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Surprise was the word of the day in the final stage of the five-day Volta a la Comunidad Valenciana, which wrapped up Saturday in sunny Spain. Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne) expressed his delight in winning his first stage race of the 2007 campaign when he came to Valencia without any intention of doing so while Daniele Bennati (Lampre-Fondital) bowled over everyone with yet another sprint victory over Alessandro Petacchi (Milram) in the final charge into Valencia. “I am very happy that I was able to achieve it with the help of the team. The truth is at the start I never imagined I

Ivan Dominguez (Toyota-United) floored it in the finale to win the Merco Credit Union Cycling Classic’s Downtown Grand Prix on Saturday in Merced, California. Dominguez outkicked Ricardo Escuela (Successful Living.com) and Daniel Schmatz (BMC) at the end of the 50-lap criterium, run on an 0.8-mile circuit in downtown Merced. Brooke Miller (Team TIBCO) won the 40-lap women’s race ahead of Elis Bradshaw (Metromint Cycling) and Suzanne de Goede (T-Mobile). Sunday brings the Foothills Road Race, run on a rolling, 24-mile circuit. Elite men will cover 120 miles, elite women 72. Merco Credit

Pozatto nails it in the final meters

Boonen was hoping to add Het Volk to his palmarès

O'Grady and Flecha almost made it

Boonen and Nuyens driving the chase

A big turn-out for the opening round of Belgian classics

The Mailbag is a regular feature on VeloNews.com. If you havea comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have seen incycling, in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write toWebLetters@InsideInc.com. Please include your full name andhome town. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writersare encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month.The letters published here contain the opinions of the submittingauthors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, policies or positionsof VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company, InsideCommunications,

ProTour cycling teams, caught up in a dispute that has led to a major schism in the sport, are hoping to hold a "last chance" meeting Monday in a bid to pacify the warring parties. The primacy of the Union Cycliste Internationale and the ProTour are being challenged by the three grand tour organizers, which control nearly half of the series’ 27-race calendar. ASO, RCS and Unipublic respectively own the Tours of France, Italy and Spain as well as a number of other races on the ProTour calendar. Nonetheless, they have virtually broken away from the ProTour after deciding not to invite

"Races are like films. You need actors to make them happen. The teams have all the actors, and without us there are no races." — pro-teams president Patrick Lefevere The drudgery of a daily newspaper job is starting to look pretty good these days, and not just because the PETA contingent in the VeloNews.com audience objects to my habit of running a cute little puppy or kitty through a blender with some yogurt and fresh fruit so I can have a delicious protein shake for breakfast. Next weekend’s Paris-Nice is in turmoil, with the grand tours and the UCI locked in an infantile squabble that

Alberto Contador gave Discovery Channel its first win of the season on European roads after taking an impressive victory in Friday’s 162km stage of the Volta a Comunidad Valenciana. The Spanish prodigy outclassed the likes of Damiano Cunego (Lampre) and Alejandro Valverde (Caisse d’Epargne) in the seven-climb “queen stage” that ended with the short but steep Cat. 1 summit at Alt del Campello. Valverde finished 13 seconds back to sneak into the leader’s jersey thanks to time bonuses and could walk away with the overall title with just one sprinter’s stage left. Tadej Valjavec

It looks like UniBet isn't the only team wondering what the heck is going on in cycling.

Clerc and McQuaid shoot for break

Contador

There were plenty of power meters being used at this year’s Tour of California, largely because it offered a unique early season opportunity for riders to test themselves against some of the world’s best. Indeed, four teams made racing with a power meter a very high priority at the eight-day California race, because this would be the best field the world would see prior to Paris-Nice. What better opportunity to start collecting crucial numbers? The professional teams Predictor-Lotto (Belgium), T-Mobile (Germany) and Slipstream (USA) as well as the U.S. National Team each stressed the

The ongoing conflict between cycling's international governing body and major race organizers has prompted six national federations to call for the urgent creation of a working group ahead of key major races. With the symbolic start to the season at Paris-Nice on March 11, riders and teams have been caught in the middle of a tit-for-tat feud which has escalated to potentially dangerous levels. The Union Cycliste Internationale and three top organizers have been battling since the creation of the ProTour, cycling’s top-tier racing schedule. The companies, which organize the Tour de

Boulder, CO, March 1, 2007 - VeloNews magazine is designing thenext generation of our famous cycling training diaries and we want inputfrom you.  If you've ever used the VeloNews Training Diary, chancesare you have ideas to make it better. We're looking specifically for cyclists who have used the VeloNews Training Diary in the past. If this is you, this is your chance to voice youropinion about how you want to track your training.Fill out our online survey to help us design the training diary. The survey should take you 15 minutes or less, and the first 50 respondents will

Quick Step-Innergetic team manager Patrick Lefevere is poised to file suit against Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws for a series of articles it published about doping in the team, Belga news agency reported Thursday. In January Het Laatste Nieuws published a series of articles accusing Lefevere of complicity in doping at his team, citing blood-boosting drug EPO and cocaine as the drugs in circulation. The paper published its accusations through several anonymous sources. "No one will ever again see me in the same light they did before January,” said Lefevere. “The damages are

Two out of three ain’t bad, at least as far as Daniele Bennati is concerned. The Lampre sprinter took down Alessandro Petacchi in Thursday’s third stage of the Valencia tour in Spain, and this time there wasn’t a flat tire for Petacchi to hang the loss on. “I am happy to beat him again because it’s never easy to beat Petacchi,” said Bennati, who bolted a bike length ahead of the Milram captain in the 151.8km third stage into Vila Real. Bennati also recaptured the overall leader’s jersey with time bonuses. Bennati beat Petacchi in Tuesday’s opener, but only after Petacchi was forced to

Two major UCI-sanctioned events slated for April, the inaugural U.S. Open Cycling Championships and the fifth edition of the Tour de Georgia, are struggling to land title sponsors as their respective race dates approach. And while neither has been canceled, both face financial shortfalls that could make running them cost-prohibitive. The inaugural U.S. Open Cycling Championships is scheduled to run from Williamsburg to Richmond, Virginia, on Saturday, April 7. NBC Sports has slated a national broadcast for 2 to 4:30 p.m. EST. With both men’s and women’s pro fields invited, the event is

Jufre Pou gathered some critical data in California, even if it cost him a little time in the TT

A brave new world: Piles of data and the tools with which to analyze them.

Press Release - Help Design a New Cycling Training Diary

Tour de France Director Christian Prudhomme (L) and general director of ASO, Patrick Clerc

UCI president Pat McQuaid, in happier times.

Floyd Landis and Tom Danielson battle on Brasstown Bald in the 2006 Tour de Georgia

The Mailbag is a regular feature on VeloNews.com. If you havea comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have seen incycling, in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write toWebLetters@InsideInc.com. Please include your full name andhome town. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. Writersare encouraged to limit their submissions to one letter per month.The letters published here contain the opinions of the submittingauthors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions, policies or positionsof VeloNews.com, VeloNews magazine or our parent company, InsideCommunications,

Alessandro Petacchi gingerly stepped off the sign-in podium ahead of Wednesday’s second stage at the Volta a Comunidad Valenciana. Even though he says his left knee is close to 100 percent after his disastrous crash in last May’s Giro d’Italia, the Gentleman Sprinter isn’t taking any chances. “My leg isn’t yet 100 percent, but it’s getting better and better,” said Petacchi, who won a long sprint ahead of Spain’s Vicente Reynes. “At [Tour of] Qatar, I couldn’t make the sprints against [Tom] Boonen because my knee hurt, but my condition improved in Algarve and now I am feeling even better

Oscar Sevilla was all smiles at the start of Wednesday’s second stage at the Tour of Valencia in what’s his first race back in action after being kicked out ahead of the Tour de France last July. Sevilla, now 30, was among nine riders not allowed to start the 2006 Tour after his named appeared on the infamous Operación Puerto list. Like all riders implicated in the scandal, Sevilla never received any official bans or sanctions, but that didn’t stop his T-Mobile team from letting him go last year. Sevilla has since penned a deal to join Spanish continental team Relax-GAM for the 2007 season

DBC Events Announces “The Boulder Cup” Television ProgramAirs March 3 on Altitude Sports & EntertainmentFebruary 24 (BOULDER, Colo) DBC Events announced today the broadcastdate of “The Boulder Cup”television program, a recap show of the cyclocross race of the samename held last fall in Boulder, Colo.The 30 minute broadcast will air March 3 at 5:00 pm MT on AltitudeSports & Entertainment.Cyclocross has its roots in racers trying to maintain fitness in thecolder months by riding off-road andrunning over barriers. This niche sport has grown into the fastestgrowing segment of bicycling in

Petacchi is closing in on his old form

Sevilla is back

The season is now fully underway and I now have my first race under my belt: the Tour of California. The race was a triumph for American cycling with massive crowds attending each stage, a world class peloton (likely the best competing at any race in the world at the moment) and a hard fought battle that lasted right up until the penultimate stage. For us, the cyclists, it was a quality event that was well organized, with good hotels, short transfers, and ideal weather. The racing was tough enough for us to gain fitness and progress while not depleting ourselves too much this early in the

Belgian cycling legend Eddie Merckx has paid tribute to embattled German star Jan Ullrich, who announced his retirement from cycling. Ullrich's decision to quit came after he was implicated in an alleged blood-doping network being run by a Spanish doctor, Eufemiano Fuentes, and sacked by his T-Mobile team during last year's Tour de France race. The team said at the time that damaging evidence from Spanish investigators in Madrid prompted the decision to drop its star rider. Announcing his decision Monday, Ullrich, 33, the 1997 Tour de France winner and five-time runner-up, said he

The near-universal reaction to Patrick O’Grady’s latest Foaming Rant about Jan Ullrich was a big thumbs-down, the general sentiment being that if anyone should be dope-tested, vilified and hounded out of the sport forever, it should be our acerbic editor at large. A representative sample follows. Tune in Friday as O’Grady takes on a basket of puppies and kitties with a ball-peen hammer. —Editor Karmically bankruptEditor:Way cold. I hope you're tutoring blind orphans in your spare time because otherwise your karma bank is gonna be way upside down after that number. I'm not an Jan

Any sprint victory with Alessandro Petacchi among protagonists is one worth celebrating, especially when it comes in the run-up to the season’s most important race for Italian sprinters. Daniele Bennati (Lampre) snatched a morale-boosting victory ahead of next month’s Milan-San Remo after he surprised a leg-heavy Petacchi, who was forced to chase back from a puncture with nine kilometers to go in the 162.7km Valenciana opener in Alzira. “I knew the only chance to beat Petacchi was to anticipate his sprint and I did that today just at the right moment,” said Bennati, who held off Petacchi by

Follow this link for full Coverage of the 2007 Amgen Tour of California

Questions, and suggestions, about stuck seatposts, especially carbon posts

Our latest reader-submitted PhotoGallery is now ready for your viewing pleasure. Of course, a new gallery also means the naming of the winner of our most recent contest. This week, we kept checking out Jesper HV Lauritsen’s “Fighting uphill,” a picture that captures that intensity of racing one-on-one with the guy who might be beating you for a podium spot or 55th place. Jesper’s shot seemed to tell that story for us. Nice shot, Jesper. Please drop us a note at Rosters@InsideInc.comto work out the details and we’ll send you a copy of our new Coors Classic DVD. Meanwhile, go ahead and

Bettini narrowly edges Gerald Ciolek in San Luis Obispo

George led an epic chase... with a broken arm

Merckx says Ullrich's retirement 'a sad way to go out'

Bennati - here winning stage 2 at the Tour of the Mediterranean - is starting his season with a bang.

Fighting Uphill

Complete Coverage - Amgen Tour of California

The early season Spanish racing calendar continues this week with the five-stage Volta a la Comunidad Valenciana. With riders anxious to put some racing miles in their legs ahead of the approaching spring classics, the race is enjoying a fine field with top sprinters and classics-hunters looking to hone their form. Among preliminary start lists are such heavyweights as Alexandre Vinokourov, making his season debut in Astana colors. The Vuelta a España champion will likely keep a low profile as Vino is betting everything on being prepared for the Tour de France. Caisse d’Epargne will have a

Embattled German cycling star Jan Ullrich, a former winner and five-time runner-up of the Tour de France, announced his retirement from cycling on Monday. Ullrich was one of dozens of cyclists implicated in an alleged doping network in Spain last year, which forced him out of competing in last year's Tour de France along with many other top riders. The 33-year-old, the only German to win the world's most prestigious bike race, claimed Monday he never once cheated in his career. "Today I'm ending my career as a professional cyclist. I never once cheated as a cyclist," said

"Unlike [Lance] Armstrong, [Jan] Ullrich doesn't have the killer instinct. He's not obsessed. It's too bad. Because if you mixed the professionalism of an Erik Zabel with the talent of a Jan Ullrich, you'd have an Eddy Merckx." — T-Mobile team manager Walter Godefroot after the 2004 Tour de France Jan Ullrich has finally hung up his bibs, saying he never cheated despite pernicious rumors to the contrary, most of them coming from the Operación Puerto inquiry, apparently headed by a Spanish graduate of the Inspector Clouseau Close Cover Before Striking School of Earning Big Pay

Valenciana gives the Astana team a chance to try its legs.

Ullrich insists he did nothing wrong

Innocent or guilty, Ullrich closes a spectacular career on a sad note.

Ullrich struggled to stay at fighting weight, providing comedic fodder for a certain cartoonist

Overall 1. Levi Leipheimer (USA), Discovery Channel, 24:57:24 2. Jens Voigt (G), CSC, at 0:21 3. Jason McCartney (USA), Discovery Channel, at 0:54 4. Bobby Julich (USA), CSC, at 1:06 5. Stuart O'Grady (Aus), CSC, at 1:16 6. Christian Vandevelde (USA), CSC, at 1:24 7. Michael Rogers (Aus), T-Mobile, at 1:32 8. Ben Day (Aus), Navigators Insurance, at 1:38 9. Franco Pellizotti (I), Liquigas-Bianchi, at 1:41 10. Ryder Hesjedal (Can), Health Net Maxxis, at 1:57

Shoreline Drive in Long Beach may not be the Champs-Élysées, but just as the Tour de France traditionally ends with a sprinters’ showdown, so the 2007 Amgen Tour of California climaxed Sunday afternoon with a spectacular mass charge to the line. And just as a surprising winner often takes the Tour’s final stage, so Cuban Ivan Dominguez shocked the heavy hitters of the UCI ProTour and give the stage 7 victory to his domestic American team, Toyota-United.

Eusebio Unzué has had a front-row seat to some of the most exciting exploits in cycling. The affable and passionate sport director for Spain’s Navarra region helped guide Pedro Delgado and then Miguel Indurain into the record books during what were the golden years of Spanish cycling in the late 1980s and mid-1990s. As sport director at Caisse d’Epargne-Illes Balears, Unzué is already well into his third decade behind the wheel in Spain’s most consistent and successful team. Unzué, who celebrates his 52nd birthday on Monday, has been the right-hand man to team manager José Miguel Echávvari

Pozzato snags Haut VarItalian Filippo Pozzato snagged an impressive victory Sunday in the 39th Tour du Haut-Var as a warm-up toward defending his Milan-San Remo crown next month. The Liquigas captain edged Simon Gerrans (Ag2r) and Spanish rider Ricardo Serrano (Tinkoff) to win the 200km race in the hilly country around Draguignan that also kick-started the season-long French Cup series. Pozzato, the heavy pre-race favorite, covered an early move that included 22 riders in the open half of the race. Leonardo Giordani was the day’s main protagonist after slipping away in a solo move for some

That's a wrap, as they say in Hollywood (hey, it's Oscar night; so sue us). Here's Casey Gibson's final envelope from the Amgen Tour of California.

The big Cuban pulls it off

Unzué is optimistic regarding Valverde's Tour chances

The big Cuban scores the only victory by a non-ProTour rider in this year's race

The break built a lead of three minutes and change

But once the chase was on, the escapees were pulled back

Leipheimer finished in the bunch to take the final overall title

The pace wasn't exactly killer

Leipheimer takes the overall

And away we go

Basso leads Discovery on the circuits

Danielson and Basso lead Leipheimer up Ocean Boulevard

Bettini at the back, enjoying the view

The break nearly went all the way

But it was Dominguez who took the stage and the podium, in front of family and friends

Leipheimer finished a little later

His biggest problem to date: a balky champagne bottle

The top three overall

And who's this? Homeland Security? Hey, wait a minute . . . .

[nid:37650]When people look back at the developing history of the Amgen Tour of California they will say that the race came of age on stage 6 of the 2007 edition. Even though Saturday’s 105.4-mile stage from Santa Barbara ended in a mass sprint in sunny Santa Clarita, won by Team CSC’s J.J. Haedo from T-Mobile’s Greg Henderson and Quick Step’s world champion Paolo Bettini, this was no parade.

Professional teams caught up in a mounting feud between cycling's world ruling body and major race organizers have announced they will not boycott the first major race of the season next week. The UCI ruled last week that teams aiming to take part in the Paris-Nice stage race would be doing so against the rules of the ProTour, which the UCI introduced more than two years ago. Paris-Nice organizer Amaury Sports Organization (ASO), which also runs the Tour de France, recently declared that it would remove the event from the ProTour calendar and conduct it under the auspices of the French

You can’t mention the words "mountain biking" and "USA Cycling" without dropping the name Matt Cramer. Cramer heads up USA Cycling’s mountain-bike development team of Sam Jurekovic, Collin Cares and newcomer Tad Elliot, and helps keep elite athletes informed on the ever-changing rules, regulations and policies governing fat-tire racing in America. With the 2008 Olympics in Beijing looming on the horizon, Cramer will be an integral cog in USA Cycling’s machine for picking the America’s Olympic cross-country team. VeloNews readers may remember that USA Cycling’s lack of action led to much

Olympic champion Bradley Wiggins returned to the track with a winning individual-pursuit ride on Friday during the final round of the 2006-07 UCI Track World Cup series in Manchester, Great Britain. In his first individual pursuit since winning gold in Athens in 2004, the 26-year-old beat Russia's Alexander Serov in a time of 4 minutes, 17.864 seconds while Australia's Brad McGee was almost five seconds slower. "To do that in a first competitive race - I'm really pleased," said Wiggins. "Because you can go as hard as you like in training but you never know until you get on the

It was one for the books today — CSC's Stuart O'Grady nearly pulled off a race-changing break, Discovery's George Hincapie was one of the main engines in the successful pursuit, despite a broken arm, and record crowds saw it all happen. So did Casey Gibson, and he was taking pictures. Here they are.