In a joint statement, GU Energy Labs and Carmichael Training Systems announced a new partnership beginning in January 2009. Under the terms of the multi-year agreement, GU will become the Official Nutrition Supplier for Chris Carmichael and Carmichael Training Systems, the coaching choice of Tour de France and Ironman World Champions as well as amateur and professional athletes around the world.
As an ancillary event of the 2009 Amgen Tour of California, the Davis Bike Club will hold criterium bike races for junior cyclists between the ages of 10 and 18 on 15 February 2009 beginning at 12:15 PM in Central Park in Downtown Davis, CA. The cycling race, entitled the Davis Junior Criterium, will commence immediately following the start of Stage 1 of the Amgen Tour of California in Davis, CA and will be viewed by thousands of spectators. The Davis Bike Club will promote the Davis Junior Criterium on Sunday, 15 February 2009.
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World Class Professional Cycling Moves To Minneapolis Uptown Neighborhood in 2009 Uptown Criterium Serves As New Stage of the Nature Valley Grand Prix Two of Minnesota’s biggest sporting rivals are gearing up to go head to head again this summer: Minneapolis and St. Paul. When the Nature Valley Grand Prix professional cycling race returns to the Twin Cities this June 10 – 14 for its 11th consecutive year, cycling and sports fans of all ages will get the chance to see world class athletes race on the streets of both Uptown Minneapolis and Lowertown St. Paul.
After a pretty unreal off-season, especially looking back now from afar, all of a sudden the season is on for Garmin-Slipstream. One group of the guys are down in Australia, racing it up in the Tour Down Under. Another crew have been in Silver City, New Mexico, for the looooong U.S. camp at elevation. I’m back over in my adopted seasonal home of Girona, Spain, and already mid-way through a training camp here focused towards the Tour of Quatar. It hardly seems like a week ago that I was at home in Boulder, and while obviously training, still in off-season mode.
Colavita-Sutter Home's Luis Amaran won Saturday's sixth stage of the Tour de San Luis in Argentina. The Cuban-born sprinter won by about 39 seconds over a group of three: Saxo Banks' Matti Breschel, Diquigiovanni's Manuel Bellettti and Liquigas's Kjell Carlstrom.
Van Haute (right) believes new riders such as Crane (left) and veterans like Reistad (center) can help the team have its best year yet.
The posh Lake San Marcos Resort in San Marcos, California, set the backdrop for the Jelly Belly professional cycling team’s first training camp of 2009. The January 20-24 camp saw 10 of the 11 team riders spin miles around north San Diego County alongside sponsor partners and the media.
Belgian Sven Nys and German Hanka Kupfernagel wrapped up their World Cup series wins in Milan on Sunday, although it was a more or less a formality for both. [nid:86889] Nys needed only 2 points to secure his fourth World Cup overall. He did that and more — winning the race by outsprinting reigning world champion Lars Boom, signaling he is ready to take the worlds next weekend in the Netherlands.
Believe it or not, there are two other Americans racing the Tour Down Under — George Hincapie and Timothy Duggan — though you’d be hard-pressed to know who they are, given the commotion surrounding a certain Lance Armstrong. VeloNews caught up with the diminutive Duggan from Garmin-Slipstream before the start of the queen stage of the TDU, and discovered the 26-year-old Coloradan’s been waging something of a comeback himself. VeloNews: This race, for most, is their first test back into the rhythm of racing — is that the case for you?
Two-time Tour de France runner-up Cadel Evans of Australia says the Astana team of Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong will be his number one threat at this year's event. Evans was beat to the 2007 yellow jersey by Contador, then of Discovery Channel, and last year succumbed to another Spaniard, Carlos Sastre, in the closing stages of the race. The 30-year-old, considered Australia's most successful stage racer, admitted while he has added some firepower to his team, Astana will be tough contenders.
American Rachel Lloyd (California Giant Strawberry-Specialized) scored her best cyclocross World Cup result ever on Sunday, coming in fifth in the World Cup finale in Milan, Italy. Daphny Van den Brand won the race, two seconds ahead of Hanka Kupfernagel and 29 seconds ahead of Maryline Salvetat. American Katie Compton skipped the event, since she could not have improved on her third place in World Cup standings. Compton instead used the weekend to prepare for the upcoming world championships in the Netherlands.
Lance Armstrong is already heading back to the United States after his successful comeback debut at the Tour Down Under. Armstrong finished 29th overall at 49 seconds behind winner Allan Davis (Quick Step) in his first major stage race since winning the 2005 Tour de France for a record seventh occasion. Next up in Armstrong’s comeback tour is a 10-day training camp in Santa Rosa, California, where he will join up with Astana teammates ahead of the Tour of California (Feb. 14-22).
José Joaquin Rojas is satisfied with third place overall at the Tour Down Under and wants to carry that momentum into the first races on the European calendar.
He chose not to sprint ? he didn’t have to ? but regardless, Allan Davis’ 33rd place behind stage winner Francesco Chicchi Sunday in Adelaide saw him crowned winner of the 2009 Tour Down Under. It’s been a monumental week for the bull terrier from Bundaberg in Queensland, Australia, who, from this moment onwards, can definitively put the past behind him and move on to what many are predicting bigger and better things. “It’s been a bit of a roller coaster ride,” Davis told VeloNews, in reference to the past two seasons that saw his career in virtual limbo.
The Versus cable network will air live coverage of all nine days of the 2009 Amgen Tour of California. VERSUS, beginning February 14 at 5 p.m. Eastern. Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwin will call the race action. “With strong U.S.-based teams and Lance Armstrong competing in the race for the first time, it is undoubtedly a marquee year for the race and we’re extremely proud to be able to showcase each weekday stage live for the first time,” said Jamie Davis, the network's president.
Three seasons after standing atop the Tour de France podium — and subsequently sitting out of competition on suspension — Floyd Landis is back in the pro peloton. He won’t be racing internationally. His return will be overshadowed by returning riders Lance Armstrong and Ivan Basso. But contributing to the designation of 2009 as the “year of the comeback” is the return of Landis, only the third American to stand atop the Tour podium in Paris.
2009-2010 UCI World Cup Cyclocross rankings, updated Jan. 18
Andalucia's Xavier Tondo won the fifth stage of Argentina's Tour de San Luis on Friday, a 205-kilometer route from San Francisco del Montea de Oro to Merlo (Mirador del Sol).
Allan Davis has never felt so good. The only rider to have ridden every edition of the race, the 28-year-old Queenslander now finds himself in the enviable position of becoming the eleventh champion of the Tour Down Under and the sixth Australian to do so. After two seasons he’d probably rather forget, he finally wrenched himself free of the mudded waters of Operación Puerto to start 2009 afresh with a new team, Quick Step, and clear of any wrongdoing.
Former U.S. national cyclocross champion Jonathan Page has been cleared of charges stemming from a missed in-competition doping test, but it may be a week before he knows whether that will result in his inclusion on the U.S. team for the upcoming world championships.
I remember my college days at University of Georgia in Athens, Georgia, with the fondest of memories. It was a great time to be a Georgia Bulldog, perhaps the greatest. The football team was the best in the nation, with the phenomenal Herschel Walker routinely running over, around, and away from hapless defenses for touchdowns. Dominique Wilkins led the Dawgs to the final four in my senior year.
Reigning Olympic road champion Samuel Sánchez is keeping his goals close to home in 2009. Instead of making a run at improving on his seventh place performance in last year’s Tour de France (now sixth, following Bernard Kohl’s disqualification), the Euskaltel-Euskadi rider will instead focus on the Vuelta al País Vasco and make a run for overall victory at the Vuelta a España. His lone goal that will take him beyond the friendly roads of Spain will be the world championships on a challenging course in Mendrisio, Switzerland, in late September.
Belgium’s Quick Step team, which lost its top Italian rider Paolo Bettini to retirement, released a 27-strong roster for the 2009 season on Friday.
Bettini may be missing but Quick Step have been strengthened by the arrival of French rider Sylvain Chavenel, one of 11 fresh faces on Patrick Lefevere's team that picked up 58 wins in 2008.
One rider not among that new intake is German Stefan Shumacher.
Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong on Friday gave the thumbs-up to the imminent return to the peloton of disgraced former teammate Floyd Landis. Landis, who once rode with Armstrong at U.S. Postal, won the 2006 Tour de France but was stripped of that title and suspended for two years after a sample from the race's 17th stage tested positive for testosterone. Next month the 33-year-old will mark his return to road racing at the Tour of California.