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If you enlarged a pancake to be 3.9km long, it would be much lumpier than the prologue of the 2009 Amgen Tour of California. That's to say — the 2.4-mile course is nearly dead flat with only an oh-so-slight rise coming in the first half mile. The Sacramento skies have delivered steady rain the last two days, as teams have arrived and headed out for training rides.

Robbie Hunter (Barloworld) just missed his second straight stage victory as Belarussian Yauheni Hutarovich (FDJeux) dashed ahead to claim his second win of the week at the Tour Mediteranéen in France. Hutarovich, winner of Wednesday’s opening stage, relegated Friday’s winner to second, with Italian Giuseppe Palombo (Acqua Sapone) coming through third. Overnight leader Luis León Sánchez (Caisse d’Epargne) finished safely tucked in the main pack in the 167km stage from Brignoles to Marseille to retain the overall leader’s jersey.[nid:87768]

Canadians Geoff Kabush, Marie-Hélene Prémont and American Lea Davison will highlight the new-for-2009 Maxxis-Rocky Mountain professional mountain bike team. The squad marks a partnership between Maxxis tires and Rocky Mountain bicycles, each of whom supported World Cup-level mountain bike racing programs for much of the last decade.

After a two-day break Mattia Gavazzi got back to his winning ways, bagging his fourth stage victory in the 14th edition of Le Tour de Langkawi, a 146.8 kilometer Stage Six from Batang Kali to Shah Alam on Saturday. The Italian sprinter registered his team Serramenti Diquigiovanni-Androni Giocatoli's 20th ever stage win at the Malaysian race, after yet another bunch sprint. This time it required a photo-finish to separate between three frontrunners: Ag2r La Mondiale's Aurelian Clerc, Garmin-Slipstream's Chris Sutton and Gavazzi, as the trio crossed the line side-by-side.

Promoters of the 2009 Amgen Tour of California released the final roster for the nine-day race starting Feb. 14. The race will feature 17 teams of eight riders each. Astana (KAZ) 1. Levi Leipheimer (USA) 2. Lance Armstrong (USA) 3. Janez Brajkovic (SLO) 4. Christopher Horner (USA) 5. Steve Morabito (SUI) 6. Yaroslav Popovych (UKR) 7. José Luis Rubiera Vigil (ESP) 8. Gregory Rast (SUI) Saxo Bank (DEN) 11. Fabian Cancellara (SUI) 12. Andy Schleck (LUX) 13. Fränk Schleck (LUX) 14. Gustav Larsson (SWE) 15. Jason McCartney (USA)

Just how much power does it take to ride the Amgen Tour of California? We’ll show you each day, thanks to Team Saxo Bank’s Gustav Larsson. Larsson may not be a widely recognized name yet within American cycling circles, but wait. The Swede finished fifth overall in last year’s Tour of California, and also claimed the silver medal in the Beijing Olympic individual time trial, only 33 seconds behind his Team Saxo Bank teammate Fabian Cancellara. Gustav will be providing his SRM power meter files for each stage of the California tour.[nid:87694]

American Taylor Phinney broke a thirteen year old American record for the 4,000-meter individual pursuit on Friday, on his way to winning a gold medal at the Copenhagen World Cup. Phinney's 4:15.223 effort in the qualifying round broke the previous American record of 4:19.800 set by Mariano Friedick in 1996. Phinney turned a 4:19.119 in the finals to beat Ireland's David O'Loughlin and register his first World Cup victory this season. Phinney's mother Connie Carpenter-Phinney noted that Phinney had never ridden under 4:20 in competition and his last kilo was his fastest, at 1:00:5.

Most American sports wait until the end of the season for The Big One. The Super Bowl, The Final Four, the World Series – all of these come at the conclusion of many months of competition. For American cycling, it doesn’t get any bigger than the Amgen Tour of California, which begins Saturday with the best riders in the world throwing down on the streets of Sacramento.

Italian sprinter Daniele Bennati (Liquigas) took his second win on the 2009 season and for the second time, it came thanks to nasty late-race crash. Just days after winning a stage at the Mallorca Challenge marred by a crash that took down Alejandro Valverde, Bennati comes out on top in t he opening stage of the Giro della Provincia di Grosseto that saw Italian rival Alessandro Petacchi crash out.

South African sprinter Robert Hunter gave his Barloworld team a victory in Friday's fourth stage at the Mediterranean Tour while Spanish rider Luis León Sánchez (Caisse d'Epargne) regained the overall lead. Hunter and Sánchez were part an early move that pulled clear in the opening 20km of the 135km stage between Greasque and Bouc-Bel-Air that tackled the Cat. 1 Col de Portes in the first hour of racing. Five others later bridged out making it a baker's dozen on a the long flats toward the finish. The winning move also included Danny Martin and Danny Pate, both from Garmin-Slipstream.

The Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) has delayed a planned hearing into allegations that blood samples provided by Alejandro Valverde match blood seized as part of Spain’s Operación Puerto the announced Friday. Valverde had been ordered to appear before a CONI panel on Monday, but the hearing has been postponed by 48 hours at the Caisse d'Epargne rider's request. The summons relates to blood and urine samples given by Valverde on July 21 during the 2008 Tour de France, a day the Tour stopped in Italy.

Louis Garneau is introducing a new helmet just in time for the Tour of California. Rock Racing and Team Type 1 will wear the Diamond helmet beginning Sunday, during the first road stage from Davis to Santa Rosa. The helmet promises to be light, comfortable, and of course stylish for these professional teams.[nid:87682]

Colombian climber Jose Serpa (Diquigiovanni-Androni) won the fifth stage of the Tour de Langkawi and moved into the overall lead after a tough ride that ended in Malaysia's hillside gambling resort of Genting Highlands on Friday. The 29-year-old Serpa, second overall in the 2007 Tour de Langkawi, won Friday by launching a blistering attack on the final climb to Genting. "This year I am in good condition, so I have no problem with breakaway and very happy with the win today," said Serpa.

Anyone wondering how defending Amgen Tour of California champion Levi Leipheimer is approaching this year’s event had those questions put to rest Thursday at a pre-race press conference, where the Astana rider confidently stated that he has returned to win the race for a third time, backed by the strongest team in the race.

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Kim Kirchen is optimistic that the road to bigger success from his breakout 2008 season goes through California.   The Luxembourg all-rounder will debut his 2009 season at the California tour and he’s hoping the race will put him on the same trajectory that saw him win Flèche Wallonne and enjoy a spell in the yellow jersey at the Tour de France.   “California is a good place to start. I raced there last year,” Kirchen said. “It’s a good race to get ready for the spring classics. I’m not going to be ready to try to win, but we will go with a strong team.”  

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California's legislature will hold a floor session Saturday morning at the state Capital in Sacramento, at the same time thousands of spectators are in the city for the Amgen Tour of California prologue, according to an article on the Sacramento Bee Web site.

In advance of the Amgen Tour of California, BH Bikes has created an AG2R-La Mondiale team replica G4. Sporting the same component group and paint job as the bikes ridden by the team, this promises to help push the BH brand toward broader recognition in the U.S. Fittingly, this season marks the 100th anniversary of the Spanish company.

In a back room at the San Diego Wind Tunnel Cervélo co-founder and engineer Phil White sat at his laptop. With a phone held to his ear, he motioned to his laptop: “Which of these three shots do you think would make the best autograph card?” When you go from team sponsor to team owner, no task — down to selecting autograph cards or getting your team cars brand-wrapped in time for the Amgen Tour of California — is too small.

Two days before his debut in the Tour of California, Carlos Sastre is recovering from a bout of flu, his Cervélo team reported Wednesday. The Tour de France champion has been training in the United States ahead of his season debut, but despite the flu bug, Sastre plans to race. “It has been nearly a week since I've ridden as I was hit hard by the flu and I’m still getting over it now”, Sastre said in a team release. “Until now, my preparation was going well, but this setback will prevent me from performing as I would have liked in this American race.”.