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The major technical difference is the 90mm threadless bottom bracket shell. Brown says that feature may appear on other Trek mountain bikes in the future.

It might surprise you to find out just what it takes to build a one-off bike. Travis Brown can sure tell you. The Trek test rider and product developer lost one after last year’s early fall single-speed world championships. Trek built Brown a custom polished one of a kind 69er single speed for the event in September. After a pre-ride, derby and race, Brown UPS’d his bike back to the U.S. and the men in brown promptly lost it.

The Cauberg climb was the scene of a stunning finale Sunday of a wild, action-packed Amstel Gold Race that saw Damiano Cunego (Lampre) score a huge victory against the attacking Frank Schleck (CSC). Realizing his only shot against faster rivals such as Cunego and third-place finisher Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne) was to attack, the Luxembourger surged away with a vengeance with 500 meters to go to drop everyone out an elite group of nine riders except Cunego. Schleck’s raid almost worked, but Italy’s “Little Prince” had another ending in mind.

Two of Italy’s biggest stars are on the mend and hope to be back at their best in time for major upcoming goals. Two-time world champ Paolo Bettini is skipping both Amstel Gold Race and Flèche Wallone due to a broken rib suffered in last week’s Vuelta al País Vasco while Daniele Bennati will finally make his debut with Liquigas following a lengthy recovery from a knee injury.

Baltimore Bike Path

Powerful gusting winds didn’t sway 19-year-old Tiffany Cromwell (Colavita Olive Oil-Sutter Home) or Michael Grabinger (Successful Living), who took NRC victories on the Laguna Seca Raceway Saturday at the Sea Otter Classic. The men’s and women’s events played out very differently. Cromwell rode solo off the front of a break for the final few laps. Grabinger, however, made it into an unusual four-man breakaway with two teammates and David Clinger (Rock Racing). The men lapped the field — twice — before Successful Living lined up a leadout in the stiff crosswind.

You may have thought that Julien Absalon had won every important cross-country mountain bike race on the planet. The Frenchman owns four elite world titles, three World Cup titles, a swarm of World Cup wins and Olympic gold. And to top that off, he won our VeloNewsInternational Cyclist of the Year prize last year as well. But Absalon, now 27, has never won mountain biking’s storied Houffalize round of the UCI World Cup. He has been second once and fourth three times. This Sunday, he’ll get another shot. Is he up to the challenge?

Anna Milkowski is a member of Team Advil-Chapstick. This diary entry was completed a few hours after she won the 2008 Tour of the Battenkill Valley in New York — Editor Redlands exists as a haze — a temporary exchange of lobster gloves and neoprene flippers for sunscreen and swimming pools — then a quick return to winter. The experience hinted I had survived this challenging winter of indoor riding and even a yard-sale crash on black ice, but the season began for real today with the Battenkill Roubaix in Salem, New York.

Near-record setting temperatures sent dust, gravel and rocks flying at the Tour of the Battenkill Valley on Saturday, but racers from the Great White North, perhaps the least adjusted to the heat, managed to dominate the event. Bruno Langlois, racing for Team Volkswagen, pipped five-time Canadian national champion Mark Walters (Team R.A.C.E.), following an 82-mile event that sent racers over a combination of dirt and paved roads in a quiet corner of New York State.

The list of favorites for Sunday's Amstel Gold Race seems nearly as long as the number of years the race has been held: 43. For the first time in more than a decade, neither one of Holland’s eternal favorites for Amstel Gold — Erik Dekker or Michael Boogerd — can be counted on to carry national pride. Each won Amstel once, beating Lance Armstrong each time in what was one of the biggest wins in each of their respective careers.

Team Type 1 Sets Sights On A Stage Win In Georgia Tybee Island, Ga. — Team Type 1 brings an arsenal to the Tour de Georgia presented by AT&T that is equipped to deliver a stage win during the seven-day, 590-mile (949.5 km) race that begins Monday. Team Type 1’s roster for the race will be Emile Abraham (TRI), Moises Aldape (MEX), Fabio Calabria (AUS), Glen Chadwick (AUS), Chris Jones (USA), Valeriy Kobzarenko (UKR), Ian MacGregor (USA) and Matt Wilson (AUS).

We’ll end with Zipp’s negative drag PowerTap equipped Sub 9 disc wheel, because we’ll pick up here with the next installment and look at what Zipp and SRAM have cooked up new for the road. The PowerTap hub only adds 120 grams to any of Zipp’s disc wheels; the Sub 9 tubular equipped with a PowerTap weighs 1120-grams. SRAM announced that it will introduce its own line of wheels at the tradeshows this fall. It will keep Zipp as its high-end road brand, so for fun I’ll take a guess that in six months time, SRAM might have a viable mountain bike wheel? It would surely round out the line nicely.

The French tire maker’s tubeless ready cyclocross tire is finally set to go and being produced.

The tread of the Toro is modeled after the Bulldog.

The Toro is a new higher-volume big treaded 29-inch tire that comes with a Tubeless Ready bead instead of a tubeless casing to keep the weight down.

Hutchinson said it has a 25mm Fusion tubeless tire coming down its development line as well as higher mileage tubeless training tire called the Intensive.

The wheelset has 44mm carbon rims, steel spokes: 18 front, and 20 rear; it weighs 1537 grams. The cost is not yet set but may be close to $4000.

Speaking of tubeless compatible, tire maker Hutchinson has teamed with Corima to offer a Hutchinson branded carbon tubeless road wheelset, called the RT1.

Both wheels feature 29-inch rims that are tubeless compatible.

The XLR relies on the brand’s top-end hub, with loose balls and angular contact races.

And this is the upper tier, the Red Metal 29 XLR; both wheels forgo alloy spokes in favor of steel.

The biggest news in the Fulcrum camp may be the two new 29-inch wheelsets. This is the economical version called the Red Metal SL, which is priced at just $350.

Just in case any of the employees at QBP, the brand’s U.S. distributor, get any ideas.

The rim is tubeless compatible.

The carbon mountain bike clinchers feature Fulcrum’s 20mm axle, aluminum spokes and nipples, but are laced normally, not with the brand’s 2:1 spoke ratio.

Fulcrum’s Red Carbon wheels will be available later this year. Currently, Julian Absalon is waging another season on the wheels.

The rim-brake compatible Red Metal Zero mountain bike rims use a hub with Campy ‘s Record internals, aside from being proven and easily serviceable. Campagnolo’s road ceramic bearing bearings can be dropped right into the mountain wheel.

Fulcrum had a new color option available for its Red Metal Zero mountain bike wheelset. It’s the inverse of the new option for road bikes. The road version keeps red spokes with a black rim, while the mountain version gets a red rim and black spokes. Technically both wheels are unchanged.

SwissStop is sharing space with Edge at Sea Otter, and had a new pad shape to show. The new shape will replace the current Campagnolo-compatible pad and will be available with SwissStop’s three pad compounds. Edge wheels exclusively use the Yellow King carbon compound. A bike’s worth of the carbon pads cost a whopping $64, but they are the best performing in Edge’s testing and our experience.

Edge will offer four mountain bars, in the next 8-10 weeks. They come in two styles, flat or rise, with two clamp options, 25.4mm or 31.8mm. One of the most interesting pieces of feedback from testers is that the bars aren’t as stiff as some of the competition’s offerings. Kevin Nelson, one of Edge’s two carbon engineers, thought it was something he would have to change, but instead the testers embraced the feel. “I guess you learn something everyday,” he said.

This fork has a King headset base plate molded in.

Edge will also have a full range of forks, two road versions, as well as aero and cyclocross models. The ’cross model should be ready for this coming cyclocross season and will be shipping in August.

1.0 Series rims come in two heights, 38mm left, and 68mm right.

Off-road, Edge does two different rims, but instead of using height as the differentiating factor, it uses width. The XC rim is 24mm wide and comes in tubular or clincher configurations. The trail rim is a full 30mm wide and only 40 grams more.

Edge has a complete line of wheels both, road and mountain, forks and handlebars all made of carbon. On the road, Edge offers two rim depths, 38mm and 68mm, in two different models. What the consumer will notice is that one is significantly lighter. The 1.38 rim — Edge’s top of the line 38mm rim — is the lightest, weighing a mere 270 grams.

Jason Schiers and Jim Pfeil are the front men of Edge Composites, a smaller Utah based carbon manufacturer that’s making waves in the bicycle industry. Both have storied bicycle industry carbon manufacturing histories.

An internal view of the rear hub.

The spokes are butted stainless steel and are mated to long 7075-T6 alloy nipples; there are 24 front and rear.

The rear hub has a 25mm center axle section, and rotates on four large bearings.

The anodized 6061-T6-aluminum wheel uses a unique spoke attachment process to allow tubeless tire compatibility without a rim strip or other sealing mechanism. The internal width of the rim is 19mm.

Crankbrothers is taking reservations for its new Cobalt XC wheelset. Early production weights are 688 grams for the front and 852 grams for the rear. The U.S. built wheels will retail for $1000.

As the Sea Otter Classic swings into full force in addition to people pouring in for the festival and the races kicking into gear, there proved to be no shortage of new stuff to see. The weather is holding, which is always a question in April on the Monterey Peninsula, so without further ado let us dive right into it.

The Suzuki 24 Hour National Point Series kicks off its 2008 race season at the picturesque Vail Lake Resort outside of Temecula, California. The Suzuki 24 Hours of Vail Lake, the first stop on the six-race nationwide team relay and solo mountain biking circuit, will run around the clock from noon on Saturday, April 26 until the following afternoon on Sunday, April 27.

Dotsie Bausch (Colavita/Sutter Home) and Ruth Clemence (Simple Green) outkicked the women's pro field with two laps to go in the road race before battling each other in a power struggle all the way to the finish. The 20-women field stayed tightly packed for most of the race until a restless Clemence made a move, bringing Bausch with her. "I tried to attack on a hill to break things up and we just stayed away," Clemence said.

Giant Bicycles gets to add one more Super D win to go with the two it picked up last year in the debut event at the Sea Otter Classic. Carl Decker succeeded in overpowering former World Cup downhill pro Jurgen Beneke (Marin/Mercury Rev) on a short climb near the top and managed to stay away from Beneke for the remainder of the three-mile race. "I wanted to be up over the top before Jurgen, who is very strong in the downhill," said Decker.

The world’s top cross-country mountain-bike racers begin their final toward the Beijing Olympics, as the UCI World Cup kicks off this Sunday, April 20, in Houffalize, Belgium. The women take to the 6.7km course at 10:30 a.m., and the men at 2 p.m. sharp.

Win a Giant Team Edition bike or a signed jersey – online sweepstake starts Monday San Luis Obispo, CA, 18 April 2008 – Team High Road, Right to Play and Giant Bicycles are pleased to announce the chance to win a team edition Giant Bicycle and a signed Team High Road jersey.

Of rubber, cinders and platform shoes...

With no individual time trial and a trip planned up the steep Brasstown Bald mountain, the seven-day 2008 Tour de Georgia presented by AT&T, appears to be a climber’s race. Odds-on race favorites include 2006 overall winner Tom Danielson (Slipstream-Chipotle), Astana’s U.S. national champion Levi Leipheimer and Rock Racing’s Spanish climbing sensation Oscar Sevilla.

Rock Racing team owner Michael Ball said Friday that his team earned an invite to the Tour de Georgia based on just one simple condition. "They said, 'can you conduct yourselves in a way that doesn't freak us out?' " Ball said in a conference call with reporters. He said that at Georgia he will not be accompanied by the Hollywood-style entourage that followed him at the Amgen Tour of California. He also said the team would not bring podium girl models to Georgia, although he said that's because the models were unavailable, not because of his promise to avoid freaking anyone out.

Wrubleski. Get used to spelling the name.

The Wheel & Sprocket Pro Development Team has been invited by the organizers of the 2008 Nature Valley Grand Prix to bring a men's Midwest regional development team to this year's race. Wheel & Sprocket Pro Development was selected because of its mission to provide developing racers the opportunity to compete at the highest level of the sport.

The Liquigas Team was officially presented on 9th January 2008: up until now that was the first and only time that Daniele Bennati had donned the green-blue strip. More than three months have passed since that day, but the sprinter from Arrezzo will finally get the chance to make his first appearance for his new the team on 20th April during the Giro d’Oro. "I’m curious and excited about this debut. My season is only just starting now and I want to make my mark," Bennati said.