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The 2008 USA Cycling national mountain bike championships opened on Thursday, July 17, with a host of youngsters battling for much-coveted cross-country titles. First to grab a stars and stripes jersey was Tad Elliott, who took his first national title in the men’s U23 race. “I’ve never been a national champion in anything before, so this is huge for me,” said Elliott, an accomplished nordic ski racer from Durango, Colorado. “I was really nervous, so I was just trying to keep it smooth.”

Today marks one week in South Africa for Taylor and I. It's been a good week so far, but there have been the ups and downs. When I left off last time we still didn't have Taylor's bike and the weather had been not so nice.

The first radio communication, not one minute after we rolled through K0 was from Millar: “We’ve got a CBF’d Friday boys, it’s bloody wonderful!” The neutral was stressful with a strong crosswind threatening to make the race a crazy one, but I didn’t even get above 200 watts before the field had shut down the road and all you could here were screams, yells and whistles of “pisseee, piano, grupetto.” The first attack was off, and we CREPT for a lovely 30k through the countryside of southern France, truly enjoying a lazy start to the day.

Canadians Andrew Pinfold and Gina Grain did their countrymen proud at the BC Cancer Foundation’s Tour de Gastown in Vancouver, this week, the sixth stop in the 2008 USA CRITS Series. Pinfold, an Ontario native, is a former elite Canadian Criterium Champion, while Grain was the 2007 Canadian National Road Race Champion. Both victories took place in front of tens of thousands of cycling fans, who lined the barriers three to four rows deep on a perfect summer day.

The Tour of Missouri, a seven day professional cycling event featuring elite international men’s teams, is pleased to announce the addition of an invitational pro-am women’s race taking place on Monday, September 8th in Kansas City, Missouri. Top professional women’s teams and riders from across the US will compete in this inaugural event for a $7500 cash purse.

Cavendish in good company:

Stage 13, Narbonne to Nimes, 182km

Retail: 5.75 euro (about $9) Web site: www.tacx.com The Tacx Tool Tube lets riders carry tools and spare tubes in their water bottle cages. The screw-top bottle has room for a tube, tire levers, a multi-tool and a CO2 inflator. The lid is watertight and tools are not included.

Taylor Phinney wrapped up the his world junior world championship run Friday with a third-place finish in the individual time trial, 8 seconds off the winning pace of Poland’s Michal Kwiatkowski. Phinney won gold in the 3,000-meter individual pursuit on the track last Saturday. Entering the race as the defending world champion, Phinney recorded a time of 36 minutes, 29.15 seconds over the 26.8-kilometer course.

Italian racer Riccardo Riccò, kicked off the Tour de France for doping, has been remanded in custody for "using a poisonous substance," the public prosecutor at Foix said on Friday. Prosecutor Antoine Leroy said Riccò had been remanded for "using a substance classed poisonous under the terms of the public health code." "Riccò is placed under arrest and is banned from contacting other members of the team,” he added. Leroy said Riccò had told the examining magistrate what he had earlier told police - namely, that he is innocent.

Team Columbia's Mark Cavendish won his fourth stage of this year's Tour de France, sprinting into Nimes ahead of Silence Lotto's Robbie McEwen. McEwen took a brief respite from protecting team leader Cadel Evans' overall lead to contest the sprint, but was little match for Cavendish's finishing kick. Evans, meanwhile, finished with the leaders to preserve his one-second overall lead over CSC's Frank Schleck. Cavendish said his velodrome-honed kick saved the day.

Editor's Note: It's official: Team Giant's Adam Craig is one of two men picked for the U.S. Olympic cross-country team. He continues to share his journals with VeloNews readers as he races around the world. This week he report on some East Coast racing: Windham, New York, last week and the national mountain bike championships at Mount Snow, Vermont, this weekend. Enjoy.

Disgraced Italian cycling star Ivan Basso deserves a second chance of resurrecting his career, the Italian's future manager at the Liquigas team said Friday. Basso is nearing the end of a ban handed down after he admitted, without having tested positive for banned substances, to being involved in the Spanish doping affair 'Operation Puerto'. The Italian, a former rival of Lance Armstrong on the Tour de France while racing for the Danish CSC team, is due to return to racing at the end of the summer.

Saunier Duval has sacked Riccardo Riccò and Leonardo Piepoli for infringing the Spanish team’s code of ethics, it was announced on Friday. Riccò was dismissed following his positive doping control for EPO (erythropoietin) at the Tour de France. Piepoli also was sacked, though he had not tested positive; team manager Mauro Gianetti said he, too, had infringed the team's code of ethics. The entire Saunier Duval team voluntarily left the Tour before Thursday's 12th stage.

“I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on in here!”— Captain Renault in “Casablanca,” shortly before a coupier presents him with his winnings.

While the news media were massed around the pale yellow Saunier Duval team bus in Lavelanet Thursday just as stage 12 was setting out farther down the street, Philippe Brunel stood back from the crowd watching the spectacle. I felt sorry for him. As an award-winning French sportswriter — he’s the principal cycling reporter for L’Équipe, the major French sports newspaper — Brunel looked to be in a quandary.

Riccardo Riccò's departure from the Tour de France produced a stack of emails and letters to the editor. Here is a sampling: Zero Tolerance Editor, This little gem was in your one of your Ricardo "Vegetable" Ricco articles: "While teams like CSC, Columbia, Garmin-Chipotle and Astana have financed independent blood-monitoring programs, some question whether that “new cycling” will ever occur until doping in sport is criminalized internationally, as it is in France, and the risks outweigh the incentives."

Riccardo Riccò always wanted to be like his hero, Marco Pantani. The self-styled "Cobra" got his wish Thursday and made a Pantani-esque implosion as two French gendarmes hauled him away after he failed a doping control from stage four at the Tour de France. In a scene that was an eerie replay of Pantani’s exclusion from the 1999 Giro d’Italia for testing for high hematocrit levels, Riccò made his own forced exit Thursday that could have equally grim consequences.

Australia's Cadel Evans has called on cycling's detractors to take a long hard look at what is being done in the sport to clean up its image. For the second consecutive day the Tour de France was rocked by controversy following the news that Italian climber Riccardo Ricco had become the third rider to test positive for the banned blood booster EPO (erythropoietin). Ricco won two climbing stages last week, becoming one of the most followed riders in the Pyrenees where he left many established climbers — including Evans — in his wake with his lightning fast accelerations.

Tour de France organizers ASO may be regretting the choice of music played after the peloton rolled out of Lavelanet at the start of stage 12 Thursday. Only 45 minutes after the news of Ricardo Riccò’s positive test for red-blood cell booster CERA rocked the start village, the public address system blared Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” — fitting perhaps as the swansong for a defiant young rider who rocketed into the spotlight while simultaneously thumbing his nose at the sport’s establishment.

We’re officially more than half way through!

Stage 12, Lavelanet to Narbonne, 168.5km