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Alessandro Petacchi (LPR) avoided a massive pileup in the closing meters of the bunch sprint to win Scheldeprijs on Wednesday in Belgium. Canadian Dominque Rollin (Cervélo TestTeam) steered clear of the mayhem to earn his first European podium with third place while Tony Cruz bolted to fourth in strong showing by BMC Racing that also saw Jeff Louder work into the day’s main breakaway. Louder joined a 14-man breakaway early in the race and was only caught in the closing 10km.

Dear Lennard, I saw the Prestaflator tool showed on VeloNews.com. Looks cool, but what kind of compressor is reasonable and affordable for road tires?  I have looked at compressors in the past and I generally only find industrial-like ones for nail guns, etc.  Is there an affordable one just for low volume higher pressure road tires? Samuel Dear Samuel,

Like many professional racers, Tony Cruz (BMC Racing) has a love-hate relationship with Paris-Roubaix. With Cruz, it’s mostly a love thing with the pavé, the history and the drama of the race, but he hates it that his dreams have been torpedoed by bad luck. Despite starting with high hopes in the team’s Paris-Roubaix debut, mechanical difficulties foiled Cruz’s ambitions Sunday and he was unable to reach the velodrome in what was his sixth Roubaix start of his career.

Tom Boonen is holding off his vacation for another few days.   The recently crowned Paris-Roubaix champion will line up Wednesday for 97th Scheldeprijs Vlaanderen before heading to the beach.   The Quick Step captain will be going for his third crown in the mid-week semi-classic, considered the final chapter for riders specializing in the northern classics before putting an end to their early season racing schedule.[nid:90514]  

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Price: $300 Web site: www.thecompetitiveedge.com New from Tanita, makers of precision scales and body composition monitors, the BC-558 Ironman InnerScan Body Composition Monitor. What sets the BC-558 apart from other body composition scales is its ability to measure the composition of each body segment — trunk, right arm, left arm, right leg, and left leg.

The Sea Otter Classic, which runs this Thursday through Sunday, is now in its 19th year. From humble origins in 1991, when just 450 attendees populated the event, to 2008, when almost 10,000 participants and 50,000 spectators packed the venue for the four-day festival, Sea Otter has become a fixture on the spring calendar.

Jersey Competition Highlights Rising Stars in The Sport Minneapolis (April 2, 2009)---,The Protein People, makers of Active Protein Complex (APC) will join the Nature Valley Grand Prix as the sponsor of the Best Young Rider competition in 2009. This program supports developing talent by putting cyclists in the spotlight at one of the nation’s top professional stage races. Stage one of the 2009 Nature Valley Grand Prix begins in St. Paul on Wednesday, June 10 and continues with daily stages in Cannon Falls, Minneapolis, Mankato, and Stillwater.

Canada’s spring cycling classic, Paris to Ancaster, is becoming more competitive daily. The latest additions to the start list are Jelly Belly professional Jeremy Powers and Planet Energy’s Mark Batty. Powers, 24 from Boston, Massachusetts is making his debut in the race but will immediately jump to the top of the list of race favorites due to his strong cyclocross results . He won six races in 2008, including the Toronto international cyclocross and is a 5 time member of the United States national team. “The Jelly Belly professional team is the longest

Staunton, IL is proud to host the 21st Annual Tour de Donut and 4th Annual Rib Cook-off on Saturday, July 11, 2009. The Tour de Donut is a unique bike race, in which you can eat donuts at the designated stops in order to reduce your race time. Last year, more than 850 riders participated in the race. Registration for the race is now open at http://www.bikereg.com/events/register.asp?eventid=8040 .

Team Type 1's Alison Powers is the first leader of the 2009 Women’s Prestige Cycling Series, a points series. Powers earned the title thanks to a consistent strong performance at the Redlands Bicycle Classic, the traditional series opener. The series includes four events and only riders on teams who register with the series are eligible. So, for example, Team Columbia-Highroad's Ina Yoko Teutenberg won Redlands, but does not appear in the series points rankings because her team is not signed up with the series.

Athens, Georgia hosts 30th Annual Athens Twilight Criterium & Festival Kicks Off 2009 USA CRITS Speed Week & National Series Some of the best professional male and female sprint cyclists in the world will race in the 30th Annual Athens Twilight Criterium on April 25. The riders will compete in separate events that customarily draw an estimated 30,000 spectators to historic, downtown Athens, Ga., every April.

A few days after Boonen's victory, the photos are still rolling in from Paris-Roubaix. Despite this year's mostly dry conditions, teams were ready with bikes for all conditions. Padded bar tape, oversized tubular tires, box section aluminum rims, and closely matched front chainrings were virtually standard equipment. Other teams took things a step further, using cyclocross bikes, cantilever brakes, bar-top brake levers, and in some cases, custom hybrid road/cyclocross frames. Reporter Andrew Hood and photographer Graham Watson captured a few photos of team bikes just prior to the race.

Oft-injured Óscar Freire will be a surprise starter at this weekend’s Amstel Gold Race, something that will make title sponsor Rabobank happy.   The three-time world champion is still on the comeback trail from his crash at February’s Tour of California that left him with two broken ribs and kept him out of Milan-San Remo.   Freire made it through the demanding Vuelta al País Vasco last week and Rabobank team officials confirmed Tuesday that Freire will ride at Amstel.  

It’s time for pedal-bashers like Tom Boonen and Stijn Devolder to head to the beach.   For anyone with some gas left in the tank, there’s still some unfinished business at Sheldeprijs, typically the final sendoff for riders like Boonen before they take a break ahead of new goals later this season.   After that, the whippet-thin climbers and hilly course specialists step center stage to dominate headlines for the hilly classics of eastern Belgium and southern Holland through the end of April.  

The Quick Step team will line up at the 2009 Tour of Missouri, the race announced Tuesday. The team, currently leading the UCI word rankings, will join Astana, Cervelo TestTeam, Columbia-Highroad, Garmin-Slipstream, Liquigas and others at the event now in its third year. “It is a big win for Missouri that the world No. 1 ranked team has chosen to participate in one of the world’s top bike races,” Missouri Lt. Governor Peter Kinder said in a statement. Rosters for the Sept. 7-13 event will be announced this summer.

The U.S. Open of Cycling, scheduled for May 16, in Rhode Island, has been canceled, the event's promoter announced Tuesday. The event was first run in April of 2007 as the U.S. Open Cycling Championships, starting in Williamsburg, Virginia and ending in Richmond. "Unfortunately, we have not been able to secure the sponsorship needed to run the US Open of Cycling this year and are canceling the event," said Richard Durishin, Executive Director of the U.S. Open Cycling Foundation said.

Frenchman Jimmy Casper, riding for Besson-Sojasun, won the 202km Paris-Camembert semi-classic on Tuesday, fending off compatriot Romain Feillu (Agritubel) and Russia's Alexandre Efimkin (AG2R) in a sprint finish. "It's not normally a course for sprinters, so I'll savor it all the more," said Casper. "Conditions were ideal for me. We let the others go for it and then we worked on two kilometers — the last two kilometers. I thought for a moment in the sprint all was lost but then I saw an opening. It's a surprise win."

Kristin Armstrong is famous for both her success in bicycle racing, and the “type-A” attention to detail that keeps her climbing the podium at critical races every season. After a dropped chain in 2006 nearly cost her a gold medal at the world time trial championships, she resolved to never let the same mechanical malady derail another performance. She used a custom machined aluminum chain catcher in Beijing to help win gold. Now, after demand from both ProTour team mechanics and the public, a new K-Edge Chain Catcher has been refined for retail sale.

Swedish rider Emma Johansson (Red Sun) dashed to victory Monday in the Tour de Drenthe in Holland to take the third round of the 10-leg World Cup series. Johansson was the fastest out of a group of six riders that escaped in the 138km course. She ruined chances for a hometown victory, out-kicking Dutch riders Loes Gunnewijk and Chantal Black, second and third, respectively. Germany’s Ina Teutenberg led the main pack across the line to take seventh at seven seconds back.

Junior national team member Adam Leibovitz finished third overall in a very tight race at the Ster Van Zuid-Limburg stage race in Belgium on Monday, after leading the race through the weekend. Leibovitz won Friday's prologue, and held the overall lead through road stages on Saturday and Sunday, entering the final stage on Monday with a one-second lead over Belgium's Jonathan Breyne. On Monday, Leibovitz, from Indianapolis, finished in the pack at 66th, 22 seconds behind a six-rider breakaway.

As XTERRA superstar Jamie Whitmore continues her battle against cancer, her friends, family, sponsors, and fans continue to find ways to help with the ever-increasing cost of her medical care. Zeal Optics is hosting the "5k fun run for Jamie" at their Boulder, Colorado office on Sunday, April 19th at 10 a.m.  It's just $10 to enter (all of that goes to Jamie) and includes post run food and two raffle tickets for the $1,000 worth of great prizes that were donated for the event.  Learn more and register here.

Germany's Heinrich Haussler may have had a frustrating season so far at the major events, with second places at Milan-San Remo and the Tour of Flanders, but he is on the top rung at one race: the UCI individual points rankings. Haussler's recent consistency has moved him into first place in the rankings, up from second place behind Allan Davis the last time the points were tallied. Meanwhile, Alberto Contador's win at the Tour of the Basque Country has vaulted him from 13th to second in the rankings.

A year after winning the race on his first visit, Spanish rider Alejandro Valverde will once again be in Normandy on Tuesday to get his teeth into the Paris-Camembert, even as he awaits the outcome of a doping investigation into him in Italy. Two weeks ago, the Italian National Olympic Committee (CONI) anti-doping prosecutor demanded a two-year ban for Valverde, embroiled in a Spanish blood doping probe. In March, Valverde, nicknamed The Green Bullet, told an Italian anti-doping hearing he had not done anything wrong and was not in any way mixed up in Spain's Operation Puerto scandal.

The Jelly Belly Team is flying halfway across the world for its next race: the Jelajah Malaysia 2009. This eight day stage race will begin April 19 in Kuala Selangor and end in a criterium in Kuala Lumpur on the 26th. The riders traveling to compete are Brad Huff, Bernard van Ulden, Matty Rice, Matt Crane, Will Routley and Kiel Reijnen. “This is one of the biggest races in Asia and we are very excited to be able to participate, with 15 other teams from all over the world,” said Team Director Danny Van Haute.

Price: $40 Web site: www.prestaflator.com

Price: $1,700 Sizes: Four sizes Web site: www.litespeed.com Litespeed is re-releasing its titanium Pisgah mountain bike frame. Features on the new Pisgah include the RDS dropout system for quick conversion to singlespeed dropouts, new geometry showcasing an oversized tube set, asymmetric chain stays for maximum drivetrain stiffness, power transfer and tire clearance.[nid:90491]

Price: $60 Weight: 180 to 200 grams Sizes: 650 x 23 and 700 x 19, 23, and 25 Colors: Black Web site: www.bontrager.com The folks over at Bontrager are more than excited about their newest performance tire, the Race X Lite Aero TT tire. After testing this new tire they have concluded that it is the fastest tire on the market. Bontrager believes that the new Race X Lite Aero TT tire will shave seconds off of your time trial.

Wilier Triestina USA today announced The Gear of the Year title its 2009 all-carbon monocoque Izoard road bike was awarded by industry leading publication Outside Magazine. The fourth model in the Wilier Triestina lineup following the Cento1 and Le Roi road bikes and the Cento Crono time trial bike, all ridden by ProTour team Lampre and reigning World Champion Alessandro Ballan, the Izoard proved to be the most bike for the money based on Outside road test and review scores.

China's Jin Long made history for his country here on Sunday by competing in arguably the world's toughest one-day classic bike race, the prestigious Paris-Roubaix. Unfortunately for Jin, his pre-race fears of not being able to negotiate the 27 sections of bone-shaking cobblestones peppered throughout the northern French epic came true as he failed to make it to the 100km mark. As a result, Jin did not make it to the finish line in Roubaix's famous outdoor velodrome where Belgian star Tom Boonen triumphed to join the elite club of three-time winners.