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Tom Danielson is champing at the bit to unleash at the Amgen Tour of California. Garmin-Slipstream’s climber is coming off of a team training camp down in Silver City, New Mexico, where he and teammate Christian Vande Velde arrived a week early to get in additional miles in the high desert mountains. Now, he’s spending a week with his old coach Rick Crawford, doing hours of motorpacing up into the mountains around Boulder, Colorado, and getting comfortable in his new time trial position.

Australian sprinter Aaron Kemps (Rock Racing) has withdrawn from the upcoming Amgen Tour of California after being treated for a hernia this week. Surgeons in his hometown of Bundaberg, Australia, operated on Kemps on Wednesday and he is expected to fully recover. That recovery, however, will not come in time for Kemps to toe the line at the California tour, which is scheduled to begin February 14.

Garmin-Slipstream’s Magnus Bäckstedt, winner of Paris-Roubaix in 2004, has announced that he will retire from cycling effective immediately.

Lance Armstrong didn’t turn up for his Astana team’s Wednesday meet-and-greet with the media, but the seven-time Tour de France champ’s presence was unmistakable.

Belgian Tom Boonen (Quick Step) won the Tour of Qatar in Doha on Friday following Columbia's Mark Cavendish's sprint victory in the sixth and final stage. The win was Cavendish's second stage win in a tour marked by the untimely death of 21-year-old Belgian Frederiek Nolf on Thursday. Cavendish dedicated his stage win to the young rider and his family.

Ivan Basso (Liquigas) makes his first race appearance on home roads since his Operación Puerto ban as the Italian and Spanish calendars open this weekend. Basso already debuted his 2009 season at the Tour de San Luís in Argentina last month, but will race on Italian roads for the first time since the 2007 Tirreno-Adriatico in Saturday’s GP Costa degli Etruschi.

After a taste of the yellow jersey in the 2008 Tour de France, Kim Kirchen is taking aim for even more in 2009. The 30-year-old isn’t standing up and calling himself a candidate for overall victory, but he is staking out a realistic goal of the top-5 and, with a little luck, the podium. With back-to-back seventh place Tour finishes, Kirchen has the confidence that his time trialing has improved enough to let him expect to make further improvements in 2009.

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Price: $17.99 Size: 4 ounces Web site: www.hincapie.com Hincapie Sportswear stepped up its retail line with SkinDefense, an advanced sunscreen perfected for cyclists and other endurance athletes. The 4-ounce non-aerosol spray bottle is perfect for a jersey pocket or saddlebag, though that might not be necessary because a single application provides sweat-proof solar protection for up to five hours.

Price: $59.95 Web site: www.silcapompe.it

Parlee Cycles has made a leap into the big leagues by committing to sponsor the Fly V Australia (presented by Successful Living) pro team. The official announcement is pending, but other team component sponsors include Edge Composites (wheels, stem, bar, seatpost and fork), SRAM Red drivetrain, TRP brakes, and Fi'zi:k saddles.

Jimmy Casper made it two in a row for his Besson Chassures team at the Etoile de Bessèges.   The veteran French sprinter out-kicked younger rivals Romain Feillu (Agritubel) and Alexandre Blain (Cofidis) in the 149.2km second stage to win for the second day in a row and solidify his grip on the leader’s jersey in the five-day stage race. With the win and time bonuses, Casper is nursing a 14-second lead to Feillu and Sébastian Chavanel (FDJeux) going into Friday’s third stage.  

Barloworld’s team training camp in Tuscany took a turn for the worst when 21 team bikes were stolen in Castagneto Carducci, the team reported Thursday. The team reported that the theft was discovered Thursday morning by the hotel management when they noticed that the lock of the storeroom where the 32 Bianchi team bikes were kept had been forced open.   Italian police in Donoratico were immediately contacted and investigations begun to try to determine the culprit behind the crime.  

Price: $175 to $380 Web site: www.rudyprojectusa.com KarbonEye

Gusting gale-force winds are not ideal for bike racing. Qatar, a peninsula that juts into the Persian Gulf off of Saudi Arabia, is a wide-open windy desert with few trees and fewer roads. The races are lost on the windy open roads as the peloton quickly splits into echelons, as every rider fights to find shelter in the draft of another rider. To race well in the wind a rider needs great bike-handling skills, unrelenting power, consistent focus and experience.

Former world mountain bike champion Christophe Dupouey committed suicide Wednesday, French cycling officials confirmed. Dupouey, 40, was reportedly despondent ever since he was sentenced to three months in jail in 2006 for his role in Belgium’s “pot belge” doping scandal. More than 40 people were arrested in 2003 as part of an alleged distribution network.

Belgian cyclist Frederiek Nolf, competing in the Tour of Qatar, was found dead in his bedroom Thursday morning prior to stage five, one of the race chiefs, Eddy Merckx, announced.[nid:87315] Nolf, a member of the Topsport Vlaanderen team, was found dead by teammate Kristof Goddaert in their 14th floor shared room at the Ritz-Carlton.

First noticed spec’ed on newer Trek Madone road bikes, the Bontrager XXX Lite Road stem loses a little weight and cuts a sleeker profile than its predecessor. The original Bontrager XXX Lite carbon stem is still available for road and mountain bikes, but this newest model is specified for road use only. A couple of nice touches make it worth consideration as an aftermarket upgrade to any road bike.

The first time I saw a copy of VeloNews, it was still a newspaper. It was the early 1980s and I had just 'discovered' the sport. A friend had an extensive collection of VeloNews, and I just pored over the back issues with a religious fervor in between rides, learning the names of the cycling stars of the late '70s and early '80s. A few years later, when I first saw my name in the back section that listed local and national results, it was a proud moment indeed!

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Director of athletics Pat McDonough left his position with USA Cycling on Monday, the national governing body confirmed. Jim Miller, the organization’s endurance program manager, had been appointed interim director of athletics effective immediately. USAC spokesman Andy Lee confirmed on Wednesday that McDonough was no longer with the federation, but would not elaborate on the terms of his departure. “I can verify that is the case, beyond that I’m not going to comment,” Lee said. “It’s company policy not to comment on personnel issues.”

USA Cycling is distributing nearly $360,000 in rebates from license sales to its 34 local associations, the governing body announced on Wednesday. Local associations receive $10 for every primary adult annual road/track/cyclocross license they sell to a member in their respective geographic areas, according to USA Cycling communications director Andy Lee. They also receive $5 per adult annual add-on license sold.

Dear Explainer guy,
This isn’t your garden variety “explain the unexplainable” type question, but I thought I’d send it in anyway. Most of us readers know, more or less, what companies certain team sponsors are, like Columbia, Garmin and Cervelo. And we know, again, more or less, what certain team names represent or who/what they are, like High Road (why couldn’t they pick a better name?), Astana, Katusha (repeat bad name comment) and Slipstream.

Once teammates on the successful Haro mountain bike team, Canadians Chris Sheppard and Seamus McGrath are together again, this time on Jamis Bicycles’ newly launched cross-country squad. The duo as well as American Blake Harlan and manager/racer Jason Sager complement Jamis' already successful gravity program. The four will focus on cross-country, endurance and all-mountain events in North America.

Bend, Oregon, will be the cycling capital of the United States for the next two years — USA Cycling announced Wednesday that it had awarded the town the 2009-10 junior, under-23 and elite road championships. Six weeks ago USA Cycling announced that Bend would host the next two editions of the cyclocross national championships.