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CSC's Voigt nearly did the job

McCartney put in a powerful ride to and was happy to make the podium

But Leipheimer smoked it

The happy podium

No word on where this guy finished . . . but the UCI is looking for him

The Tour of California is starting to become interesting as there are still several riders with a good shot at winning the overall classification after Wednesday’s hard and fast stage into San Jose. It seems every team wants to make the race hard on race leader, Levi Leipheimer’s team, Discovery Channel, and today they had to control the race on the front for most of the stage—and it was certainly not an easy stage to control as it was hilly and windy, and the peloton that sat in their draft feisty. Since the start, we, T-Mobile, have been fighting hard for a stage win. We narrowly missed

[nid:37614]Just as sunshine followed rain on Thursday’s beautiful ride along the Big Sur coast at the Amgen Tour of California, so the stage 4 victory in San Luis Obispo by world champ Paolo Bettini of Italy was just a trailer for Friday’s time-trial showdown. Going into the rolling 14.5-mile TT in Solvang, Discovery Channel’s Levi Leipheimer still has a three-second margin over his main challenger, Jens Voigt of CSC, but a half-dozen others remain in contention, including three-time world TT champion Michael Rogers of T-Mobile, who’s 19 seconds back.

Freire takes Ruta by a second over CioniSpaniard Oscar Freire (Rabobank) won the final stage and the overall at the Ruta del Sol on Thursday, taking the victory from Dario Cioni (Predictor-Lotto) by a single second. The 170.9km stage from Ecija to Antequera was marked by an early break by Netherlander Piet Rooijakkers (Skil-Shimano) and Spaniard Benat Albizuri (Euskaltel-Euskadi), who built a lead of six minutes before being retrieved as the peloton entered Antequera. There, Freire finished two seconds up on a small group containing Cioni, who had led the race since Sunday. Ruta del

Cycling rolls into the 2007 season a house divided. At almost every level of the sport, cycling is facing ruptures of unprecedented proportions. Operación Puerto, the Floyd Landis scandal, the ProTour battle and waning interest among media and fans have left cycling battled and bruised. Rather than circle the wagons and close ranks, cycling’s power brokers are engaged in a incendiary civil war. Divisions run deep and wide: the UCI vs. the grand tours; teams vs. teams; and rider vs. rider over the war on doping. Among the major fractures are: Chinks in the façade of solidarity among

It wasn't exactly the kind of day a photographer enjoys — torrential rain is not kind to camera gear, especially when you're hitching a ride on a moto — but our man Casey Gibson persevered, and the results can be seen below.

And we mean close

This year's Amgen Tour is tougher than last year's inaugural, says Barry

A rainy ride alongside the Pacific

The escapees

That's a close one

Leipheimer is confident of victory

He's certainly enjoyed the assistance of some extraordinarily powerful domestiques

Discovery chases

Rabobank and Liquigas pitch in

It was a soggy start . . .

. . . but there was a rainbow at the road's end

Bettini and Basso lead the boys out of Seaside

There's that bridge again, with rain in the distance

But it didn't stop Discovery from Cruz-in (sorry, we had to do it)

Say 'Cheese'

Disco' all in a line

The peloton rolls along the coast

Leipheimer really wants the win

But he's gonna have to go through her to get it

Cyclists in many parts of the country are ready to leave behind long rideson the trainer and eagerly await warmer weather and putting in some qualityroad miles. As you continue to train and prepare for the 2007 season, don’tignore a small, but essential component of your training diet. Adequateiron intake and optimal iron stores are essential to putting in full effortson the bike. Low iron stores can impair athletic performance, and correctingiron deficiency that has led to full blown anemia, can take several monthsto correct, potentially bringing an unwelcome halt to your training andracing

[nid:37587]Things didn’t start well for Team CSC at this year’s Amgen Tour of California. Largely due to shifting wind conditions, the squad’s time-trial specialists, including Dave Zabriskie and Fabian Cancellara, who went one-two at the 2006 world time trial championships, were shut out of the top three spots in the opening prologue in San Francisco.

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,

Boonen turns it up in RutaTom Boonen (Quick Step-Innergetic) is back in the winner’s column after coming out of a self-imposed hibernation since the Tour of Qatar in January. The Belgian out-kicked Danilo Napolitano (Lampre-Fondital) to win Wednesday’s 179.2km fourth stage from Cabra to Córdoba at the Ruta del Sol in Spain to claim his sixth victory barely a month into the 2007 season. Boonen raced discreetly last week at the Mallorca Challenge without contesting the sprints and kept his head low during the opening three stages of the five-day Ruta while he battled through a stomach

Wednesday's stage from Stockton to San José turned into a real bike race when a 17-man break scampered off the front of the main field early in the race. With race leader Levi Leipheimer under pressure, the Discovery Channel team put the hammer down and delivered the yellow jersey to the base of Sierra Road in time to reel in the escapees.Our guy Casey Gibson was there to document the action.

Voigt snatches the stage, with Leipheimer second

Leipheimer and Horner, with Gesink trailing

McCartney drilling it with Voigt in tow

McCartney and Voigt

Riding through the wind farm

Leipheimer drives the five-man break

Fans line the Sierra ascent

Leipheimer appreciated the assist from a seven-time Tour winner

Disco' dialing it up

Toyota's Chris Wherry meets fans in Stockton

The peloton rolls out of town

After forming up early in the stage, the break starts the Patterson climb through a wind farm.

Hincapie at the front of the Discovery chase

The race leader's team got little help from others

The national champion was a work horse all day

His big effort over, Basso works his way up Sierra road

World champion Paolo Bettini put on a big chase all the way into San Jose

Ahead, Leipheimer joins up with the day's winning move

Big crowds near the top

With Bettini and a big group charging hard, Leipheimer drives the break toward the finish

Voigt takes the win...

... and Leipheimer keeps his jersey.

Danielson working it

Argentinean ace J.J. Haedo blasted to the front of another all-ProTour sprint finish Tuesday to win the second stage of the Amgen Tour of California. After yesterday’s chaotic finish, Levi Leipheimer (Discovery Channel) was happy to have remained intact and safely inside an upright peloton after three circuits of downtown Sacramento concluded the 116-mile stage from his hometown of Santa Rosa.

Ignatiev wins againMikhail Ignatiev is quickly proving he can bump shoulders with the big boys. The 21-year-old Russian won for the second time in a week with a victory Tuesday in the 44th Trofeo Laigueglia in Italy. The Tinkoff Credit Systems rider – who won the third stage last week at the Tour Méditerranéen – put down a surprise attack with about 7km to go after the peloton split going over the 690m Passo Balestrino in the 188km hilly march. The 2004 Olympic points champion had enough in the tank to hold off some chasing Italians to snag the win. Coming through second at four seconds

Haedo times it perfectly

. . . and off Haedo goes

. . . Julich and O'Grady hit the front . . .

The Navigators and T-Mobile got things rolling . . .

This time, no commissaires were required

The stage podium

Clocking in and going to work

Another scenic

Basso on the job

The finish-line crowd awaits a show, and a show they got

A musical sendoff

Fit for an angel?

Bettini on the first climb

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. Mike Chilcoat’s “Mike Gann in Sedona,” had us pining for spring. Sure it indicates a bit of geographic bias, but it’s been a tough winter for us here in the Rockies and we’re ready for a bit of warm-weather riding in Arizona. Nice work, Mike. 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 take a lookat our latest

For the second year in a row, American Levi Leipheimer took the podium of the Amgen Tour of California as the race leader in his hometown of Santa Rosa. This year, however, it wasn’t under circumstances the Discovery Channel rider would have chosen. Australian sprinter Graeme Brown (Rabobank) won Monday's Stage 1 after Leipheimer went down in a 50-rider pile-up with two 3-mile laps of a downtown finishing circuit remaining in the 156.4km stage.

The domestic Priority Health team enjoyed a great first day in its first Tour of California, with Ben Jacques-Maynes taking third in the prologue and Brian Sheedy winning the race’s first King of the Mountains jersey. "This whole team is really coming together well," said Jacques-Maynes before Sunday’s prologue. "I think we’re really going to show ourselves. People may not have heard of us before now; we’ve been an upstart team. But people are really going to know us by the end of this tour." Racing the Tour of California last year under Sierra Nevada’s banner, Jacques-Maynes muscled his

Freire wins in RutaOscar Freire drove home the bunch Monday to win the second stage of the Ruta del Sol, a 156.6km stage from Vegas del Genil to Cazorla in southern Spain. The three-time world champion held off Francisco José Ventoso (Saunier Duval-Prodir) in the mass sprint to snag his second win of the 2007 season. The Rabobank sprinter, who just missed victory in Sunday’s opener after Dario Cioni (Predictor-Lotto) held off a long breakaway, clawed within one second of Cioni’s lead thanks to time bonuses. The race continues Tuesday with the third stage. Hamilton satisfied, eyes Georgia

A last-ditch meeting Monday between the UCI and ASO made little headway toward solving the disagreements threatening to push the ProTour league into chaos. The UCI issued a terse statement Monday evening saying it would be reviewing its options on how to deal with the upstart race organizers after being snubbed yet again by officials from ASO, the organizers of such events as the Tour de France, Paris-Roubaix and Paris-Nice. "ASO has staked its position, with contempt of the function and legitimacy of the UCI as an international federation, and plans to substitute it with a destabilizing

Narrow, nervous and windy — that was the report from Stage 1 of the 2007 Amgen Tour of California, which saw more than one rider hit the deck between Sausalito and Santa Rosa. But Casey Gibson's shots remind us that it's not all pain and suffering out there. Take a peek.

Mike Gann in Sedona

Leipheimer drilling it