If I were to write the perfect classified ad to recruit top female athletes to track cycling it would look like this:
Tired of your current sport? You might have an Olympic future in Cycling! Oarswomen, listen up – Rebecca Romero of England came from a top career as a single sculler to win a silver medal in cycling in less than 365 days. Add another year to that and she’s a double World Cycling Champion, supported by the best funding in women’s cycling. And to top it off, the crowds and media LOVE her, she’s a national hero. What more could a girl want?
Australia's reigning Olympic 500 meter time trial champion Anna Meares is celebrating after hearing she has qualified for the sprint event in Beijing.
Australia's sole women's sprint spot at the Games was under threat because of Meares' place in the world rankings, but results from the world championships in Manchester, England, on Friday mean she can no longer be overtaken.
Meares is absent from the world championships as she recovers from injuries sustained in a serious crash at the Los Angeles round of the World Cup in January.
The editors of Slate magazine's website have run across what they believe is the stupidest bike lane in America, so dumb they've even made a video about it.
Come on VeloNewsers, surely with all of the miles we're putting in on American roads, one of us can top it. If you run across a design that serves even less of a purpose, drop a line to Slate , but be sure to cc us on that email.
Professional endurance competitor Rebecca Rusch has tackled her fair share of adventure races and 24-Hour mountain bike races throughout the years. Now, the Idahoan is in South Africa competing in the Absa Cape Epic, a nine-day endurance mountain bike stage race across the country’s scenic Western Cape. And we’re along for the ride. - Editor
Trek-Volkswagen’s Susan Haywood and Jenny Smith took the women’s category while Kevin Evans and David George (MTN-Energade) won the men’s in the opening prologue of South Africa’s 2008 Absa Cape Epic on Friday.
The two women completed the 17km course, which spun a hilly circuit around the port city of Knysna, in 42:51.2. The pair, both regulars on North America’s National Mountain Bike Series, crossed the line with a 40-second advantage on the Rocky Mountain team of Alison Sydor and Pia Sundstedt.
We've got some more reader photos for you. Here's a good spectator's view of the Tour of California as well as some other great action shots.
Keep 'em coming! Submit your photos here
Italian rider Valentino Fois, a former teammate of deceased champion Marco Pantani, has been found dead at his home near Bergamo, La Gazzetta dello Sport reported on Friday.
The 34-year-old Fois, who turned professional in 1996, was arrested in 1998 for doping after testing positive twice during the Tour of Switzerland and the Tour of Poland.
He was suspended for three years in 2002 while he rode for the Mercato Uno team of Pantani, who died of a drug overdose four years ago.
The cause of Fois' death is unknown. He was found by his mother with whom he lived.
Crédit Agricole’s ace sprinter Thor Hushovd says he is prepared to boycott the opening ceremony to the Beijing Olympics in August to protest Chinese repression in Tibet.
"We sports people do not have any particular responsibility to take a stance over what is happening in China," he told Norway’s Faedrelandsvennen newspaper.
"But all the same we can have some influence by snubbing the opening ceremony in Beijing. That would be a valid form of protest and I am prepared to do it,” Hushovd said. "However, from there to boycotting the Games entirely is a huge step.”
On a foggy December day in 1983 the newly formed National Off Road Bicycle Association held its first event in the Los Padres National Forest outside of Solvang, California. A bushy haired Kansas kid named Steve Tilford escaped with the win that day, riding in his first ever mountain-bike race on a rig slapped together just a day earlier.
You know the guy who couldn’t pass a calculus exam even if the fate of the human race depended on it, but who can count blackjack cards like one of those brainy MIT kids or Rain Man? Well, I guess don’t really either, but I do know I am not that guy.
After being put through my paces at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine testing lab, I did a similar battery of threshold and power exams outdoors a week later. Much to my chagrin — but not surprise — the outdoor results were very similar to the indoor ones. I remain average.
Bobby Julich is never afraid to speak his mind.
Like many inside the peloton, Julich is worried about the growing tensions between the UCI and the major race organizers led by the Amaury Sport Organisation, noting that the split may permanently damage the sport.
This weekend, the veteran CSC rider lines up for the Critérium International, a race he won in his big comeback season in 2005. Julich’s big goal of the year is to perform well in ASO’s flagship event, the Tour de France.
When newly crowned world women's pursuit champion Rebecca Romero first climbed onto a track bike, she fell off.
Any hardened trackie knows that such a tumble is not an unusual experience, but it is a measure of the former Olympic rower’s determination that two years to the day that the Team GB rider first made close acquaintance with the boards of Manchester velodrome, she became world pursuit champion.
Now in its ninth year, the San Dimas Stage Race opens Friday with a deep start list of pro men and women. Originally called the Pomona Valley Stage Race, San Dimas has served as the season opener for domestic racing for years.
Although not an NRC event this year, San Dimas still draws most of the teams who will line up at the Redlands Bicycle Classic on April 3.
American women have already had four NRC events — Santa Rosa Grand Prix, the Sequoia Cycing Classic time trial and criterium, and the Susan G. Komens Cycle for the Cure — but Redlands will be the first men’s NRC event.
Venus de Miles Opens Registration
Venus de Miles, Colorado’s 1st Women’s-Only bike ride, announces registration and the launch of their web site www.venusdemiles.com. Venus de Miles is a celebration of women and community designed to empower women through cycling, the world’s most popular sports, and give back to community youth through Greenhouse Scholars.
COURSE
The American Track Racing Association (ATRA) has been reborn for the 2008 season with a new executive board, website and National track racing calendar boasting over $100,000 in prize money at 30 events held around the United States.
ATRA's 2008 Executive Board:
President - Pete Antonvich
Vice President - Tim Goodwin
Secretary - Leigh Barczewski
Treasurer - Mike Murray
A Base for Growth
The following press release was sent by the Australian cycling federation:
Olympic and World Champion, Brad McGee, moved a step closer to his goal of a fourth Olympic Games berth with a solid performance in the individual pursuit on day one of the UCI Track Cycling World Championships in Manchester.
McGee was the fifth fastest in qualifying, missing a chance to ride off for a medal, but posting his fastest time since 2004 when he claimed silver in the event at the Athens Olympic Games along with gold in the teams pursuit.
Team Type 1 will field a much different lineup for its third stage race of the season – and its first in the United States – when it takes the start line Friday at the San Dimas Stage Race.
On Team Type 1’s roster for the three-day, three-stage race are Americans Chris Jones, Ian MacGregor, Shawn Milne and Phil Southerland, Australian Ben Brooks, Mexican Moises Aldape and Emile Abraham of Trinidad and Tobago.
Cadel Evans’ remarkable spring campaign continued when the Australian doubled Thursday at Italy’s Settimana Internazionale Coppi e Bartali both winning the stage and claiming the overall leader’s jersey.
The Silence-Lotto captain, fresh off winning atop Mont Ventoux at Paris-Nice earlier this month, drove home a solo victory 32 seconds ahead of overnight leader Stefano Garzelli (Aqua e Sapone) and Vincenzo Nibali (Liquigas), who came through second and third in the 189km stage.
The USA Cycling’s board of directors on Thursday elected collegiate cycling’s Mark Abramson as president of the organization, replacing Jim Ochowicz, whose term has expired.
Abramson takes office immediately and replaces Ochowicz who assumed the post in 2002 and served the maximum allowable three consecutive two-year terms.
Wayne Stetina was elected as the Board's vice president while United States Cycling Federation Trustee Jim Patton will serve as secretary.
World cycling chiefs said Thursday their athlete's 'passport' scheme will be maintained despite losing backing from the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA).
The World Anti-Doping Agency has withdrawn its endorsement for the Athlete's Passport project from the UCI after the cycling body launched a lawsuit against a former WADA chief.
The International Cycling Union (UCI) recently launched a 'biological passport', which records and charts athletes' blood and urine parameters, as a new and seemingly effective weapon in the fight against doping.
Alberto Contador (Astana) won a mountaintop duel versus Colombian condor Mauricio Soler (Barloworld) on Thursday to win his second stage and all but secure overall victory in the Vuelta a Castilla y León.
The defending Tour de France champion pointed to his Astana jersey and fired an imaginary pistol as he crossed the line 11 seconds ahead of Soler in the 160.8km stage from Carrión de los Condes to Collado de Salcedillo.
On or off the track, you don’t mess with Arnaud Tournant, the powerhouse French sprinter who remains one of the most feared sprinters in the world and perhaps the best kilometer rider ever to take to the track.
Reigning champions Britain defended their team pursuit title in a new official world record time of 3:56.322 at the world track cycling championships in Manchester England on Thursday.
Denmark finished second to claim the silver medal while Australia overcame some late race drama in their duel with New Zealand to claim the bronze.
Australia, the Olympic champions, had set the previous world record in the 16-lap 4km event in a time of 3:56.610 in Athens in 2004 and they were quick to congratulate their new world pacesetters.
Reigning world sprint champion Theo Bos says he will not shy away from his rivals when the blue-ribbon event of the world track championships gets under way Friday in Manchester, England.
And the flying Dutchman believes his main challenger, big Frenchman Kevin Sireau, lacks the necessary experience to battle his way through to the gold medal.
With only five months to go to the Beijing Olympics, and despite keeping a low profile in the World Cup this season, Bos is still considered the man to beat in the men's prestigious speed events.
He’s been talking about it for the past few seasons, now Damiano Cunego will finally do it. Italy’s “Prince” of cycling will skip the Giro d’Italia and focus on the Tour de France instead.
The 26-year-old Cunego likes the look of the 2008 Tour route compared to the more challenging Giro on tap for May. He was 11th in the Tour debut in 2006 and believes he challenge for the podium in July.
Bob, I was talking to a cycling friend today and telling him how my riding had been going and happened to mention an accident I was in while riding a couple of weeks ago. He laughed and said he was just reading a similar story and showed me the birdman case. I found it very interesting and it left me with questions about my incident. So here goes my story.