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A decade after his first Tour de France stage win, 36-year-old Frenchman Cedric Vasseur gave the host country something to cheer about on Wednesday, taking the 10th stage of the 2007 Tour, a 229.5km rolling run from Tallard to Marseille. Vasseur (Quick Step-Innergetic) shot out the right side of a five-man breakaway 200 meters from the finish, narrowly holding off countryman Sandy Casar (Française des Jeux); the difference at the line barely more than a tire width. It was the first victory by a Frenchman at the Tour since Pierrick Fedrigo took stage 14 into Gap a year ago.

COURSE: This is one of the flattest courses of the entire Tour, skirting the Camargue marshes of the Rhône delta, just north of the Mediterranean coast. This stage has “sprinters” written all over it, especially if the Mistral winds are blowing. The finish loops to an end on the western edge of Montpellier, an ancient city dating back to the 8th century. HISTORY: There have been 25 Tour stage finishes at Montpellier, the latest in 2005, when Robbie McEwen won a tight field sprint after breakaways Chris Horner and Sylvain Chavanel were caught in the finishing straightaway. FAVORITES: A few

T-Mobile rider Patrik Sinkewitz reacted in amazement on Wednesday after he was informed he had failed a doping test as he prepared for the Tour de France last month. The German Cycling Federation (BDR) announced on Wednesday that the 26-year-old's A sample, taken on June 8, had a raised testosterone level and he must now decide if his B sample will be tested. The up and coming rider has been suspended by his team who say that if the B sample confirms the first test then he will be sacked. That news sent shockwaves through the German media, with national TV networks ARD and ZDF

Until Wednesday, many believed overall victory in China's Tour of Qinghai Lake would go to one of two teams: Selle Italia with Gabriele Massaglia, or Relax-Gam with Francisco Mancebo. But a 26-year-old Englishman by the name of Daniel Lloyd, a relative unknown who hails from a small London suburb a stone's throw from Heathrow Airport, has set out to prove them wrong. Courtesy of a five-second bonus after finishing third in a 42-man sprint, won for the third time by Discovery Channel's Allan Davis, the DFL-Cyclingnews rider earned the privilege to don the yellow jersey on

If there was anyone able to grab a stage win for CSC on the Tour de France's 10th stage here Wednesday, it was Jens Voigt. However the German, who suggested he would have dedicated the victory to his stricken teammate Stuart O'Grady, was left with the crumbs after being outfoxed in the closing meters, leaving the outcome to a tight sprint duel between Sandy Casar and Cedric Vasseur. Voigt, watching three of his sprint rivals on his left, fell victim to Vasseur's perfectly-executed attack as the experienced Frenchman sneaked up on Voight’s right in the race's final 200

Weather: Very sunny and warm, highs into the 90s, moderate headwinds Stage winner: Cédric Vasseur (QuickStep-Innergetic) outsmarted five riders that were the remnants of the day’s winning 11-man breakaway with a surprise sprint on the right side of the road with 200m to go. His second career Tour victory comes a decade after he won with a 145km solo break into La Chatre to snag the yellow jersey in the 1997 Tour. The win is the third for QuickStep in this year’s Tour. Race leader: Michael Rasmussen (Rabobank) retained the yellow jersey after finishing 30th safely tucked inside the bunch at

It’s been a long decade for Spanish cycling fans. By the 1990s, fans south of the Pyrénées became accustomed to toasting victory in Paris with wins by Pedro Delgado in 1988 and Miguel Indurain with five straight yellow jerseys from 1991-95. It’s been a long wait ever since. Riders such as Abraham Olano, Fernandro Escartín and Joseba Beloki all came close, but could never quite live up to the Indurain legacy. The 2007 Tour marks the return of the Spanish Armada. With four riders securely in the top 10 coming out of the Alps, many are hoping that this is the year to see a Spanish spoken

If American T-Mobile boss Bob Stapleton thought the past few days at theTour de France had been trying, Wednesday was a hot day spent tossed outof the frying pan and into the fire. On Sunday’s stage 8 into Tignes, the T-Mobile squad saw banged-up Britishrider Mark Cavendish abandon his first Tour, Australian Michael Rogersleave the race after crashing as the virtual yellow jersey on the road and German Patrik Sinkewitz sent to the hospital with a broken nose and injured jaw after a freak collision with a fan followingthe stage. On Tuesday’s stage T-Mobile’s German Marcus Burghardt struck a

You will never see a general classification rider hooked up to SRM’s telemetric data system. By beaming real-time power meter data directly to SRM’s servers television stations and websites can see the exact effort whatever rider on the other end is expending. The transmission provides all of the information a SRM power meter can gather to commentators, but it gives anyone, including other teams a look at the wired rider’s cards. It’s up to the team and the individual rider to decide if they want to participate in the program. This year riders from a handful of teams including, T-Mobile,

"Hotter than hell today," reports Casey Gibson from Stage 10 of the 2007 Tour de France." How hot was it? The ASO folks said the air temperature was 35 Celsius and the road temp' 49C. "That converts to flippin' hot," notes Casey (actually, that converts to 95 in the air and 120 on the road, but we'd say '"flippin' hot" is a fair approximation. Happily, Casey sent back some equally hot pics, and you can find them below.

Results-Stage 10 (Tallard To Marseille)1. Cédric Vasseur (F) Quick Step-Innergetic, 229.5km in 5:20:242. Sandy Casar (R) Francaise Des Jeux, at S.T.3. Michael Albasini (Swi) Liquigas, at S.T.4. Patrice Halgand (F) Credit Agricole, at S.T.5. Jens Voigt (G) CSC, at S.T.6. Staf Scheirlinckx (B) Cofidis , at 0:367. Paolo Bossoni (I) Lampre-Fondital, at 0:368. Marcus Burghardt (G) T-Mobile, at 1:019. Aleksandr Kuschynski (Blr) Liquigas, at 2:3410. Antonio Juan Antonio (Sp) Rabobank, at 2:34 11. Andriy Grivko (Ukr) Milram, at 3:4212. Sébastien Chavanel (F) Francaise Des Jeux, at 10:3613. Tom

Today’s 230k went by as fast as it possibly could, given the conditions. Out on the road it was more than 100 degrees all day and the pavement was rough. Some of us were still a bit tired after the mountain day yesterday that took us over the famed Galibier. It was a great mountain stage that started at the bottom of the Col de l'Iseran in the ski town of Val-d'Isère. The Iseran goes straight up to 2770 meters (9088 ft.) and there ain’t so much air up there. I went with a few attacks and every extra effort was rewarded with a straight-up bout of dizziness. Then we raced down to

American cross-country Adam Craig claimed the biggest international victory of his young career July 13 at the 2007 Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The 25-year-old sprung away from the field in the opening meters of the race, holding his advantage to the end. For Craig, currently the top-ranked American in the UCI and World Cup standings, the win brought in more valuable UCI points needed for the United States’s push for the 2008 Olympic Games. The U.S. men are currently ranked sixth in the UCI rankings, and only the top-five countries will earn the maximum three spots for the

Stage 11 - Marseille to Montpellier - (182.5km)

Stage 11 - Marseille to Montpellier - (182.5km)

Vasseur takes it

Allan Davis gets the sprint...

Lloyd takes Qinghai Lake lead, Davis takes a hat-trick

Lloyd takes Qinghai Lake lead, Davis takes a hat-trick

Rasmussen retains the leader's jersey

A little scenery — the town of Sisteron

And a little scenery of another kind altogether (no testosterone jokes, please)

The big break of the day

Voigt driving

Marcus Burghardt’s bike wired up and ready to race.

SRM techs getting the Giant setup to transmit power data.

The GPRS transmission unit.

The power control unit.

ChristianVande Velde’s SRM with FSA manufactured carbon arms.

Discovery Channel’s new Madone wired and ready.

The GPRS unit.

SRM had to refine the profile of the crank mounted gauge to fit the Trek Madone’s new cup-less bottom bracket shell.

This Belgian gent is celebrating his 50th year of attending the Tour

Where do those tight closeups come from? Why, from the guys with the 400mm lenses

At 35 degrees C it was bottle after bottle, all day long

The break heads past the village of Theze

A young French fan at the finish

'When I was your age, we walked 20 kilometers to see a Tour stage, uphill both ways, in the snow . . .'

Horner goes better with Coke

Meanwhile, back at the podium . . .

It's all orange on the front as Rabobank sets the tempo

Ruins in the start village of Tallard . . .

. . . and a knight from there as well

A Frenchman on the podium: Cedric Vasseur

... and Daniel Lloyd gets the jersey.

A big bump in the road for Stapleton and efforts to save T-Mobile.

MTB News and Notes: A conversation with Adam Craig

The last wild-card team picked for the 2007 Tour de France showed Tuesday that the organizers made the right choice, after Barloworld's Colombian climber Juan Soler earned an impressive solo win in the 159.5km stage 9 haul from Val-d'Isère to Briançon.

COURSE: With a start from just south of Gap, and heading through Provence to the Mediterranean coast, this long stage looks ripe for a successful breakaway. Two Cat. 3 climbs in the final 30km will split up the break and also disrupt the chasing efforts of the sprinters’ teams. The Col de la Gineste, out of the small wine town of Cassis, summits 10km from the finish, which is on a wide boulevard on the eastern edge of Marseille. HISTORY: There have been 32 stage finishes in the port city of Marseille, the most recent in 2003 and 1993. Four years ago, Denmark’s Jakob Piil out-sprinted

French champion Christophe Moreau, one of the stars of Sunday’s grueling stage to Tignes, says he is hoping to do well in the Pyrénées in the Tour’s final week and finish on the podium in Paris. His best Tour finish to date was fourth in 2000. After eight stages of this Tour he’s sitting in seventh overall, 3:06 down on race leader Michel Rasmussen, but on a par with other contenders like Alejandro Valverde, Cadel Evans, Fränk Schleck and Denis Menchov.

Spaniard Alejandro Valverde has refused to rule out Alexander Vinokourov’s chances for the yellow jersey this year. His co-captain Oscar Pereiro, however, believes otherwise, saying that Astana’s other star - Andreas Klöden – may pose a bigger threat over the final two weeks of the Tour de France. Valverde played a key role in Sunday's eighth stage when a series of attacks by Frenchman Christophe Moreau led to the Astana pair losing more time on their rivals.

It’s tough to tell what Rabobank’s Michael Rasmussen is better known for: His aptitude for winning the Tour’s climbing jersey or his phenomenal meltdown in the 2005 Tour’s final time-trial. [nid:39592]On Sunday’s stage 8, Rasmussen once again established the former, and placed doubts in everyone’s mind that anyone else will be able to take the Tour’s polka-dot jersey in the near future. He also established a solid foundation for his newly proclaimed aspirations to win the overall classification.

Buried deep in Sunday’s UCI commissaires’ report was a penalty against Levi Leipheimer for illegal mechanical assistance and bidon pulls. The top American contender was fined 50 CHF and penalized 5 points and 10 seconds for the bidon pull and fined an additional 50 CHF for illegal mechanical assistance. Leipheimer couldn’t care less about the money or the points, but those 10 seconds could be vital in the battle for the overall crown when every second counts.

Discovery Channel team leader Levi Leipheimer admitted on the Tour’s first rest day that he’s not yet riding to his top ability, but believes he will be by the time the race reaches the Pyrénées in its pivotal third week.

Results - Stage 91. Mauricio Soler (Col), Barloworld 4:14:24 (38.92kph)2. Alejandro Valverde Belmonte (Sp), Caisse d'Epargne, at 0:383. Cadel Evans (Aus), Predictor-Lotto, at 0:384. Alberto Contador Velasco (Sp), Discovery, at 0:405. Iban Mayo Diez (Sp), Saunier Duval, at 0:426. Michael Rasmussen (Dk), Rabobank, at 0:427. Levi Leipheimer (USA), Discovery, at 0:428. Kim Kirchen (Lx), T-Mobile, at 0:469. Andreas Klöden (G), Astana, at 0:4610. Carlos Sastre (Sp), CSC, at 0:46 11. Christophe Moreau (F), Ag2r, at 0:5412. Mikel Astarloza (Sp), Euskaltel-Euskadi, at 0:5413. Yaroslav Popovych

Hardly anyone knew a thing about Juan Mauricio Soler Hernández before he ran away with Tuesday’s climbing stage across the Galibier. Journalists were scrambling to find out more about the soft-spoken son of farmers from central Colombia who bolted away from the world’s best climbers to win Barloworld’s first stage of the 2007 Tour de France.

On the eve of the U.S. National championships RockShox has quietly put a new cross-country fork into the hands of its top sponsored athletes. Reports put at least four riders onto the new fork for the upcoming Mount Snow, Vermont event. The championship race will not be the first competitive event the fork has seen, it is currently being raced in the European Transalp race by Karl Platt. Gary Fisher-Subaru’s Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski has had one of the new forks for roughly a week. He was shipped the fork to ride during the week leading up to the national championship race, and had it mounted

Weather: Highs in 80s, partly cloudy, brisk cross-headwinds Stage winner: Colombia's Mauricio Soler (Barloworld) took the biggest win in both his career and the history of his team by breaking clear of the peloton 10km from the top of the Col du Télégraphe. The 24-year-old from Ramiriqui, Colombia, then rode through the remnants of the day’s breakaway to finish 38 seconds ahead of Alejandro Valverde and Cadel Evans. Race leader: Rabobank’s Michael Rasmussen defended his yellow jersey by sticking with the race’s top GC contenders.

After the recent withdrawalsof three high-profile Australians, cycling fans from down under found somethingto cheer about Tuesday in the form of Predictor-Lotto’s Cadel Evans. Theslim Aussie rode aggressively on the race’s first two hors categorieclimbs in stage 9 to finish third on the stage and move into fourthoverall.

Mountain bike racer, Barry Wicks was the first to sign on with Giro for eyewear. But in the week prior to the Tour de France, Giro signed Discovery Channel’s Alberto Contador and Caisse d’Epargne’s Nicolas Portal. At the prologue in London the ink was still wet on both contracts. Nonetheless, Giro produced a special pair of green glasses to go along with Contador’s Discovery Channel team’s newfound eco’ conscience.

The Tour de France offered up another beautiful in the Alps and our man Casey Gibson was there to record it.

On Tuesday, the first real day in the high mountains at the Tour of Qinghai Lake, the expected assault on Discovery Channel saw overnight leader Allan Davis knocked off the top spot on the overall classification, and replaced by Selle Italia's mountain man Gabriele Massaglia. A late offensive on the 3880-meter-high Laji mountain by Selle Italia and Relax-Gam, the team of race favorite Francisco Mancebo, almost saw the blond-haired Aussie rejoin the front group on the 50km-long descent. Though unfortunately for Davis, just as his group began to close in on the front 17, he wiped out on

Keith Norris (AEG-Toshiba-JetNetwork) won the U23 stars-and-stripes jersey in a field-sprint of 174 riders on Sunday, July 15, at the USA Cycling National Festival in Champion, Pennsylvania. It was a close call for Norris, who jumped out front early to position himself for the final sprint, proving his strength and holding the lead without a lead-out. Cody O’Reill (Kodak Gallery-Sierra Nevada) and Jacob Keough (CL Noonan-Coast to Coast) finished second and third, respectively. “The whole race was much faster than I anticipated,” Norris said. “My plan was to be in the top three coming out of

Stage 10 - Tallard to Marseille (229.5km)

Stage 10 - Tallard to Marseille (229.5km)

Soler takes the stage for Barloworld

Rasmussen crosses with Leipheimer on his wheel

Rabobank setting tempo

T-Mobile's evil luck continued as a stray dog wandered onto the route . . .

. . . and took down Marcus Burghardt

The normally stoic Vino' weeps after conceding more time on Tuesday

Valverde leads

The break

Astarloza cracked the break

Contador has a go

Contador and Popovych

Contador and Evans

Going up: The 9085-foot, hors categorie Col de l'Iseran

Rasmussen knows who the boss is at Rabobank now — it's him

Soler attacked 'like a crazy man'