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Maglia rosa Danilo Di Luca's victory in the 90th Giro is all but assured after his performance Saturday, which saw him finish eighth to Astana's Paolo Savoldelli in a 43km time trial to Verona. With an enviable two-and-a-half minute advantage to Team CSC's Andy Schleck at the start of the day, Di Luca was never really in danger of losing his overall lead. The Liquigas captain finished just 29 seconds slower than the young Luxembourger, with Schleck also doing more than enough to retain his second place overall.

Olympic chief Jacques Rogge said Saturday that former Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich could be stripped of his Olympic gold and silver medals from the Games in 2000. Ullrich won the men's Olympic road race in Sydney, where riders from his Telekom team also took the silver and bronze medals, and also claimed silver in the time trial. However, the German is among several top cyclists on whom suspicion has fallen in the wake of a series of doping confessions and revelations from former doctors, trainers and cyclists with links to the Telekom cycling team. Although Ullrich, now retired,

The Mt. Hood Cycling Classic’s Wy’East Road Race lived up to all expectations, delivering suffering, anguish and heartbreak for many of the day’s stage and overall contenders, and ultimately relief for the GC leaders of the pro men’s and women’s fields. Saturday’s epic 89.5-mile slog from Cooper Spur Mountain Resort to Mt. Hood Meadows Ski Resort dished up 9200 feet of elevation gain and saw a pair of first-time Mt. Hood stage winners in Darren Lill (Navigators Insurance) and Felicia Gomez (Aaron’s Corporate Furnishings). Neither rider was able to take over the general classification,

Rashaan Bahati delivered his first-year Rock Racing team its biggest win yet on Saturday afternoon in Arlington, Virginia, blazing to the head of a field sprint to take home the 10th edition of the CSC Invitational. Laura Van Gilder (Cheerwine) won the women’s race, outsprinting race-long breakaway companion Rebecca Larson (Aaron’s Corporate Furnishings). Sarah Uhl (Cheerwine) was third. Bahati in the heatWith temperatures hovering around the 90-degree mark, it was once again a race of attrition on the notoriously difficult 1km, five-turn course, which winds its way through Arlington’s

Italian Fabiana Luperini (Menikini-Selle Italia-Gysko) ignited the definitive break and outsprinted American Mara Abbott (Webcor) to win the sixth round of the Women's World Cup series in Montréal on Saturday. Luperini rode Abbott's wheel into the finishing straight and easily came around her in the final 100 meters for the win. Once again, the quality of the Montréal course came to the forefront. With 11 laps of an 11km circuit, including the famed climb up Mont Royal, attrition is always the name of the game here. Numerous attacks always take place, but it is a difficult course to

Savoldelli rides to victory in Verona.

Mazzoleni slots in for a 1-2 Astana finish

Zabriskie makes the podium in third

Di Luca rode a respectable race to defend his maglia rosa

And to the victor (well, come Sunday, anyway) go the spoils

Schleck rode the ITT of his life

Bahati saw his chance and jumped at it

CSC was running its train toward the finish, hoping to set up Haedo

Toyota United's Stevic hoped to pull off the win, but a miscue cost him the V

Luperini takes the win

O'Neill remains in yellow going into Sunday's finale

Goldstein, a former Israeli soldier and kickboxing champ, took a pummeling

Abbott rides to second in her first international race

The men's break

Health Net masses at the front of the bunch

Lill was clearly the strongest

The women's break

Gomez guts it out to the win

Gomez congratulates a 'very, very tough' Goldstein

Navigators powers the break through the feed zone

The race's namesake looms in the background

Friday's foul weather did nothing to curb the inner aggression of Basque Iban Mayo (Saunier Duval-Prodir), whose beautiful pedaling motion returned, to the bane of his breakaway companions, on the 19th stage of the Giro, triumphing with a solo victory in Comano Terme. Not content to sit in a seven-man lead group after the midway climb of the Pian delle Fugazze, especially with Acqua & Sapone's Stefano Garzelli by his side, Mayo chose fellow Spaniard Alberto Losada (Caisse d'Epargne) as his partner in crime.

Spanish star Alejandro Valverde finds himself treading increasingly dangerous water in the face of increasing speculation that he might be one of the unnamed riders among the Operación Puerto papers that continue to haunt cycling. Valverde admitted that he knows controversial doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, the alleged ringleader at the center of the Puerto doping scandal, during his tenure at Kelme from 2002-04 when Fuentes worked as the team’s doctor. Valverde even said he has a dog named Piti, but denied it links him to the ongoing doping scandal. “I know Fuentes from my time at Kelme, but

The individual time trial is often referred to as the race of truth, and after two time trials in four days at the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic, Health Net-Maxxis rider Nathan O’Neill has a pair of yellow leader’s jerseys to testify to his dominance over the pro-1-2 field assembled in Hood River, Oregon. As expected, the race’s defending champion won the 18.5-mile Scenic Gorge individual time trial on Friday. But the eight-time national Australian time-trial champ didn't quite dominate the stage as had been predicted by many, including O’Neill. Instead O’Neill’s time of 40:25 narrowly beat

Two decades of American presence in the European peloton are under threat by cycling’s credibility crisis in the face of a non-stop barrage of doping scandals. For the first time since 7-Eleven paved the way with its pioneering start in the 1985 Giro d’Italia, there is a very real possibility there will not be a U.S.-sponsored team in the ProTour European peloton next season. Why? Because U.S. corporations seem less willing to take a multi-million risk on cycling’s bad-boy doping image. Two major American teams are scrambling to find sponsors for the 2008 season, and both are finding a

Mayo's win capped off an aggressive ride.

Safely tucked in the peloton, Di Luca rode one stage closer to an overall Giro title.

This early dig had just a little too much horsepower for some people's taste.

Liquigas had one job... protect the guy in pink.

Losada and Mayo form a temporary alliance.

Petrov chases the two escapees.

Just keep the gap small... and try to stay dry.

Riis's confession might be good for the soul, but how does it affect the bottom line? Only his American sponsor knows for sure.

O'Neill wins, as expected

Jacques-Maynes prefers a flatter course

Zajieck: Little drag, big power

Goldstein rips it

Harper slots into second

Mactier rides into third, sans sunglasses

On a summery Thursday afternoon in Riese Pio X, 33 year-old La Spezia speedster Alessandro Petacchi (Milram) avoided a final corner crash to claim his fourth victory in the 18th stage of the Giro d’Italia. Largely unaided up to the line, Petacchi, seemingly unperturbed after what happened in front of him, closed the gap to Quick Step's Matteo Tosatto with casual aplomb, launching himself down the finishing straight with nearly 600 meters remaining and charged to the line largely unchallenged.

Exactly a week after his EPO confession, German cyclist Erik Zabel admitted he was emotional after claiming his first victory of the season when he won the second stage of the Tour of Bavaria on Thursday, AFP reported. It has been an emotional week for the six-time winner of the green jersey in the Tour de France, who confessed last Thursday that he took the banned blood booster erythropoietin (EPO) while competing for German team Telekom in 1996. His current employers, Team Milram, only announced Tuesday they would honor his contract for the remainder of the 2007 season after a crisis

Tyler Farrar is racing his “home tour” this week in his adopted country of Belgium in his return to major European competition since crashing out of Ghent-Wevelgem in April. The budding Cofidis classics rider sprinted to third in Thursday’s second stage at the Tour of Belgium and fourth in Wednesday’s first stage in a clear sign that he’s doing better than expected after his nasty fall on the notorious Kemmelberg cobblestones last month. “After my crash, I went back to the U.S. to see a specialist and tests showed it wasn’t as bad as first that, so I was back on the bike after three weeks

The Mountain States Cup held its premier event, the Chile Challenge, May 26-27 at New Mexico’s Angel Fire Resort. For 2007 the event hosted the second round of the National Mountain Bike Series gravity competition. With around 1600 participants, the event is one of the largest off-road races on the continent. Those numbers aren’t a surprise — with seven events, the Mountain States Cup will attract in the neighborhood of 10,000 race starts this year, making it arguably the best-attended off-road racing series in the country. The series will also hand out $125,000 in cash and prizes — another

With just 10km remaining of the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic’s hilly stage 3 Cooper Spur Circuit Race, Navigators Insurance rider Glen Chadwick was the virtual race leader on the road, nursing a 45-second lead over a dwindling peloton. But the final climb proved to be a few kilometers too long for Chadwick to take the yellow jersey from Ben Jacques-Maynes (Priority Health-Bissell) — and almost a bit too long for Chadwick to take the stage win. Chadwick entered the day seventh on GC, 24 seconds behind Jacques-Maynes. Three and a half hours later, the Aussie attacked off the front of a dwindled

Even with his lead-out train derailed, Petacchi nails it.

Tyler Farrar, pictured here with his girlfriend, Stephanie, in their adopted hometown in Ghent, is back racing at the Tour of Belgium this week.

Gentlemen, start your engines

Horrilo leads the escape

Milram's pursuit gets a little TV time

A long day at the office for Ale-Jet

Chadwick takes a close one

Carroll took the stage and the leader's jersey

Priority riding on the front

Toyota stacks a break

Mactier's teammates doing the domestique thing

Louder navigates the twisty backside descent

The yellow jersey gets personally involved in the pursuit

Top three on the stage

Jacques-Maynes retains the leader's jersey

Sanders sails solo

Mactier finds herself isolated and forced to chase

Saunier Duval's climbing king Gilberto Simoni has prevailed again on the wickedly steep slopes of the Monte Zoncolan. "To have won here on Monte Zoncolan means an enormous amount to me, more than being on the podium," the two-time Giro winner panted at the finish line on Wednesday. "It was important to win a stage, more so that it was the Zoncolan, which is the most beautiful.”

Tour de France organizers on Wednesday announced the three wild-card teams that will join 18 others for this year's race. Agritubel and Barloworld will join 19 of the 20 teams from the UCI ProTour series for the three-week epic, which begins July 7 in London. Astana, which competes in the Pro Tour, was the third team to be handed a wild-card invitation although its invitation was at the discretion of the organizers as Astana was not ranked on the ProTour last season. It means there will be no place in the Tour de France peloton for the Swedish-registered team Unibet, which this season

Tour de France director Christian Prudhomme said it would be "shocking" if Bjarne Riis, who has admitted doping when he won the 1996 Tour de France, was involved in this year's race as CSC's sporting director. Riis did not include Ivan Basso at the start of the 2006 Tour de France because of suspicions hanging over the Italian rider in the wake of the Operación Puerto blood-doping scandal. "We have the right to challenge whichever rider or team official we want to," Prudhomme told AFP. "We are speaking with teams and sponsors, but at this time, it would be shocking to have Riis

It was tough news for Tulsa Tough Ride and Race—300 Schwinns destined for school-age kids tackling a special Tough Kids 10km ride on Sunday have gone missing. A 40-foot steel shipping container containing the bikes was apparently stolen last weekend from the Pacific Cycles shipping yard. The youngsters earned the bikes through the Tough Kids Challenge, a program in which middle- and high-school students either participated in Tulsa’s Little 100 cycling event or completed a bicycle-safety education course. Tulsa Tough Ride and Race launched the youth health and fitness initiative this year

NRC individual points leader Ben Jacques-Maynes showed that he is one of the top riders in America by winning stage 2 of the Mt. Hood Cycling Classic Wednesday. The Priority Health-Bissell team leader's bunch-sprint win, ahead of Navigators Insurance rider Phil Zajicek, came with a 15-second time bonus, propelling Jacques-Maynes into the race lead. Wednesday's Columbia Hills Road Race, a long, hot affair at 112 miles in dry 90-degree heat, began with a correction in general classification after race officials determined that overnight leader Devon Vigus (California Giant

Simoni and Piepoli celebrate together

Di Luca guts it out toward a hard-fought fourth

Ardila leads the escape

The Dolomites

Piepoli sets the pace

Cunego and Di Luca fight their way up the mountain

Jacques-Maynes takes a win for his twin

. . . and the Health Net chase