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Gerolsteiner chases

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.Cultural respect and Maori tattoosEditor:Facial tattoos have specific meanings for Maori, and the designs are based on the spirituality of family and ancestors. Getting a moko knockoff in Argentina is about as culturally respectful as having the Stars and Stripes tattooed on your butt by

Dear Lennard,I have two sets of wheels I use for my bike with two different sets of clinchers, each with a different maximum-pressure rating. My race wheels have tires with a max pressure rating of 116 psi (Michelin Pro Race). However, my training wheels have tires with a max pressure of 145 psi (Vredestein Fortezza Tri Comp). I use my training wheels as my pit wheels while racing. If I have to change a wheel during a race, will the different pressures between the front and rear cause me handling problems or other dangers? Secondly, I am 175 pounds and use paired-spoke wheels (Shimano

Editor’s note: In his new weekly web column, VeloNews European correspondent Andrew Hood takes you behind the headlines. This week he looks at Mario Cipollini’s comeback attempt, how Bobby Julich helped secure Dave Zabriskie and Christian Vande Velde contracts at Team CSC, and Graeme Obree’s remarks on Lance Armstrong’s talk of making a run at the world hour record. Check back each Tuesday for more. Will the Lion King roar again?Mario Cipollini couldn’t have hoped for a better start to the 2005 season with his stage victory last week in the Tour of Qatar. After two lackluster seasons, a

Valverde gets his in MallorcaIn a week that’s seen some big names take early season victories, it was only a matter of time before Alejandro Valverde would bounce into the winner’s circle. The 24-year-old Spanish sensation won more than 15 races last year and it didn’t take long for him to notch his first victory of the 2005 season. Valverde sprang back to life by peeling away from the main bunch to win the Trofeo Soller and give home team Illes Balears a much-desired win. Conditions were horrible during the 164km stage, which featured three tough climbs, with wind, snow and rain pelting

Monterey, California — MotionBased Technologies and Sea Otter Classic, the most celebrated cycling festival in North America, have teamed up to provide athletes with detailed course descriptions to train for races. Riders simply strap on their GPS devices and they’re instantly empowered with online performance analysis and mapping. The 15th annual Sea Otter Classic will be held this year on April 14-17, 2005, at the Laguna Seca Recreation Area, Monterey, California. “We’re excited to partner with MotionBased Technologies,” says Frank Yohannan, president and CEO of Sea Otter Classic. “By

Marco Pantani: The Legend of a Tragic ChampionEdited by John Wilcockson For Immediate Release: On February 14, 2004, Italy’s most recent Tour de France champion Marco Pantani died alone in a hotel room at the Adriatic beach town of Rimini. He was only 34 years old. Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, who lost to Pantani in two stages of the 2000 Tour, said: “I had deep respect for Marco. Cycling has indeed lost a great champion and a great personality.” Some 30,000 fans attended the funeral, to remember a man who they affectionately nicknamed The Pirate for his bandanna-covered shaved

The Lion King has roared once already in 05, in Qatar

Valverde scores one for the home team

Tankink and Pozzato on the Poggio

PRESS RELEASE: Marco Pantani: The Legend of a Tragic Champion

It’s two for two for Oscar Freire, who scored his second straight victory in just two days of racing in the 2005 season. A day after making his season debut a winning one at the Trofeo Mallorca, the reigning world champion won Monday’s Trofeo Alcudia in similar fashion. It’s not bad for a guy who only has about 2500km in his legs when many of his competitors might have double or triple that amount. “I didn’t start training seriously until after Christmas and then I got sick with a cold, so I haven’t been able to put in the kilometers I normally would,” Freire said after Sunday’s win. “To

If I could go through it all again,the slender iron rungs of growing up,I would be as young as any,a child lostin unreality and loud music.   –Robert Traill Spence Lowell, Realities These crazy kids today, with their mouthy web sites and Maori tattoos. They got no respect, do they? And that stuff they call music – why, it’s just noise. There has been no end of the old viewing-with-alarm lately, thanks to the madcap antics of Matt DeCanio and David Clinger. Once clean-cut, happy young men, the kind a lucky team director could feel good about taking home to meet the sponsor, they

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.Webcor’s decision on Clinger’s tattoo is shockingEditor:I am shocked by Team Webcor's stand against David Clinger and his choice of "artistic expression.” (see Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood: Webcor gets a new look – one it's not happy with") I was surprised that a clean-cut,

Boulder, Colorado – Tuesday, February 8, at Boulder’s Flatirons Theater, Boulder-based cyclists star in “Pro: The Movie”. “Pro” is a feature-length film shot at the 2004 US Professional Road Cycling Championships in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Boulder riders Scott Moninger, Chris Wherry, Dan Schmatz, Michael Barry, Will Frischkorn, Mike Jones, Greg Henderson, Alex Candelario and Jonas Carney play substantial roles in a movie that offers an insider’s view of the biggest cycling event in North America. Racing legends Andy Hampsten (winner of the 1988 Tour of Italy), Nelson Vails (silver

TEMPE, Arizona - Do you believe that you can ride a bicycle the 494 miles from San Diego to Flagstaff, Arizona, in 24 hours? This year, the organizers of the Insight Race Across America aim to make everyone a believer. While history tells us that the Insight Race Across America (RAAM) is the same to ultra-distance cyclists as the Tour de France is to road racers, recent years have brought significant changes to the organization of the world's greatest ultra-cycling challenge. First was the Corporate Challenge that emerged in 2002, making it a realistic prospect for weekend warrior teams

1. What is RSS?RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It is an easy way to keep up with your favorite news. An RSS feed contains headlines and links to full news stories. If you click an RSS link, you will see XML (or eXtensible Markup Language) code in your browser. This is to be expected, since you do not view RSS content through a browser. You view the headlines through an RSS news reader. 2. What are RSS Readers?RSS news readers are small software programs that aggregate RSS feeds and display the story information. They allow you to scan headlines from hundreds of news sources in one

Mancebo, seen here at the 2004 Tour of Germany, is looking to France this year.

Mancebo (r) with co-captain Alejandro Valverde at last weeks team presentation

Freire does it again

With the king of Malaysia looking on from the VIP seats at the finish line, Aussie Graeme Brown affirmed his status as ruler of the Tour de Langkawi sprints, easily taking the 10th and final stage of the 2005 Tour de Langkawi on Sunday in downtown Kuala Lumpur. The win was Brown’s fifth at the 10th anniversary of the Malaysian national tour, upping his all-time wins record to nine.

Freire wins season opener in Trofeo MallorcaReigning world champion Oscar Freire (Rabobank) got his season started on a nice note with a sprint victory against Isaac Gálvez (Illes Balears) in Sunday’s Trofeo Mallorca. With Erik Zabel (T-Mobile) and Paolo Bettini (Quick Step) also in the field for the opener of the five-day Mallorca Challenge, the three-time world champion made his season debut in the rainbow jersey a pleasant one. Freire’s win comes as somewhat of a surprise, considering just yesterday the Spanish sprinter was complaining of an early season bout with the flu. He follows in

A federal court jury in Minnesota last Friday concluded that a New York manufacturer violated the terms of a contract when the firm dropped Greg LeMond’s name from a line of mass-market bicycle accessories sold in Target stores. The jury awarded LeMond a total of $3.46 million dollars in what the three-time Tour de France winner said was a “very conservative” estimate of potential royalties that he would have earned had PTI Holdings Inc. properly marketed the brand and honored the contract for its full 10-year term. “I think it was a fair judgment,” LeMond told VeloNews Monday. “I mean,

Brown wins the final sprint

Discovery riders Mike Creed, Patrick McCarty, and Michael Barry look forward to the finale

Yellow jersey Cox takes a corner early on

The peloton passes the Abdul Samat, a former palace in downtown KL

Headed for home

You could not have scripted a more appropriate ending for the ninth stage of the 2005 Tour de Langkawi on Saturday. The 164.8km run from Menara Kuala Lumpur to Putrajaya started with the standard early attacks, continued with solid team tactics by Barloworld, and concluded with Ceremica-Panaria coming to the front to deliver yet another sprint win for Aussie Graeme Brown. The win was Brown’s fourth at the 10th anniversary of this 10-day race in Malaysia, and it extended his all-time wins record to eight.

The peloton charges towards the line in the heat in Putra Jaya

A base jumper pops his chute over the start line at the base of the KL

Ryan Cox in the leaders jersey near the top of the first climb

Walters leads the chase over the first climb

The massive Putra Jaya mosque near the finish

Jose Rujano’s run at the overall Tour de Langkawi title won’t officially come to an end until the finish of Sunday’s stage 10 criterium in Kuala Lumpur. But in his mind, the pint-sized Venezuelan climber’s concession likely came with 3km to go in Friday’s stage 8 run from Kuala Kuba Baru to the top of the Genting Highlands. It was there that Rujano’s chief rival in the chase for the GC title, South African Ryan Cox, rolled up beside him and gave him a glaring gaze of confidence.

One of the top stories coming out of last year’s Tour de France was the fighting panache of Thomas Voeckler, the quiet, hard-working national champion who held the yellow jersey for more than a week. The fresh-faced national champion defied the odds and carried the maillot jaune out of the Pyrénées, giving French fans something to cheer for as Lance Armstrong barnstormed to a record sixth consecutive win. Voeckler is making his season debut at the Tour of Qatar with his fellow Bouygues Telecom teammates. Here are excerpts from an interview posted on the official race page: Q: How do you

Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich could cross swords on more than one occasion this season if the Union Cycliste Internationale’s ambitious plans for major reforms come to fruition. Ullrich, the 1997 Tour de France winner, and Armstrong, the six-time winner and record holder, hardly ever race each other outside of the Tour. But that could all change. Or at least that is what UCI president Hein Verbruggen hopes will happen when the system that has been in place for nearly two decades is ripped up and replaced by an elite league which, in theory, will guarantee cycling's top stars ride in

The 10-race World Cup and the UCI world rankings are no more, replaced by the 27-race ProTour series and a new system of awarding points that will determine who wears the ProTour leader’s jersey. In the three-week grand tours, the first 20 overall finishers gain ProTour points; in the others, such as Paris-Nice and Milan-San Remo, only the first 10 overall finishers do. In most stage races, stage winners collect one point. However, in the more difficult grand tours, the first three stage finishers receive three, two and one, respectively. And the Tour de France delivers more points than

Wow. File this week’s column under the “Stranger Than Fiction” heading. Or, following last week’s story about Matt DeCanio and the Ofoto-Sierra Nevada squad parting ways, maybe we should designate this as chapter 2 of “How to lose your job before ever toeing a start line with the team.” So, where to begin? When three-time NRC winner Chris Horner left the upstart domestic Webcor Builders squad to take his rightful place among the world’s elite in Europe, the first question many asked was, “What will happen to Webcor?” That question seemed to have been answered when Webcor announced that it

Giroscopic Sports Management is pleased to present Team Biovail, which will be competing in road cycling events throughout North America in 2005. Team Biovail continues to build on an existing five-year franchise and is actually two distinct teams. The Elite Women's team focuses on key Pro-Am races in the U.S. and Canada while the Master Men's team will contest events primarily in Canada. Women's Elite Team: Newcomer Amanda Shaw, 2004 Ontario provincial ’cross champion, returning rider Anna Garnett, Jennifer Stephenson, Nanci Dodman and newcomer Tracey Vincze. Men's Masters

American cyclist Will Frischkorn will moving into a team leadership role as he joins newly crowned national champion Ian Macgregor in heading up Team TIAA-CREF in 2005. Sponsored by Fortune 68 financial services company TIAA-CREF, the team begins its second season with a full slate of the country’s most exciting young up-and-coming riders. Frischkorn, who comes to TIAA-CREF after serving as a key teammate for Chris Horner at Saturn, is widely recognized as one of the country’s top talents. An accomplished rider at only 23, Frishkorn has won stages in the Ronde de L'isard and the Tour

Robbie McEwen (Davitamon-Lotto) finally got it right in a week dominated by sprinting’s biggest names. After watching Tom Boonen and Mario Cipollini take the glory earlier, the Aussie boxer punched his way to victory in the 153km final stage from Sealine Beach Resort to Doha Corniche. There were some early attempts at a breakaway, but the sprinter teams were anxious for one more stab at the spoils before leaving behind the oil-rich Persian Gulf nation. Boonen came through third, but McEwen scored the win that eluded him all week in Qatar. Team CSC delivered Lars Michaelsen into the overall

What we read and how we communicate have always been important elements in the evolvement of our sport. At the outset of professional road racing in the late nineteenth century, the editors at newspapers and magazines not only reported the events but they also dreamed up the races and put them on. The world’s very first long-distance road race, from Paris to Rouen along the length of the Seine valley, was sponsored in 1869 by a magazine called the Vélocipède Illustré. Another title, Véloce-Sport, organized the first Bordeaux-Paris classic in 1891, Le Petit Journal put on the inaugural

A sprint to the line at Genting

Cox was clearly not intimidated

The two leaders emerged from a shrinking lead group as the climb to Genting took its toll

Grajales managed fifth

Danielson

Barry

Grinding

Raisin had a great ride and was the top finisher for Credit Agricole

Voeckler before the start of Thursdays stage at Qatar

The Once Were Warriors look didnt go over with Webcor team management

McEwen finally punches his way through to victory

But Michaelsen got the big prize

CSC swept the podium

The final circuit race

Tom Simpson on the cover of Sporting Cyclist

Tyler Hamilton is expected to have his day in court in late February when the Olympic time trial champion is hoping to prove his innocence of allegations of blood doping or face a possible two-year racing ban. According to a posting on the Tyler Hamilton Foundation web page, a hearing date before U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has been set for the week of February 28. Last September, Hamilton’s world spun out of control after UCI officials notified his Phonak team that he failed doping tests following his victory in a time trial stage at the 2004 Vuelta a España. Subsequent follow-up “B” tests

Calling the seventh stage of the 2005 Tour de Langkawi purely academic would be a disservice to Aussie Graeme Brown and Japan’s Koji Fukushima. After all Brown did pick up his third stage win of this year’s race, upping his career record here to seven. And Fukushima easily held the yellow jersey for yet another day. But make no mistake, Thursday’s 167.7km rolling run from Maran to Raub was simply window dressing for the big show here in Malaysia.

This is crunch time for the tech’ guys in VeloNews editorial. Whilemost of our colleagues may dread the workload heading into July, Lennard and I are hard at work putting together the annual Buyer’s Guide. Still, Iwas lucky enough to sneak away from the office to spend two precious daysin the Northern Sonoran Desert with the folks of SRAM last week. On theagenda: two days of riding the latest SRAM, Truvativ, Avid and RockShoxproduct. Held a month before the official SRAM press launch, this particularcamp was designated for bicycle product managers intent of putting thefinishing touches on

PROFESSIONAL AND AMATUER ROAD CYCLISTS ROLL INTO MORGAN HILL TO COMPETE IN THE MORGAN HILL GRAND PRIXSpecialized Bicycle Components Creates a Road Race in its HometownMorgan Hill, Calif, - The Morgan Hill Grand Prix, Northern California’snewest and most eagerly-awaited professional and amateur road race, willtake place on April 10, 2005, from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Between 300-500pro and amateur athletes, and approximately 2,000 spectators are expectedto attend.“It's really great to be involved in the creation of a local race,"says Mike Sinyard, Founder and President of Specialized

Mario Cipollini is back at the front of the pack after scoring an importantvictory in Thursday’s fourth stage of the Tour of Qatar, his first sincelast year’s Tour de Georgia. The 37-year-old Tuscan held off 24-year-old Tom Boonen (Quick Step)in a significant objective for the Lion King, who edged near retirementbut joined the Liquigas-Bianchi team with new motivation to come back tothe elite levels of sprinting after two lackluster seasons. “Every win encourages you very much and this one in a particular waysince it comes after months full of sacrifices and a very tough training,”Cipollini

The Union Cycliste Internationale has released its first set of Continentalrankings in keeping with the comprehensive restructuring of internationalracing that came into effect this year. With the the 2005 cycling seasonunderway in America (North and South America), Asia and Oceania, the UCIhas released the first leaders’ individual rankings on these continents. The first leader jerseys of these rankings, which mark the beginningof a new era for cycling sport, will be worn from the 1st to the 28th ofFebruary 2005 by the following riders: UCI America Tour:José Rujano Guillen (VEN)UCI Asia

Yup, its a Panaria jersey crossing the line first.

Koji Fukushima

Brown grabs win No. 3 at Langkawi

Brett Lancaster leads out of the last corner, around 300 meters to the finish. Brown is sitting about 8th here, and still wins.

Herbolds riding skills were about the only thing we could document with a camera

Cipo gets his first win in his new kit.

Thomas Voeckler and friend.

Michaelsen had some troubles Thursday, but his lead remained safe

"Cycling in the News" is a regular service of VeloNews.com. Readers,reporters and friends are encouraged to send links to current stories aboutcompetitive cyclists and cycling that appear in the mainstream media. Ifyou come across a news item that you believe may be of interest to otherVeloNews readers, we would be grateful if you choose to send it to Rosters@InsideInc.com.Pioneer Press - TwinCities.com - February 1, 2005LeMond faces backpedaling firm in courtThe Medina bicycling legend charges breach of contract after a manufacturerdropped his brand, saying Lance Armstrong's star had

It’s been a lonely road for Spanish rider Angel Casero since his hey-day after winning the 2001 Vuelta a España. Since then, he spent two under-productive years at the ill-fated Coast and then sat out the entire season last year after Kelme couldn’t deliver its required bank guarantees and contract papers to the UCI. Casero is set to return to racing in the coming days with Comunitat Valenciana (formerly Kelme) with more modest goals. His most important step will be simply to be racing again as a professional. “I will have to suffer on the bike now to have options to win something perhaps