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Bettini in the break

Parra on the podium

Chris Baldwin (Navigators) and Geoff Kabush (Jittery Joe's) bridging to the break with about five laps remaining

Race leader Vassili Davidenko (Navigators) cornering

Tim Duggan (TIAA-CREF) on a solo

Davide Frattini (Colavita-Sutter Home) and Baldwin in the break

Jittery Joe's rider Craig Wilcox's bike with sheared off carbon fork, after hitting another rider on the descent

The Navs' Oleg Grichkine leads the peloton

Mark Walters (Navigators) suffers on the climb

Tim Johnson (Jittery Joe's) heads down the descent

Dominique Perras (Kodak-Sierra Nevada) earning the best climber's jersey

Davidenko winning again, and looking glad to have the race over

The podium: Davidenko, Frattini and Baldwin

The submissions continue and we've posted another new Photo Gallery., the fourth one this week. As you know our winner from last week's contest was "Ace assaultsHogpen," by Ronnie Fields, an excellent shot that reflects both great composition and creative "dark room" work in PhotoShop. Congratulations to Ronnie Fields, who will receive a signed copy of Graham Watson's "Landscapes of Cycling." As we said, it was a difficult choice and there were several photoswe thought worthy of mention. Our list of honorable mentions includes:Jay Christy's "Giro d'Italia 2004: Stage 4,

Iñigo Cuesta gave Saunier Duval its second consecutive stage victory in Friday’s 17km climbing time trial high in Andorra while Discovery Channel’s Yaroslav Popovych solidified his hold on the leader’s jersey. Cuesta won in 37 minutes, 18 seconds, some 26 seconds faster than teammate Leonardo Piepoli, Thursday’s winner. Popovych, making his first race appearance since March because of visa problems, came through fifth and holds a 20-second lead on Piepoli and 59 seconds on David Moncoutie (Cofidis). "I am as surprised as anybody, I never expected this," the former amateur world champion

Alessandro Petacchi catapulted to his second stage win of the 88th Giro d’Italia in what turned out to be a slow 178km roll between giants. Following the sparks in Thursday’s stage to Zoldo Alto and the epic climbs lying in wait in the Dolomites this weekend, the peloton seemed content to enjoy Friday’s sunny passeggiata from Alleghe to Rovereto. “These sprints after the mountains are always difficult, but the team was motivated to win. I could still feel yesterday’s stage in my legs,” said Petacchi, who won easily ahead of Paride Grillo (Panaria). “This year it’s been harder to win stages,

If you’re not racing mountain bikes in Europe during May, you’re not doing any big races. I’m not heading over until the third round of the World Cup May 29 in Houffalize, Belgium, so that means some serious down time. You might think I’d take some time off, maybe go to a warm beach somewhere, or even just hang out in Durango. But I can’t seem to sit still for a single weekend, so I’ve been hitting the road circuit. It’s a good thing I’m a bike racer. I already got in some good road racing this past February with a six-day race in Mexico. Then, after Sea Otter, I headed to New Mexico for the

After Thursday’s mountainous throw-down, it looks as though the Giro d’Italia is coming down to a two-man battle, eh? Funny, for all the hype built up around the double-pronged danger of Lampre’s Damiano Cunego and Gilberto Simoni, the winners of the past two years, it’s now CSC’s Ivan Basso, a rider who has never won a grand tour, wearing the maglia rosa. While the Giro is far from over, it appears Basso is the strongest man in the race, with only Discovery Channel’s Paolo Savoldelli, the 2002 Giro winner, able to hang with him in the mountains. And while no one wins a grand tour by luck,

Davitamon-Lotto’s Australian sprint ace Robbie McEwen, winner of three stages of this year's Giro d’Italia, announced Friday that he was quitting the race after the day's 12th stage. "I'm going home," said McEwen, who is wearing the points leader's jersey. "The plains are behind us now. I'm sorry to leave but after the Giro I've still got the Tour de France and the world championship. To race everything would be too much. It's a big and beautiful Giro. Goodbye to the tifosi!" During his three previous appearances in the Giro McEwen, 32, also quit before the

The Discovery Channel team had a special visit on the rest day, as Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel flew in for dinner at the team hotel. The two unexpected visitors provided a little extra motivation and shared some laughs with team, especially when the usually shy and conservative looking Tony Cruz showed up to dinner with a Mohawk. After the Giro's first rest day, several other riders in the bunch had trimmed their manes to cool themselves in the mountain stages ahead. Rain threatened much of stage 10, but very little actually fell on the peloton. Aside from the wild ride

“I came around the last corner, saw the line, and knew I had to go." Winning stage 1 of the Tour of Connecticut on Friday was that simple for Vassili Davidenko (Navigators Insurance). The Russian sprinter has been on a tear of late, but he needed his team to make the victory happen. The 80-lap race around the half-mile rectangle around the New Haven commons was a festival of speed. Despite a fairly steady stream of attacks, no one could get more than a handful of seconds, and not for very long. With both the Navigators and Colavita Olive Oil-Sutter Home squads looking to keep things together

Fassa's fast man does it again

Who is that man in the plain white jersey?

Basso enjoys a day in the pink

Going up

Hey, mate... are those mountains up ahead?

Schnyder goes for a little free publicity

McEwen and friends in a happier moment, before the sprint was lost, the law called and his ticket for home punched

That's one packed peloton

McCartney bellies up to the rolling Discovery bar

Fassa finishing fast

Baldwin leads his Navigators mob through a corner with five laps to go

Davidenko early in the race, looking relaxed

Tim Johnson rippin' it early on

Geoff Kabush airing out his sideburns

An early crash has everyone sorting out bike parts

Grishkin and Haedo hassle for the same space

.... with Davidenko and Artacho waiting behind

Navigators on the front with two to go . . .

. . . and Davidenko wins

As Paolo Savoldelli was winning a stage in the Giro d’Italia, understudy Yaroslav Popovych slipped into the race leader’s jersey in the Volta a Cataluyna in what was a big day for the Discovery Channel team. Popovych finished second to stage winner Leonardo Piepoli (Saunier Duval) in the 237km march across the Catalan Pyrénées, which ended with the long summit finish to the Pal ski area in Andorra. “I was more interested in getting the stage win than the lead,” said Popovych, who holds an 11-second lead going into Friday’s 17km climbing time trial to the Arcalis ski area. “I've only

And then there were two. After months of hype and 10 exciting stages of pyrotechnics, 150 kilometers of pavement up the grinding Passo Duran and to the summit finish to Zoldo Alto turned the 88th Giro into a two-man race. It wasn’t supposed to be that way, but Ivan Basso’s piston-shot legs spun a tale of destruction in his wake. Only the inspired Paolo Savoldelli, the 2002 Giro winner wracked by two seasons of injury and frustration, could hang on. Team CSC’s Basso surged into the maglia rosa after a string of vicious accelerations left his rivals withered on the steep roads in the

Tour of ConnecticutMay 20-22Start listColavita Olive Oil-Sutter Home1. Mark McCormack2. Juan Jose Haedo (Arg)3. Davide Frattini (I)4. Todd Herriott5. Aaron Olson6. Derek Wilkerson7. Gustavo Artacho (Arg)8. Tyler WrenWebcor Builders11. Charles Dionne (Can)12. David Clinger13. Bernard van Ulden14. Ben Haldeman15. Lucas Euser16. James Mattis17. Marc Collard18. Ted HuangFiordifrutta21. Jon Hamblen22. Phil Wong23. Mike Dietrich24. Chris Rozdilsky25. Larry Perera26. Dan Timmerman27. Matt White28. Josh GewirtzVolkswagen-Trek31. Alexandre Lavallée (Can)32. Alexandre Cloutier (Can)33. Jean Sébastien

MAROSTICA, Italy (AP) - The Union Cycliste Internationale has risen to the defense of teams that were targeted by police raids and criticized the publicity given to the anti-doping operation. The UCI said in a statement Thursday that the hypobaric equipment found in the hotel housing the Davitamon-Lotto team is not illegal, and medicines and bottles from intravenous drips reportedly used by Lotto and Saunier Duval were believed to be legal products. The police raid was carried out after Wednesday's 10th stage of the Giro d'Italia, which was won by Davitamon-Lotto captain Robbie

Yesterday (Wednesday) was just long and boring, but today sure made up for it. Dead, dead flat and really slow. The only thing anyone was worried about on Stage 10 was that finishing circuit – three laps around a 5.2km loop – with narrow roads and tight corners. But before we got there it was just five hours of absolutely nothing. It was slow and that was it…until we started heading into the circuits. We had moved to the front, to keep Ivan out of trouble and we came to a poorly marked turn, where the peloton was supposed to go right, but a good part of the field was led into the wrong part

Mayo is taking things more slowly this spring

Savoldelli gets the stage . . .

. . . and Basso gets the shirt

A fine day for a bike race

Cunego had a disastrous day

Basso, Savoldelli and Simoni showed their strength

Joachim on the move

Savoldelli came around at the right moment

It's good to be king

Tony Cruz and Davis Phinney have a chat pre-race

Horrillo on the marchIt’s often said Spanish rider Pedro Horrillo is too smart to be a bike racer. After all, he’s a guy who reads philosophy books and studied law before becoming enamored with the bike. But his intellectual proclivities come in handy sometimes, especially in his bids to out-wit the hard-charging peloton. The Rabobank attacker took advantage of a rising finish to hold off the main bunch to snag the win in the 157.8km third stage of the Volta a Cataluyna. Coming through second was Thor Hushovd (Credit Agricole) while Italian Claudio Corioni (Fassa Bortolo) was third. “It

Robbie McEwen is a puckish little scrapper who’s made a career of knocking the crown off the big dogs. But pulling a hat-trick against the formidable Fassa Bortolo train in the opening 10 days of the 88th Giro d’Italia is something else. McEwen might as well be called the giant killer of the corsa rosa and the Davitamon-Lotto rider played his David card yet again in Wednesday’s 212km snoozer that started slow, got wet and ended hot across the flats of the Po Valley. With the ominous Dolomites brooding to the north, the peloton was in no hurry to go anywhere until it charged onto three laps

The Mailbag is a regular feature on VeloNews.com. If you have a comment, an opinion or observation regarding anything you have seen in cycling, in VeloNews magazine or on VeloNews.com, write to WebLetters@InsideInc.com. Please include your full name and home town. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.Nice to see a wide-open GiroEditor:I don't know if anybody else feels this way, but the first week of this Giro has been much more interesting than last year. Sure, I like to see the Silver Train line up and deliver Alessandro Petacchi every now and then, but not winning every stage.

Carbohydrate supplements Hi, Monique,Thanks for the info you pass along in your articles, they really help in trying to sort through the tons of info that’s out there on sports nutrition. One quick question for you, though: You refer to a "high-carbohydrate supplement" in your article; can you give me one or two examples of a supplement and what amount of carb/kg you would recommend for consumption one hour before training? Thanks.Peter Hi, Peter,Many of these high-carbohydrate supplements can be consumed in the hour before exercise for a handy source of pre-training fuel. They can

The hilarious and inspiring film – The Tour Baby! – chronicling filmmaker Scott Coady's amazing journey following the entire Tour de France, began its 2005 world tour in Ghazni, Afghanistan! U.S. troops who are diehard cyclists and big-time pro cycling fans serving in Afghanistan have a hard time getting any miles or pro race coverage. One committed cyclist, Master Sergeant Pat Gleason, is finding ways to get his cycling fix. His wife, Jill, wrote to The Tour Baby! filmmaker Scott Coady to order a copy of the film for her cycling-starved husband. In honor of Master Sergeant Gleason’s

McEwen by a hair

Darth Basso

Master Sergeant Gleason and his platoon

As the big teams set up their trains, Vogels brought McEwen into the mix

Wednesday's pace reflected the prospect of hard days ahead

TV time for Raffaele

Di Luca holds on to the lead

T-Mobile may not have set Zabel up for the win, but McEwen seemed to benefit

Di Luca likes the color

The U.S. Olympic Committee has asked a federal judge to take over a state-courtlawsuit filed by the organization's former drug czar.Wade Exum, who served as the Colorado Springs-based agency's directorof drug control administration for nine years until he resigned in 2000,sued the organization in El Paso County District Court in February, revivingclaims that a federal judge refused to consider in a previous lawsuit.Exum's attorney, John Pineau, hadsubpoenaed two women to testify at a hearing next week about theirknowledge of athletes who tested positive for performance-enhancing

When Jan Ullrich first met his girlfriend Gaby Weiss it was her modest and unobtrusive demeanor that attracted him. “She was different than the other girls”, he wrote in his autobiography, “in that she was quiet and confident. She didn’t need to draw attention to herself.” Eleven years later the quiet girl has moved out of the Ullrich’s house in Scherzingen, Switzerland, with their two-year-old daughter Sarah and one of the reasons may be, that Gaby had become a little too quiet for the sports star. In his autobiography “Ganz oder gar nicht” (“All or nothing”), Ullrich describes how he

With two selective stages over the weekend, the strengths and weaknesses of the Giro favorites were displayed. Ivan Basso (CSC) lost a little in stage 7 to Damiano Cunego and Gilberto Simoni (Lampre), while the reverse occurred in stage 8, and Paolo Savoldelli (Discovery Channel) was consistent and showed his form is only getting better as the race progresses. Dave Zabriskie (CSC) surprised some by winning the stage-8 time trial, but in my mind, he was one of the favorites going into it. Dave has been knocking at the door of a major international TT win for quite some time. His fifth-place

Backstedt carries Gasparotto to win in CataluynaThere’s no better wheel to be on than one belonging to the big Swede with speed, Magnus Backstedt. The 2004 Paris-Roubaix winner blocked the wind and a lot more in the perfect set-up for young Liquigas-Bianchi teammate Enrico Gasparotto, who shot to victory in Tuesday’s second stage of the Volta a Cataluyna. “Backstedt was decisive in my victory today,” said the 23-year-old after scoring his first win in the pro ranks. “He brought me to the front in the last kilometer and accelerated very fast. It was like following a race horse.” Thanks to

Wow - what a Giro we're seen so far. After two individual time trials, eight road stages, and 1592 kilometers, the top 10 riders overall are separated by two minutes and 11 seconds, the top 20 by 3:48, and the top 50 by 8:29. That last figure alone can be lost on one bad day in the mountains. Heck - it can be lost on one ’Big Bird’ turns pink flamingo. It all started when that character known as “Big Bird” – a.k.a., 25-year-old Australian Brett Lancaster (Ceramica Panaria-Navigare) - decided to ditch Sesame Street that evening and ride down the Lungomare Italo Falcomata in Reggio

The rest day and come and gone. I am not sure just how rested I feel and now Stage 10 is on the horizon. I have mixed feelings about rest days. First off, I am not all that sure that they help you that much. In a way, I’d like it if we just got on with it and went home one day earlier. On the other hand, you do need a little respite from the stress of bike racing, just to relax. In that sense, the rest day is “rest” in the psychological sense than it is the physical. Still, I did sleep for two hours this afternoon, so I guess I was a bit tired, after all. One thing about the rest day is

Di Luca has the jersey - how long can he hold it?

A day at the office

If at first you don't succeed... Try, try again. That's the motto being adopted by Fassa Bortolo, who, after several failed attempts, finally got their Silver Train in motion, sending Alessandro Petacchi to the line for his first stage victory of the 2005 Giro. It would have been a travesty if he didn't win. With wide-open streets and generous corners, the stage was tailor-made for his team to deliver their man in fine form to the line. And that's exactly what the team managed to do on Monday, at the close of a 139km race from Firenze to Ravenna. With his lead-out men