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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

He'll take the jersey to his hometown of Santa Rosa today

Basso races past Coit Tower

Bettini

World TT champ Cancellara

Hincapie

The ever-smiling Horner

Hushovd

Julich, back to racing after a tough 2006

O'Grady represents for Oz

Vande Velde

U.S. TT champ Zabriskie

Jacques-Maynes

Sheedy

Leipheimer in an unscarred yellow jersey

Despite crashing on the finishing circuit, Leipheimer retains the yellow jersey

The crash in sequence: Going . . .

. . . going . . .

. . . really going . . .

. . . and gone.

Levi and friends at the start in Sausalito

Hincapie and Zabriskie chat it up before the gun

Rolling out of town

Discovery keeping a tight leash on the bunch

Peterson manages to slip away

Bettini has a chat at the back

Abraham was one of the day's casualties

Fans pack the Coleman Valley KOM

Where did you ride today?

Another scenic

T-Mobile drilling it, right before the big crash

And Levi enjoying another day in yellow

The fast, furious finish

Bettini and Leipheimer chat it up

The long and winding road

More of the same

Oh, let's have a break, whaddaya say?

Disco' drilling it

Curb to curb

The stage podium

One of the world champ's many fans

After a several months of training we are now ready, and eager to race. The last few weeks the eight-man T-Mobile Tour of California squad has been in Buellton, California training and fine-tuning for the coming season. Storm after storm blew through Boulder every weekend during the last months of 2006 and the first months of 2007 and after spending a few good weeks in the sun in Mallorca, I wasn’t too keen to train outdoors in the snow or indoors on the trainer, so I made the decision to head to the California for some sun and time in the saddle. Prior to our team camp I rode alone in

The 2006 season was not a good one to be a cycling doctor, but the string of doping scandals that traumatized cycling last year could have a positive effect on the sport. In the wake of the departure of franchise rider Jan Ullrich, T-Mobile has instituted a groundbreaking monitoring program it says will guarantee that its riders are not cheating. And in the process, they hope to help rebuild the credibility of the sport in the eyes of fans and media. Dr. Lothar Heinrich has been a T-Mobile doctor since 1995. But he nearly quit cycling following the revelations that came out of the Operación

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The world’s top cycling team in 2006, Team CSC, spent the first two weeks of February at a training camp in Gilroy, California. Team director Bjarne Riis didn’t pick the self-proclaimed "Garlic Capital of the World" for its plethora of pungent produce, but for its farm roads swooping into and around the Santa Cruz Mountains, which provide an ideal training ground. Plus Gilroy sits a short spin away from roads that will be the battleground for the first half of the Amgen Tour of California, which begins today in San Francisco. CSC has lofty goals in California, as demonstrated by the depth of

Embattled 2006 Tour de France winner Floyd Landis struck out at UCI president Pat McQuaid on Sunday, accusing cycling's top official of subjecting him to a trial by media as he prepares for an arbitration hearing before the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Landis was reacting to a story in the San Jose Mercury News in which McQuaid was quoted as saying that Landis’s defense against a positive doping test from stage 17 of last year’s Tour is simply damage control at an "epic" level. "Every athlete who tests positive blames the system and somebody else," said McQuaid. "Floyd's no different.

A thousand cyclists marched through the Spanish city of Vigo on Sunday to demand that Oscar Pereiro be declared the winner of the 2006 Tour de France. "It's great to see the people support me," said the Caisse d'Epargne rider, who finished second to Floyd Landis in last year’s Tour. The American subsequently tested positive for a skewed testosterone-epitestosterone level and faces arbitration before the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency. Sunday’s protest was dubbed the "yellow march" in reference to the color of the winner's jersey in the Tour. Organizers say they will now send a

Defying an increasing wind that saw the likes of world time-trial champion Fabian Cancellara (CSC) fall out of contention, Levi Leipheimer stormed to the Amgen Tour of California prologue win on Sunday atop Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. The last rider to leave the starting house, Leipheimer flew down the flat one-mile stretch of The Embarcadero along the water before turning onto the steep Telegraph Hill climb towards Coit Tower with pitches as steep as 22 percent.

It was a short race, but a dramatic one, with a former trash-truck driver holding off some of the best riders in the world — until defending prologue winner Levi Leipheimer clocked in and went to work. Casey Gibson was there to capture it all; here's what he sent home.

The ever-stylish Bettini

Just check out those shoes

Talk about your golden slippers

Tim Johnson's footwear is a tad understated by comparison

A Quick Step wrench on the job

Vogels gets his game face on

Heinrich hopes to help rebuild cycling's credibility

Julich is ready to race again after a disappointing 2006

Instead of warming up for the Tour of California prologue and a title defense, Landis was riding around San Francisco this morning

Leipheimer does it again

The upstart Donald nearly pulled off the win

World TT champ Cancellara finished fifth

Zabriskie was sanguine: 'That’s just the way cycling is'

Leipheimer takes the podium

Never before has there been such a plethora of leading time trialists on display in an American stage race as fans will see this Sunday and next Friday at the Amgen Tour of California. Three of the top four from last year’s world TT championships will be competing — gold and silver medalists Fabian Cancellara and Dave Zabriskie of CSC, and their former teammate Brian Vandborg, now with Discovery Channel — along with the top two from the Tour de France prologue, Thor Hushovd of Crédit Agricole and George Hincapie of Discovery. Joining them are such powerful riders against the clock as CSC’s

The Amgen Tour of California is just rolling into its second year as a domestic event, but its organizers hope it can become the fourth grand tour of worldwide bicycle racing. "Our finish line is to host a grand tour," said Shawn Hunter, president of AEG Sports, during a kickoff press conference at the Argonaut Hotel at San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf. "People laughed when we said that over a year ago. They said, ‘Let’s see you pull off one year of the race first.’ Well, we did, and we’re constantly looking for ways to improve. We want to grow this into a fourth grand tour. We want to

Ace shooter Casey Gibson was clicking away on Saturday as the second Amgen Tour of California prepared to get under way. Here's a sampler of what he saw.

Leipheimer looks like the man to watch in this year's Amgen Tour

Hincapie and Julich meet the press in San Francisco

Bettini's appearance in California is equal parts training and tourism

Next question, please

USA Cycling's Sean Petty fields a query

The professional continental team Slipstream-Chipotle (formerly TIAA-CREF) is heading to the Amgen Tour of California happy to know that it will also participate in this year’s the prestigious Criterium International stage race. ASO, the organizing body of the Tour de France, gave Slipstream-Chipotle the invitation late last week. "Everyone is really excited about this, as it’s a race that all the young guys have read about and dreamed of competing in," said team director Jonathan Vaughters. “As an organization, we are very grateful that ASO has given us this opportunity to race in one of

Luis León Sánchez (Illes Balears-Caisse d’Epargne) hopes his victory in the Mallorca Challenge will help put behind him some painful chapters that were threatening to overwhelm his promising career. The 23-year-old claimed the unofficial overall title Thursday at the five-day Mallorca series (riders are allowed to pick and choose which stages they start) and he said the win takes some weight off his shoulders. “I was motivated to achieve a victory as soon as possible to send it to my brother,” Sánchez told EFE, referring to his older brother who died in a quad accident last year. “I’ve done

World Anti-Doping Agency chairman Richard Pound said Friday he has no regrets about his abrasive style in dealing with famous athletes which earned him a warning from the International Olympic Committee. "I'm very happy to be known by the enemies I make," Pound told reporters on the sidelines of a two-day anti-doping conference in Athens. "You're dealing in most cases with organized cheating and hypocrisy beyond belief. You've got to challenge them; you've got to be right in their face." Demonized in Athens prior to the 2004 Games for making acidic remarks on the