92nd Giro d’Italia heads into its second week, Lance Armstrong will find himself racing on terrain he knows very well, even though this is the first time he has raced the Italian grand tour. The Texan is still in training mode at the Giro, but knowing many of the road he’ll be racing on through Wednesday should help him in his quest to bid for a stage win later in the race — perhaps as early as next Thursday’s 60.6km time trial along the Cinque Terre coast. The connections with Armstrong are intense and frequent over the next five stages of the Giro.

The sun hasn’t set on Astana yet, but the glow of the team’s sponsors has certainly dimmed. Following a long-running row over the non-payment of the team’s wages, eight of nine riders on the Kazakhstan-sponsored squad started the Giro d’Italia’s seventh stage Friday wearing race jerseys and shorts Friday with the names of the team’s major sponsors virtually faded out. Astana manager Johan Bruyneel said the protest is the team’s way of demonstrating its frustration that Kazakh sponsors are not fulfilling its contract obligations to the team.

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Press Release

Mechanics need the right tools to do their jobs. While of course their trucks are stocked with myriad good bike tools, sometimes they choose to use tools they made themselves. Or they appropriate a tool that was made for a different purpose. And the truck itself is a tool that is critical to doing their job.

Homemade truing stand

The Tour of Atlanta is back in 2009, and has several exciting new stages and courses for all levels of racers. Each stage will be hosted by the city of Alpharetta, just miles away from Atlanta. The TOA begins with a short TT, followed by a Criterium on May 22nd. The next two days will feature two races each day, with exciting courses in the heart of Alpharetta. The last stage will be a road race, and it will truly test the mettle of each rider. Here are some of the great features of the 2009 edition:

Lance Armstrong will target a stage win in the Giro d'Italia after falling off the pace in the overall standings, race leader Danilo Di Luca claimed on Thursday. "You mustn't forget that he stopped competing for three years and fractured his collarbone a month and a half before the race," the Italian said after completing the sixth stage. "I saw the footage of the Alpe di Siusi stage (on Wednesday) on television and he gave everything," Di Luca added. "He's doing his best, he's honoring the Giro. I think he'll focus on a stage victory."

The Rocky Mountain Bicycle Show has opened registration to the entire cycling industry. In keeping with the planned evolution of the show, RMBS/09 will include all areas of the cycling industry while highlighting the custom framebuilders in the Framebuilder’s Showcase. Both an industry and consumer show, RMBS/09 offers the opportunity to display cycling related products, sell them, all for hundreds if not thousands of dollars below most trade show rates.

The Kelly Benefit Strategies pro cycling squad heads east this week to field a double defense of last season’s victories at both the Bank of America Wilmington Grand Prix and Baltimore’s Kelly Cup, part of Bike Jam, Baltimore’s premier cycling event. Both races mark what Jonas Carney describes as the real start of the KBS racing program.

Michele Scarponi (Diquigiovanni) soloed home an impressive victory Thursday to leave the chasing peloton in his rear-view mirror in the 2009 Giro d’Italia’s first successful breakaway.   Despite a frenetic chase by Quick Step and Katusha, the sprightly Italian held out after 198km in a five-man move in the 248km sixth stage over two rated climbs to the posh Austrian ski town of Mayrhofen. He won by 32 seconds clear of an impressive Edvald Boasson Hagen (Columbia-Highroad).  

Belgian cycling federation president Laurent De Backer has hit out at the president of world cycling, Pat McQuaid, following the International Cycling Union's (UCI) decision to sanction Tom Boonen. Belgian star Boonen, who recently claimed a third victory in the prestigious Paris-Roubaix one-day classic, tested positive for cocaine in April — less than a year after he first tested positive for the drug, in May 2008.

Lance Armstrong just wants everyone to calm down. Some over-eager fans and media accustomed to watching Armstrong crush the climbs were dismayed Wednesday at the sight of him being dropped on the 24.9km summit finish to Alpe di Suisi, but on the day after, Armstrong was keen to put things in context.

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Team Type 1 announced Wednesday that it has hired Michael Creed, the domestic all-rounder who was fired by Rock Racing last month. “It’s nice to be in a position to help out a deserving American rider like Mike Creed,” Team Type 1 Director Sportif Vassili Davidenko said. “He will definitely be an asset for us in some of the biggest races in the United States this year.”

To start, it might be worth pointing out that these entries are being written via BlackBerry, so I apologize for their sometimes-rambling nature.

Under a strict interpretation of UCI rules, teams are only allowed to ride with “a single design for clothing (colours and layout) which may not be altered for the duration of the calendar year.” However, teams have made changes in the past, with the prior approval of the UCI. The UCI approved, for example, the Discovery team’s switch to a green-themed team kit for the 2007 Tour de France, a change designed to highlight an initiative undertaken by its title sponsor.

Roasted Gingered Salmon with Mango Salsa and more