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There’s never a dull moment in the Vuelta a España. Well, not if you slept through the first 100km of Monday’s soggy 157.1km third stage from Burgos to Soria. For the first half of the stage it seemed the peloton was on siesta as a four-man breakaway that included U.S. Postal Service foot soldier Benoit Joachim chalked up a lead of nearly 10 minutes. But the bunch awakened from its slumber when it got a sniff of the finish line and the lead quickly dwindled against headwinds and heavy pressure from T-Mobile, Valenciana-Kelme and Cofidis – but not before Joachim gobbled up all three

Passing around the Vuelta a España leader’s jersey wasn’t necessarily in the plan for U.S. Postal Service, but Floyd Landis was more than happy to pass the lead to teammate Max Van Heeswijk in Sunday’s second stage. Van Heeswijk chased time bonuses during the longest stage of the 2004 Vuelta and earned a six-second bonus to slip into the lead. Postal’s Benoit Joachim was third in the intermediate sprint to grab a two-second time bonus and moved ahead of Landis into second overall. “It wasn’t part of the plan that I would take the lead,” Van Heeswijk said on the Vuelta’s official race page.

Some riders would have packed it in after having struggled the way Anna Milkowski (Rona) did for the first three days of Vermont’s Green Mountain Stage Race. The first-year pro suffered through every stage, losing time to the leaders she knew she should be riding with. On Monday, however, the former schoolteacher from Maine soloed off the front with three laps remaining to win the Burlington criterium, the fourth and final stage of the 2004 Green Mountain Stage Race. “I entered the race with absolutely nothing to lose because I was very far down [on GC] and I really wanted to race hard and

Valverde wins a soggy sprint

Joachim leads the break

The peloton was in nap mode until the break reached nearly 10 minutes

Van Heeswijk in gold

Valverde came from fourth wheel to take the sprint

But Joachim got the jersey

After three days of suffering, Milkowski takes a dig – and wins

Moore, meanwhile, wrapped up the overall

Dionne and McCormack duel in Burlington

Following Saturday’s team time trial to kick start the 59th Vuelta a España, the peloton hit the road Sunday with the 207km second stage, the longest of the three-week romp across Spain. With a largely flat course across the treeless expanse of northern Spain, two factors proved to be decisive in the Vuelta’s first road stage: the wind and Fassa Bortolo’s silver train. Both were protagonists, with heavy crosswinds buffeting the peloton in the second half of the stage before the bunch came in for a mass gallop. Alessandro Petacchi was back to his old tricks, winning his eighth career Vuelta

Floyd Landis was the center of attention Sunday morning in the Vuelta a España start village as the U.S. Postal Service rider proudly showed off his leader’s jersey. It’s the first time an American has worn the Vuelta’s leader’s jersey and the first time for Landis to wear a European race leader’s jersey since the Tour de l’Avenir in 1999. Landis won the Volta a Algarve in Portugal in February but took the lead in the final stage, not giving him much time to enjoy the spotlight. “I didn’t sleep in the jersey, but it’s nice to have it,” Landis joked to VeloNews before Sunday’s second stage

Anne-Marie Miller is old enough to know better, but the 49-year-old Verizon Wireless-Wheelworks rider still thought a solo breakaway in Sunday’s Mad River Road Race might be worth a shot. The third and most demanding day of the 2004 Green Mountain Stage Race, which started and finished in Waitsfield, took the elite women’s field up two major climbs in the Green Mountains, with the finishing ascent of the insidious Appalachian Gap the nail in many riders’ coffins. Miller knew she couldn’t climb with the leaders and instead chose to hit the base of the App’ Gap climb with nearly four minutes

By the morning of day three, with the Eurobike show in Friedrichshafen, Germany, only half over – the show opens its doors to the public for a day after three business-only days – the consensus was already firm: This was one of the best bike shows in years. Some of that good cheer is a spillover from the general heartiness in the industry. Through June, 2004 was on track to be a banner year, with bikes of all kinds selling well at all prices. Sales went suddenly soft in July and August, in Europe and the U.S., but the slowdown in spending affected all discretionary purchases, not just bikes,

Mit der golden and silver people yet.

Petacchi finds his legs

Landis and the team weren't playing defense today

Tamkink and Serrano built a big lead only to lose it to the pursuit

Then Van Goolen had a go

But no one could hop the Fassa freight train except Petacchi

'Mad Max' in gold

The peloton ambles along on the Vuelta's longest day

Old enough to know better, Miller did it anyway

McCormack repeats at App' Gap

Iban Mayo's lightweight climber

Mayo had his mechanic drill out the Dura-Ace levers . . .

. . . and rear derailleur

Fi'zi:k's Arione: a carbon fiber base, a tubular titanium rail and an aluminum core

Selle San Marco's Rever has air scoops to cool the booty

Selle San Marco Aspide Composite A: a bare-bones saddle

ITM's K-Sword does away with bolts and plates for clamping

The Uniko White Super Over, meanwhile, does away with the color black

3T's Biomorphe is shaped for a better grip

The 2X2 stem teams up with the Biomorphe

Cinelli's limited-edition Ram Shining

The Cinelli Bat is built to fly

Selcof's high-gloss Zen . . .

. . . and Karbon post

Deda has branched out into cranksets . . .

. . . and clinchers

Stella Azzurra is stretching itself, too, with the four-spoke Maris wheel . . .

. . . and the low-profile Compasso

Just when you thought you'd seen every carbon-fiber application imaginable comes a carbon trainer from Elite

Storck's Scenario C 0.9 can be hoisted with a pinky

The Time RXS is an all-new design . . .

. . . and there's an all-new RXS shoe to go with it

The VXRS can be had with the full Paolo Bettini effect

Gunn-Rita pic

Tyler Hamilton could become the first American racer to win a stage in each grand tour if he can roll out of the 59th Vuelta a España with a stage victory. The 33-year-old New Englander already has stage wins in the Giro d’Italia (a time trial in 2002) and in the Tour de France (a mountain stage in 2003) and said he’s motivated to make it a hat trick. “I have won stages in the other grand tours, so I wouldn’t mind to win one here to complete the circle,” Hamilton said before Friday’s opening ceremony. “We’ll see how things go. I’m here thinking about the overall but I will also work for

History has a way of repeating itself at U.S. Postal Service and now Floyd Landis is hoping that trend continues after he became the first American to wear the leader’s jersey at the Vuelta a España on Saturday after his team roared to victory in the opening team time trial. “We didn’t have a particular plan about who would come across first, but we had a plan on how to ride the time trial,” said Landis, who enjoyed some quality time on the podium following the stage. “Johan called in on the radio in the last 500 meters and he was generous enough to give me the lead, so I wasn’t

We have started the Vuelta on the right foot with a nice stage win in the team time trial. The TTT is one of my favorite events as it takes a complete team effort; and, the feeling when everything is running smoothly is incredible. During the effort the whole team is completely focused- it feels as if we are riding in a tunnel with nothing but the open road in front of us with the voice of Johan encouraging us over the radio, the noise of the disc wheels, the sound of the wind and our breath blocking out all other noises and distractions. In the last two years we have lost the Vuelta

On a day when all signs pointed to bunch sprint finishes, the finales of the elite men’s and women’s circuit races at day two of the Green Mountain Stage Race produced something else altogether. Men did 72 miles and the women 52 on Saturday’s undulating 19.4-mile circuit in Moretown, Vermont. On paper, the course was hard, but not hard enough to break up the respective fields. All previous editions of the race had ended in furious field sprints, but the 2004 edition was an exception. Joe Papp (ACT-UPMC) soloed off a group of four to win the men’s race, finishing off a 10km breakaway effort

T-Mobile takes second

Illes Balears set an early mark to beat

Victor Hugo Peña

Plotting and planning

Tony Cruz makes last-minute adjustments

Dave Zabriskie looks a little spent

Papp picked his spot just right

Moore, like Papp, was outnumbered . . . but won anyway

Levi Leipheimer has signed a two-year contract to join the German squad Gerolsteiner for the 2005-06 seasons. After two top-10 finishes in three Tour de France starts, the 30-year-old American will join rising star Georg Totschnig as team leader going into the ProTour inaugural next season. “This is a major coup,” said team manager Hans Michael Holczer on the team’s web page. “We’ll have a strong reinforcement for the grand tours, secondly he will be able to share leadership duties with Totschnig and finally his strong experience can help young riders on our team.” Leipheimer couldn’t be

More items of note from the shores of the Bodensee: personal trainers, power measurement devices, saddles — do you detect a theme here? Tacx i-Magic Fortius trainerThe i-Magic Fortius trainer from Tacx is billed as a "virtual reality trainer," a claim that may seem overly modest when you witness the stunning capabilities of this amazing device. Hooked up to your PC or projection television, the Fortius can put you in the middle of a virtual reality race that you program, or a ride up the Alpe d'Huez taken with real-life video. You can also load in training software that analyzes and

With the Canadian border less than a two-hour drive away, it stands to reason that the Green Mountain Stage Race, September 3-6 in Vermont, would attract a sizable contingent from the Great White North. But the opening day of the fourth annual race looked more like a trans-provincial climbing championship than anything else. Canadian riders have come in droves to this year’s four-day stage race, run in the heart of Vermont’s Mad River Valley, and two of them – Dominique Perras (Ofoto-Lombardi Sports) and Amy Moore (Quark Cycling) – won Friday’s prologue hillclimb. The 8.1-mile, mass-start

EuroBike, Day 2: More goodies from Friedrichshafen

EuroBike, Day 2: More goodies from Friedrichshafen

EuroBike, Day 2: More goodies from Friedrichshafen

EuroBike, Day 2: More goodies from Friedrichshafen

EuroBike, Day 2: More goodies from Friedrichshafen

EuroBike, Day 2: More goodies from Friedrichshafen

EuroBike, Day 2: More goodies from Friedrichshafen

Perras took the prologue hillclimb . . .

. . . but McCormack nearly got him when he blew in the final meters

Italian star Francesco Casagrande (Lampre) and Spanish rider Carlos Golbano (Paternina-Costa de Almería) won’t be starting the Vuelta a España on Saturday after UCI blood tests conducted Wednesday evening revealed the pair “unfit” to start. The 189 starting riders in the Vuelta, which starts Saturday with a team time trial in León in northern Spain, were given blood screening to test levels of hemotacrit, hemoglobin and reticulocytes. While not considered a positive doping test, inconsistent indicators can suggest, but not prove, the use of EPO, Nesp or other banned blood boosters. Vuelta

We are now in the hotel in Léon sitting and waiting for the Vuelta España to begin on Saturday. We arrived in Leon last night, as we had to be at the hotel three days prior to the start for the medical testing-which is essentially a blood test. This year the Vuelta starts out with several flat to rolling stages as we race across the middle of Spain towards the Mediterranean and the coastal town of Valencia. Valencia will host the first of three individual time trials, one being up to the peak of Sierra Nevada, the other being the final stage in Madrid. Today we rode our time trial bikes