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Hincapie helps Zebriskie up Brasstown Bald - TDG Stage 6

The second round of the 2008 Speed Week Series arrived in Beaufort, South Carolina on Tuesday the 29th of April for the Beaufort Memorial Cycling Classic, with Toyota-United’s Hilton Clark and Tina Pic (Colavita-Sutter Home) taking top honors. Set in the heart of what’s known as South Carolina’s “low country,” hundreds of top elite and professional cyclists raced around the “Queen of the Carolina Sea Islands,” and the state’s second oldest city.

In last week’s column, I mentioned suspension as a likely Next Big Thing in road bikes. I also promised another prediction this week. This one I think is coming, but it’s going to take awhile.

Team High Road will not be among the 20 teams racing the 2008 Vuelta a España. Organizers unveiled their list of invitees for the third grand tour of the season on Tuesday. “We had initially intended to support the Vuelta," said said team owner Bob Stapleton. "However, in the absence of a firm commitment from the race organizer, Team High Road has withdrawn its application and will support the Tour of Britain, the Tour of Ireland and the Tour of Missouri – which compliment the marketing objectives of High Road."

Neither Nathan O’Neill nor Mara Abbott will be on hand to defend their crowns on Wednesday when the 2008 Ben D. Altamirano Tour of the Gila kicks off in Silver City, New Mexico. But there will be plenty of horsepower in the elite men’s and women’s fields as the race gets under way with the Silver City-Mogollon Road Race. Chris Baldwin (Toyota-United), runner-up here last year and second at the 2008 Redlands Bicycle Classic, will be in Silver City with an eight-man team that includes Justin England, Chris Wherry and Henk Vogels.

Mark Cavendish continued High Road's winning streak by claiming the kickoff to the Tour de Romandie on Tuesday. The Brit won the 1.9km prologue in 2:07:60 ahead of Daniele Bennati (Liquigas), who was given the same time. Michael Albasini (Liquigas) rounded out the podium at one second back.

Caisse d'Epargne's Alejandro Valverde gave his future Tour de France rivals an early reminder of his explosive climbing talents by winning his second Liège-Bastogne-Liège classic Sunday.

Pocatello, Idaho Tax Day Race

Chad Haga - SCCCC Road Champ

The Italian cycling team Liquigas has been kicked out of the Frankfurt Grand Prix semi-classic for failing to add its signature to a protocol on doping. "Our anti-doping program calls for team bosses to sign a statement of honor but Liquigas has made it known to us that it won't be signing this declaration," explained race organizer Bernd Moos-Achenbach on Monday. "And so we've therefore taken the consequences. "Some teams haven't yet taken on board the fact that cycling is in a serious situation," he added.

Marco Pinotti of Team High Road raced last week’s Flèche Wallonne classic in Belgium for the fourth time in his career, however this is the first time he has finished the race.

The peloton on the first climb headed approximately 2k before the KOM

Astana was less than four seconds behind Slipstream-Chipotle in the time trial, enough to keep team leader Levi Leipheimer in the hunt for the overall title, which he thought he could secure on the Brasstown Bald climb.

High Road was third in the team time trial, which was good enough to keep Greg Henderson in the yellow leader's jersey.

Final Overall 1. Kanstantsin Siutsou (Blr), Team High Road, 22.44'44" 2. Trent Lowe* (Aus), Slipstream-Chipotle, 0:04 3. Levi Leipheimer (USA), Astana, 0:14 4. Antonio Colom (Sp), Astana, 1:02 5. Inigo Cuesta (Sp), CSC, 1:11 6. Oscar Sevilla (Sp), Rock Racing, 1:25 7. Christian Vande Velde (USA), Slipstream-Chipotle, 1:32 8. Moises Aldape (MEX), TT1, 1:37 9. Rory Sutherland (Aus), Health Net Maxxis, 2:08 10. Bobby Julich (USA), CSC, 2:31 11. Rubiera Vigil José Luis (Sp), Astana, 2:39 12. Scott Nydam (USA), BMC, 2:49 13. George Hincapie (USA), Team High Road, 3:19

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the latest edition of The Prologue, the weekly summary of news from the world of competitive cycling by your friends at VeloNews.com.

It's been a busy week since our last newsletter, with the Tour de Georgia, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Flèche Wallonne and a World Cup cross-country race in Germany topping the list.

Coach Frank Overton has been keeping VeloNews.com readers up to speed on Health Net-Maxxis rider Frank Pipp's wattage output for the entire Tour de Georgia. On Sunday, Pipp finished off a successful week by riding stage 7 at 324 normalized watts or 86 percent of his threshold power for 2 hours and 19 minutes. "Considering how tired he was, 86 percent sometimes feels like 150 percent after over 900 kilometers racing," Overton said.

In probably the most dominant team showing since the revival of La Vuelta de Bisbee, Team Tecos from Mexico swept the top four spots in the final stage to push Colombian Gregorio Vega to a wire-to-wire victory. Vega donned the yellow jersey following Friday’s prologue and wore it all weekend, beating teammates Fausto Muñoz, Carlos Guinez and Francisco Navarro, who finished second through fourth in the overall.

Basically any time a week of racing bikes somewhere kicks ass, we’re going to do a Ten Reasons piece. There’s just so much to tell on these perfect weeks that there would be pages and pages for you, the unfortunate reader, to wade through. We’ll just condense things a bit here … Ten Reasons why World Cup #2 in Offenburg was the bollocks:

Namrita O'Dea and Chuck Wheeler took top solo honors in the weekend’s 24 Hours of Vail Lake at California’s Vail Lake Mountain Resort. The race, part of Granny Gear Production’s 2008 Suzuki 24 Hour Series, wrapped up Sunday morning, with Wheeler defeating 2007 24 Hour National Series men's solo champion, Rob Lichtenwalner, riding 17 laps for a total of 173.4 miles.

This year’s Sea Otter was better than ever with regards to new product roll-outs. There was too much to see during the short four days I was in Monterey, but we caught the vast majority in the hottest new stuff category. I’ll cover the rest of the best in this final photo gallery, but look for a few more stories from the Otter that go deeper than these galleries have. You should expect a rundown of Shimano’s new Saint group online tis week, while reports on Tomac, Yeti and FSA will pop up in future pages of VeloNews and VeloNews.com.

Cadel Evans' plans to go one better than his runner-up place at last year's Tour de France remain intact after what has proved to be an ultimately confidence-boosting week of bike racing. Yet on Sunday the 30-year-old Australian was left wondering about his form at the prestigious Liege-Bastogne-Liege one-day classic, where at least one of his yellow jersey rivals put his climbing potential on full display.

Italian Davide Rebellin conceded defeat to the "faster legs" of Spanish rival Alejandro Valverde after their thrilling battle for one of the most prestigious crowns in one-day cycling Sunday. A runner-up to Italian Danilo Di Luca last year and winner in 2006, Valverde left Rebellin struggling to match his pace when he capped the tough, 12-climb 261km epic with a winning sprint a few hundred meters from the finish line. Rebellin's victory here in 2004 rounded off a superb week in which he won the Amstel Gold Race and the Fleche Wallonne classics.

The 8.25-inch-travel bike features a single down tube and new larger pivots for the FreeDrive suspension system.

Mongoose’s ECD downhill racer has evolved into a new model called the Boot’R for 2009.

For your amusement: We spied this 6-Works in the Cannondale camp, obviously a play on Specialized’s S-Works — same font even. It seems the guys from Bedford, Pennsylvania, get a kick out of taking jabs at the competition in Morgan Hill, California.