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Dear Explainer,
Katusha? Isn’t that the rockets that have and are killing Americans? Am I wrong? What does Katusha have to do with cycling and why does Katusha have a ProTour license?!?!
Jim Manning Dear Jim,
Well, for a short question we have a lot to cover. Where to start? Maybe, since we are a cycling publication, let’s first look at the team before we discuss the relevance of naming it after a mobile artillery unit.

Weston Schempf and Betsy Shogren turned in strong performances to win the Men’s and Women’s 1-2-3 classes at the Squadra Coppi Tacchino Ciclocross (i.e.: “Turkey Cyclocross”) on Sunday at Ida Lee Park in Leesburg, Virginia.

Colavita-Sutter Home has announced its 2009 team roster, which includes most of re-signed its core squad for the 2009 season and added Aaron Olson, who comes to the team from Bissell.    Returning riders include Cuba's Luis Amaran, Argentinean sprinters Alejandro and Anibal Borrajo and Sebastian Haedo, climber Anthony Colby, Kyle Wamsley, and all-arounders Luca Damiani, Davide Frattini, and Tyler Wren.  Olson raced for Colavita in 2004 and 2005 before heading to Europe to ride with Saunier-Duval and T-Mobile.  He returned to the domestic peloton last year with Bissell.

Retail price: $18.95 Web site: www.velopress.com Pages: 224 Weight Training for Cyclists: A Total Body Program for Power and Endurance by Ken Doyle and Eric Schmitz is now available in a revised second edition. The new edition features: • All-new illustrations for clarity and ease of use • A new chapter on stretching and warm-up • Expanded coverage of core strength and lower-body strength exercises

Should I wax my carbon seatpost?

Bradley Wiggins may be Garmin’s highest-profile signing for 2009, but Christian Meier may be the team’s most promising young hire. Along with Svein Tuft, Meier comes to Garmin from the Canadian Symmetrics team. But in a way, Meier was already there; the tri-lingual 23-year-old spent the last half of the 2008 season as a stagiare with Garmin.

Bouygues Telecom has signed a former Japanese national champion for the 2009 season, the French team announced Tuesday. Yukira Arashiro, the Japanese champion in 2007, becomes one of just a few riders from his country to be given a chance to compete in the European peloton. Bouygues is hoping the 24-year-old, who is said to be comfortable on most types of terrain, will show his full potential in one of cycling's three grand tours.

Spanish cyclist Manuel Beltran has been banned from racing in France for two years after testing positive for the banned blood booster EPO at this year's Tour de France. France's national anti-doping agency (AFLD) made the announcement Tuesday.

If there was a representative moment of Saturday night’s Garmin-Slipstream 2009 team presentation, it came as the squad took the stage of the Boulder Theater following a few short videos and words from both team sponsors and management. As the 27 riders sauntered single-file up a short staircase and onto a stage scattered with couches in no particular order, the last men onstage were left to sit in chairs placed at the front of the stage.

They are two of Great Britain’s hottest sports stars, both vying to be the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year, but they specialize in vastly different disciplines. Thirty-two-year-old Chris Hoy won three gold medals on the velodrome at this summer's Beijing Olympics and 23-year-old Lewis Hamilton is the youngest-ever world champion in Formula 1 auto racing.

The price of 11s
Dear Lennard,
I have been riding Campagnolo components for years and years. The new 11s stuff looks great, but the new 11s cranks are not inexpensive.

I cannot understand why given a 5.5 to 5.9 mm difference in changes the 10s crank would not work fine. Do you have any experience with the 11s parts used with a 10s crank. I happen to have a carbon 10 crank, first generation, Record.
Jeff

Dear Jeff,
I think you’ll find that your Record crank will work just fine with the 11-speed group.

Web site: www.fizik.it Weight: 145 grams Are lightweight saddles a pain in the butt for you? Well, Fi’zi:k has created a new saddle that may satisfy your lightweight obsession without sacrificing the comfort of your backside. The Antares is the third ‘a’ between Fi’zi:k’s two other premium a’s: Aliante and Arione. Compared to others in the ultra-lightweight saddle category, Antares has 300 percent more padding and 50 percent more flat sitting area, yet it weighs only 145 grams.

Colors: White, Silver, Grey White, Black Sizes: 38 to 48 Price: $400 Web site: www.gaerne.com There is no question of whether or not the Gaerne Myst is a high quality road shoe. Every stitch, perforation, and bit of material was designed to serve a function, and do it well.

Jeremiah Bishop (Trek-Volkswagen) and Melanie Swartz (Vela Bella- Kona) won Saturday's events at the North Carolina Grand Prix in Hendersonville, North Carolina. The UCI Cat. 2 events were part of the North Carolina Cyclocross series, which concludes next weekend the finals in Salisbury, North Carolina. The Hendersonville races continue Sunday.

Jeremiah Bishop (Trek-Volkswagen) and Melanie Swartz (Vela Bella- Kona) won both events at this weekend's North Carolina Grand Prix in Hendersonville, North Carolina. The UCI Cat. 2 events were part of the North Carolina Cyclocross series, which concludes next weekend the finals in Salisbury, North Carolina.

Members of Canada's Olympic and Paralympic cycling teams will be coming to Quebec City next weekend for the Canadian Olympic & Paralympic Cycling Celebration on Saturday, November 29th. The event is brought to you by the Canadian Cycling Association (CCA) and CanadianCyclist.com. Members of the cycling community and media will have the opportunity to meet and honour members of Canada's Beijing Olympic & Paralympic cycling team in the relaxed environment of the Boudoir Lounge restaurant (www.boudoirlounge.com) between 8:00 pm and 11:00 pm Saturday evening.

The UCI Licenses Commission has granted an additional seven ProTour licenses, bring the number of teams holding the governing body’s top designation to 16. In release issued on Monday, the UCI announced that the panel has approved the applications of Cofidis (F), Française des Jeux (F), Katusha (RUS), Quick Step (BEL), Saxo Bank-IT Factory (DEN), Silence-Lotto (BEL) and Rabobank (NED). The commission is still reviewing the applications of Euskaltel-Euskadia and BBox-Bouygues Telecom.

Triple grand tour winner Alberto Contador underwent a successful surgery on his injured nose, a spokesman reported Monday. "Doctors who operated on him fixed a deviation in his nasal partition," his spokesman said in a statement. The 2007 Tour de France winner's injury resulted from a fall during this year’s Giro d’Italia, which resulted in breathing problems. The statement said Contador will leave hospital on Tuesday and can join his Astana team at a training camp in the Canary Islands on November 30.

A pair of UCI category one and a pair of cat. 2 events made up this past weekend's USA Cycling Cyclocross National Calendar. At Long Island's Whitmore's Landscape Super Cross Cup — the cat. 1 events — Ryan Trebon (Kona) won on Saturday while Todd Wells took Sunday's event. Trebon moved into the USAC calendar standings lead for the first time this season. Meanwhile Georgia Gould (Luna) won both days in Long Island to increase her lead in the standings.

Bernhard Kohl, who last month admitted to using drugs in the Tour de France where he finished third, was banned from cycling for two years on Monday. The suspension was handed down by the disciplinary commission of Austria's anti-doping agency, NADA. Kohl tested positive in retroactive controls carried out by France's national anti-doping agency last month for CERA, the new generation of banned blood booster EPO.

Despite authorization from the UCI for a late application, USA Cycling declined last week to review an application to replace the Tour of Georgia in 2009 on the UCI America Tour with a two-day race in upstate New York, passing up an opportunity to fill a gap in the international calendar. As the 2009 USA Cycling National Racing Calendar stands, there will be a nearly month-long gap in NRC racing between the March 26-29 Redlands Bicycle Classic and the April 26 Dana Point Grand Prix of Cycling. In 2008 the Tour de Georgia was part of USA Cycling's Professional Tour.

Check out CyclingTips's author page.

With Scot time trial specialist David Millar in the mix, Garmin-Chipotle won the Giro d’Italia’s opening team time trial this May. Having added Olympic and world pursuit champion Bradley Wiggins to the team along with Canadian strongman Svein Tuft, Garmin is anticipating an even stronger TTT crew for 2009. With a team time trial back on the menu at the Tour de France, Millar is already eager for July.

To a cycling enthusiast, the fall Garmin-Chipotle team camp may look like Christmas for the 28 riders on the squad, but to them it’s another day at the office. Whether they’re thumbing through Fi’zi:k’s ‘Blackbook,’ the brand’s 2009 saddle catalog, trying to decide which saddle to choose or test, or they’re submitting sizes for 2XU compression gear, or sitting through a lecture on wheel selection by sponsor Zipp — it’s all work. [nid:85344]

Georgia Gould delivered a knock-out at the Whitmore’s Landscaping Super Cross Cup in the Hamptons Sunday to take both the race and the North American Cyclocross Trophy Championship. Meanwhile, Todd Wells went toe-to-toe with Jeremy Powers to win the men’s race while Ryan Trebon refused to tap-out after a bad break on lap one.

Alberto Contador will undergo surgery on Monday to repair a nasal injury from a crash and remove a polyp from his vocal cords. The Astana rider said he thinks a spill in the Giro d’Italia that drove his glasses into his nose left him with breathing problems. “Doctors have detected a deviation of the nasal partition toward the right that doesn't allow me to breathe properly,” he said. As regards the polyp, Contador said he has suffered from hoarseness for more than a year, and that an examination determined that the polyp was the cause.

American Floyd Landis has challenged the ruling of the international Court of Arbitration for Sport that stripped him of the 2006 Tour de France title in U.S. Federal court, charging that the system for resolving doping cases is inherently biased against the accused.

Christophe Moreau endured a forgettable 2008 season, suffering through a winless season that collapsed when he abandoned in the seventh stage of the Tour de France without making much of an impact. Moreau -- the last active rider from the “Festina 9” from the Festina Affaire of the 1998 Tour de France – wants to have at least one more strong performance before hanging up the cleats for good.

A day of surprises greeted the NACT competitors at the first day of the Whitmore’s Landscaping Super Cross Cup on Saturday. Perhaps the biggest surprise of the UCI C1 event occurred before most of the Elite competitors had even arrived at the venue. Earlier in the morning, Tim Johnson, tested his injured knee on the trainer and found he couldn’t even pedal a full circle. Johnson injured his knee when he banged it on a wood post while riding to victory in the USGP in New Jersey last Saturday.

Australia's national team won the Melbourne round of the UCI Track Cycling World Cup Classics series here on Saturday. The Australian Cyclones, with 112 points, edged out compatriots Team Toshiba, which scored 98 points over three days of competition. Although an impressive performance, the win came in light of only limited participation by the world's strongest track squad, the British national team. Australian Shane Perkins went one better than his Manchester World Cup silver earlier this month to claim the men's sprint with a straight heats win over Frenchman Michael D'Almedia.

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Floyd Landis will race next year for the new domestic squad OUCH, a revamped version of the Health Net - Maxxis team. The team's title sponsor is the OUCH Sports Medical Center in California. The sports center's co-founder, Dr. Brent Kay, is Landis' personal physician and oversaw his hip resurfacing surgery in 2006.

Price: $21.95 Web site: www.firstendurance.com First Endurance, the makers of Ultragen and Optygen, also make an unbeatable electrolyte mix. Electrolyte Fuel System (EFS) is packed with all of the right ingredients to provide lasting energy during endurance events.

This week’s column begins with an apology. My act of contrition goes out to anyone who had the misfortune of witnessing one of several temper tantrums I threw at the last couple Colorado Front Range cyclocross races. See, after having one of my best career ’cross races (a come-from-the-back-of-the-pack 11th in the 35+/cat. 4s at round No. 2 of the Boulder Cup), I’ve gone three straight without making it to the finish line. And in each case I was well ensconced inside the top 10 before being taken down by mechanicals (two poorly timed punctures, one busted chain).