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Astana is looking to make the most of the unexpected trip to the Giro d’Italia. With its marquee lineup that includes Levi Leipheimer, Alberto Contador and Andreas Kloden, the team would normally be expected to dominate the race. But Astana’s invite didn’t come until a week before the 91st Giro kick-started in Sicily last weekend and the team had less-than-ideal preparation for one of the season’s hardest races.

Price: $130 Weight: 60 grams (cups only); 95 grams (with races, star nut and top-cap) Models: cobalt (cross-country/road); iodine (trail); opium (downhill race);sage (heavy duty freeride) Web site:www.crankbrothers.com Cutting the Fat: crankbrothers' Cobalt SL headset eliminates the redundancy of a standard headset’s cup and outer bearing race by combining the two components: the headset's cup also acts as the bearing’s outer race.

In every generation, it seems, there is someone in the peloton that all the other riders point to when asked: Who’s the fastest descender? Who’s the man who can race down mountain roads seemingly effortlessly and leave the rest behind?

Spot Brand, best known for the belt drivetrain it introduced last year, has acquired Maverick American, a mountain bike and suspension company founded in 1999 by Paul Turner and Frank Vogel. Frank Scurlock, co-owner and VP of operations of Spot Brand Bicycles, confirmed the purchase this week. Scurlock along with a tight-knit owner-management group, purchased the Spot Brand in 2006. The company, based in Golden, Colorado, made waves at the Interbike tradeshow with a belt-driven bicycle drivetrain called Carbon Drive, a product developed in conjunction with Gates Rubber.

Penn State fan at ECCC Championships

BMC's South African, Darren Lill, won Thursday's second stage of the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic by peeling away from the remnants of the peloton on the final climb a bit less than a kilometer to go. Lill, who won the fifth stage at Mt. Hood last year, barely held off a late charge by Health Net's Rory Sutherland and Symmetric's Christian Meier. Lill took over the leader's jersey from Toyota-United's Hilton Clarke, who was dropped by the lead group about 8km from the finish of the hilly circuit race.

Bike fit is no joking matter for a professional racer. Fit is the single most important aspect of the bike. If the bike doesn’t fit, it really doesn’t matter how light or technologically advanced it is — it’s not going to be very fast. Take the case of Liquigas rider Daniele Bennati. He has short legs, long arms and a long torso. So the team’s bike sponsor, Cannondale, built him a custom SuperSix carbon bike, which he has been racing for two and a half months.

The highly anticipated Tour of Atlanta, May 22nd through the 26th, is less than two weeks away from its first event. This inaugural stage race will feature 7 stages in 5 days in, and around, the Atlanta area. The stages provide an exciting mix of time trials, criteriums, and road races to allow racers of all types with a chance to excel and win stages. The most unique aspect to this event will be the street sprints on the first day of racing. The time bonuses awarded for the street sprints may turn out to be the difference between winning and losing the general classification.

For the second day in a row, a breakaway stayed clear of the peloton, with another unsung hero from a smaller team in the form of Matteo Priamo (CSF-Panaria) taking center stage. Unlike yesterday, the attackers had enough rope to end Franco Pellizotti’s four-day run in the pink jersey. Italian national champion Giovanni Visconti (Quick Step) and German Matthias Russ (Gerolsteiner) ended the day tied on time, but Visconti took the maglia rosa based on differences taken in the team time trial.

Me & JJ after his stage 2 win in Augusta

Hmmm....SCOTT meets Ferrari...oh well.

The Mt. Hood Cycling Classic ventured into new territory Wednesday with a new venue for the sixth year of the event: a hilly criterium held in a verdant city park wrapping around a long-extinct volcano. The new event delivered large crowds and down-to-the-wire racing action that saw the mens and womens overall leads switch hands in the final meters of the crits. The fact that Portland was enjoying some of the nicest weather of the spring only helped improve the festive atmosphere in Mt. Tabor Park.

Brooks England announces collaboration with the New York City Bicycle Film Festival with the release of a limited edition Swallow. Only one hundred special Swallow models, manufactured with British racing green leather and each bearing an authentic serial number of authenticity, will be available to the public. Proceeds from sales will benefit the 8th annual Bicycle Film Festival which runs from May 28th through June 1st (www.bicyclefilmfestival.com ).

The 2008 Priority Health Tourde Leelanau will be lead by a record participation of 17 teams in the Men’s field and 11 teams in the Women’s field and will take place on Sunday, May 25th, 2008. The Men’s race will include the Bissell Pro Cycling Team of defending champion Garrett Peltonen, who is looking to repeat in a race that is very important to their Grand Rapids, Michigan based sponsor. Bissell has been on a hot streak recently, winning stages at the Tour of the Gila in New Mexico and the Joe Martin Stage race in Arkansas as well as leading the

Barry Wicks is already a household name in the domestic cyclocross and mountain bike scene, but this year he is trying his hand at joining mountain bike racing’s elite crowd on the World Cup.

Riders are at their wits’ end with the seemingly endless string of transfers, delays and hassles associated with the opening days of the 91st Giro d’Italia. In the first three stages of racing on Sicily, there were no less than 500km of transfers, nearly as much as the peloton has raced. Tensions came to a head following the botched ferry transfer across the Straits of Messina from Sicily to Italy on Monday evening, when what should have been a 20-minute ferry ride turned into a four-hour odyssey.

Tinkoff’s Pavel Brutt feinted and feigned his way to victory in the final kilometers of a five-man breakaway that held off the chasing peloton by 30 seconds in Wednesday’s fifth stage at the 91st Giro d’Italia.

Web site: www.serotta.com/paint/index.html Serotta Competition Bicycles offers 26 paint colors, several different carbon clear coat tints and a variety of decal colors and schemes. Now the Saratoga Springs, New York-company is offering buyers (and dreamers) the chance to design their bike's color scheme completely online.[nid:76148] Buyers first pick the frame design they want, then browse more than 700 examples, such as those shown here. Buyers can choose one of the examples or come up with their own.