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Fasso car

Cows and cyclists on backroad

Col de la Core river

The final three switchbacks, jammed with fans, on Col de Peysourde

The ascent to Col de Mente

The descent from Col de la Core

Village of Castillon en Couserans

The bull wants his side of the road

Vinokourov will not give up...

... and neither will Ullrich.

Lauri Aus at Paris-Nice in 2000

Hamilton attacks on l'Alpe d'Huez

Green drops out of the 'Heart of Darkness.'

Premont smooth and in control

Green and Hesjedal cross Fitzsimmons Creek.

Redden ended up second.

The men's race was full tilt from the start.

It's good ... but it's just not OLN

Lance Armstrong made it through an epic day in the Pyrénées Saturday, but he only just kept the race leader's yellow jersey on his back after a frantic finale to the 197.5km stage 13 of the 2003 Tour de France. The four-time Tour champion was attacked from all sides on the grinding, 9.1km climb to the Ax-3 Domaines ski area high in the French Pyrénées, but hung on to finish fourth and retain the maillot jaune by a scant 15 seconds over Bianchi’s Jan Ullrich. Armstrong admitted that he was fatigued from the efforts in Friday's individual time trial and tried to limit his losses when Ullrich

Sprinter Robbie McEwen's bid to win a second successive Tour de France green jersey was not going quite to plan, the Australian admitted on Saturday. McEwen won the jersey last year with victory on the Champs-Elysees on the race's final day. This year, he led the points competition from stage one to five, but dropped to third behind Italian Alessandro Petacchi (Fassa Bortolo) and Australia's Baden Cooke (fdjeux.com) after crashing on the sixth stage. Petacchi abandoned the race on the seventh stage to leave McEwen second in the standings, eight points behind Cooke. Speaking before the

Stage 13 Individual Results1. Carlos Sastre (Sp), CSC, 5:16:082. Jan Ullrich (G), Bianchi, 01:013. Haimar Zubeldia (Sp), Euskaltel-Euskadi, 01:034. Lance Armstrong (USA), U.S. Postal Service, 01:085. Alexandre Vinokourov (Kaz), Telekom, 01:186. Ivan Basso (I), Fassa Bortolo, 01:207. Mercado Juan Miguel (Sp), iBanesto.com, 01:248. Iban Mayo (Sp), Euskaltel-Euskadi, 01:599. Christophe Moreau (F), Credit Agricole, 02:3210. Tyler Hamilton (USA), CSC, 02:3411. Laurent Dufaux (Swi), Alessio, 03:0612. Francisco Mancebo (Sp), iBanesto.com, 03:0913. Richard Virenque (F), Quick Step-Davitamon, 03:4614.

Lance Armstrong has not yet won his fifth Tour de France, but Saturday marked his 52nd day in the race leader's yellow jersey – beating the total of five-times Tour champion Jacques Anquetil. Frenchman Anquetil sported the yellow jersey for 51 days between 1957 and 1964 as he became the first rider to win the Tour five times. Armstrong, winner of the last four Tours, is still a long way behind Belgian Eddy Merckx, who led the Tour for 96 days, while France's Bernard Hinault was the race leader for 78 days and Spaniard Miguel Indurain for 60 days.

To see how Stage 13 of the Tour unfolded live, just go to our Live Update window and follow the action all the way to the finish.

Pacific Northwest riders turned in solid performances Friday as the Alpenrose Velodrome Challenge kicked off in Portland, Oregon. In its fifth year, the AVC – the sixth race in the American Velodrome Challenge Series – featured temperatures in the mid-90s baking the 268-meter concrete oval with its steep, 43-degree banks. And the racing was equally hot. Portland’s Larssyn Staley (Hot Tubes), just back from winning gold in the pursuit and points race at junior nationals, opened the morning session by taking a hard-fought victory in the women’s 3000-meter pursuit with a 4:05:47. Heather

The Tour de France of Danish team CSC looked to be over before it had even begun when leader Tyler Hamilton crashed and broke his collarbone on the very first stage. But two weeks later, the brave American is still in the race, lying fifth, four minutes and 25 seconds behind overall leader Lance Armstrong, and his teammates have now won two stages. Spaniard Carlos Sastre, 10th in the Tour last year, nearly became the team's leader when it was at first thought that Hamilton would be forced out. But he resumed his team duties until Saturday, when the Spaniard asked Hamilton permission to try

It was a big day in the Tour de France today. And there are still more to come, with the race hanging on the thread of 15 seconds between Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich. With one of four days in the Pyrénées down, all I am really thinking about now is making it to the finish in Paris – and making the best of next Saturday’s time trial along the way. If you were in the bus – the laughing group – like I was today, there was one thing very funny about today’s 13th stage: hearing the Italians crying as we tackled the major climbs. You could hear them. Crying. Why? They just thought we were

It wasn’t only in the top overall placings of the Tour de France that important changes came about in Saturday’s first Pyrenean stage. If you cast your finger down to the end of the right column of the second page of the results sheet — or dragged your cursor to the last place — you’d notice a change that will have gone largely unnoticed. For the first time since stage 9, Belgian rider Hans De Clercq (Lotto-Domo) is no longer the Tour’s lanterne rouge — officially, the last placed rider on overall standings. De Clercq will most probably have taken his move up from last place to 161st at 2

Despite again losing time to Jan Ullrich on Saturday’s stage, Lance Armstrong is still in the yellow jersey and seems confident of winning his fifth Tour. Before stage 13 started in Toulouse, he happily signed a number of yellow jerseys as souvenirs for local VIPs and then shook hands with a line of local teenage cyclists who waited for him on the presentation stage. He signed more yellow jerseys after the finish, and happily answered questions in French for the France 2 network, which covers the Tour live. Then, after being held up during the chaos of finishing another stage in a small ski

You may have noticed Armstrong’s flat carbon handlebar in the team time trial on his new superlight Trek time-trial bike. According to Trek, one of Lance's goals going into this year's Tour was to lighten his entire time-trial setup. His frame has been stiffened and lightened with a composite honeycomb inside the carbon in the areas around the bottom bracket and head tube, technology that was premiered on the Trek OCLV mountain-bike frames a number of years ago. The aero’ bars Armstrong had previously used weighed anywhere from 800 to 1000 grams for the bar/stem combo, according to Trek.

At the highest levels of competition, there isn’t that much separating a great day from a bad one. We’re not talking about a huge change in power output or overall performance. At this level, being better or worse by a few percentage points can lead to either minutes gained or minutes lost. Lance Armstrong lost about 6 kilograms of fluid weight between yesterday morning and the end of the stage-12 time trial, and also lost 1:36 to Jan Ullrich during that same time period. Losing 2 percent of your body weight due to dehydration leads to a 10-15 percent drop in performance, and Lance lost 8

For the first time in four years, Lance Armstrong is not the favorite to win the Tour de France, the London bookmakers William Hill said on Saturday. They now make Germany's Jan Ullrich the 4-6 favorite with Armstrong at 11-10 and Kazakh Alexander Vinokourov at 14-1.

Fair or unfair — a topic that’s been debated extensively — the 2003 women’s Canadian national downhill champion is Vancouver’s Michelle Dumaresq. The reason for the deliberation: Six years ago Dumaresq was a man. But after living “two many years in the wrong body” Dumaresq underwent sexual reassignment surgery, and with the blessing of the UCI, she’s been racing as a female pro downhiller for the last two years. Saturday she grabbed the biggest win of her career. “I’ve trained a long time for this and this is what I was always pointing to,” said Dumaresq, after besting Claire Buchar by 2.62

The Slopestlye Expression Session capped off festivities on Saturday at the Whistler Gravity Festival where riders were judged in five categories during their runs down a jump/trick park at the base of Whistler Mountain. Canadian Darren Berrecloth emerged the winner, taking home $2000 and pricey Oakley watch. Second place went to Eric Porter, with Richie Schley in third. The only major casualty of the day was Gareth Dyer, who came up short on a back-flip attempt, and was taken off the mountain on a backboard with what was initially reported to be a broken arm. With digi-cam in hand,

Ullrich makes his move

Sastre honors his family with a win

Traffic jam from hell in Ax-Les-Thermes. The team buses were stuck as well.

Tour supplies for a day on the mountain. No wonder they are so excited when the race comes through

Lance's bike is buckled into the car for the start.

Very French father and daughter at the start.

Euskatel fans push a struggling rider.

Mavic car, but going straight.

TV camera and fans stakeout the Postal Bus, hoping for a glimpse of Lance.

Lone straggler

Replenishment motos on the front of the race.

Brochard leads the early break

Sastre and Mercado off on the chase

The last survivor: Rubiera was the last one of the original 10 to be caught.

Some difficulty for Hamilton

A war of seconds

First Vino' went... then Ullrich charged

Sastre's win adds to CSC's lead in team standings

DH winner Dumaresq.

Jones celebrates his national title.

Off the box.

Dropping in.

Berrecloth shows his skills.

3-2-1 lift off.

Safe!

Find that landing.

Off the wall.

It was a packed house at Whistler on Saturday.

This is the type of stage you could call a “sleeper.” It comes the day after the first long time trial, and the day before a classic Pyrenean stage across six mountain passes. But this stage could be more destructive because it has a summit finish that is immediately preceded by what should prove one of the toughest, if not the toughest climb in the Pyrénées. It’s hard to figure why the organizers gave it only a Cat. 1 ranking and not hors-categorie — the Port de Pailhères is longer and steeper than the renowned Col du Tourmalet. It climbs for 25km, with the final 15km on an extremely

None of the six climbs on this classic 191.5km mountain stage is particularly long or high, but six hours of racing in potentially adverse weather will be a challenge. The three climbs in the last 70km, all Cat. 1, are the most difficult, particularly the narrow, winding Col de Menté, which averages 8.2 percent for 7km. This will soften up the field for the 8.3km Portillon (that comes during a brief foray into Spain) and the 13km Peyresourde, from which the race plunges to the finish in Loudenvielle. 7/20/2003 Start Time: 11:15:00am7/20/2003 Estimated Finish Time: 5:26:00pm HISTORY All

Friday's stage of the 2003 Tour de France delivered yet more shocks in what has been a Tour of full of drama. The shock of the day was Jan Ullrich turning 47 kilometers of French asphalt into a personal road to redemption, by scoring his first Tour stage victory since 1998 and pushing his longtime rival Lance Armstrong to an unfamiliar second place in a Tour time trial. Armstrong said he ran out of water and suffered with the heat, which again shot into the humid-90s. Armstrong was dealt his worst Tour time trial defeat since his 1999 comeback to the race after overcoming cancer. Indeed,

Things have certainly changed for the Italian Fassa Bortolo team on the Tour de France - and its experienced manager Giancarlo Ferretti admits he’s feeling rather short-handed. Ferretti, who was on cloud nine in the first week of the Tour as 29-year-old sprinter Alessandro Petacchi added four impressive stage wins to the six he won in the Tour of Italy, has fallen back to earth after a virus decimated his team. Fassa Bortolo have been operating with only three of their nine riders for the past six days - a peculiar but worrying situation which has left plenty of room on the team bus but

1. Jan Ullrich (G), Bianchi, at 58:322. Lance Armstrong (USA), U.S. Postal Service, at 01:363. Alexandre Vinokourov (Kaz), Telekom, at 02:064. Haimar Zubeldia (Sp), Euskaltel-Euskadi, at 02:405. Tyler Hamilton (USA), CSC, at 02:436. Uwe Peschel (G), Gerolsteiner, at 03:267. David Millar (GB), Cofidis, at 03:558. Inigo Chaurreau (Sp), Ag2R Prevoyance, at 04:019. David Plaza (Sp), Bianchi, at 04:3710. Santiago Botero (Col), Telekom, at 05:0011. Francisco Mancebo (Sp), iBanesto.com, at 05:0012. Iban Mayo (Sp), Euskaltel-Euskadi, at 05:0313. Georg Totschnig (A), Gerolsteiner, at 05:0614. Denis

In a recent Sports Illustrated column, Rick Reilly says to his daughter that besides spending two hours writing his weekly column, what he does the rest of the time is “worry about those two hours.” Well, here at bike-geek central, none of us has the luxury of being a full-time, once-a-week columnist, seeing as how our staff is about the size of the Fassa Bortolo squad after a week at the Tour. That being the case, we generally leave it a little late when it comes to our weekly Web columns, which can make for some, um, interesting topics. This week, for example, Neal Rogers found it in

Lance Armstrong said blistering temperatures and not drinking enough fluids gave him a challenging day in the saddle during the Tour de France’s 12th-stage time trial, won by German rival Jan Ullrich here on Friday. Ullrich ended a five-year famine to win his first Tour stage since 1998, another time trial, after posting the winning time of 58:32 over the 47km race against the clock between Gaillac and here. Armstrong, who admitted that at one point he felt he was going backwards, finished second at a massive 1:36 behind the 29-year-old German to see his lead in the race

Four more stages have been completed here at Superweak 2003. The first few road races are out of the way, and there weren't any huge surprises. This year the road races have double points, and so they should dictate who is going to contest the overall. The Alpine Valley Road Race is probably the hardest race of the series. It is also where Stevie Ray Vaughn lost his life in a helicopter crash. Every year I choose not to race there for one of those two reasons. The course has several very steep hills that repeatedly beat you down like a red-headed stepchild. There is also very little shelter

The Lithuanian cycling federation has imposed a one-year ban on controversial Lithuanian rider Raimondas Rumsas, who tested positive for the banned drug EPO during the Tour of Italy, the federation said Friday. The federation also fined 31-year-old Rumsas 2,000 Swiss francs (1,300 euros). "The federation offered a six-month suspension for Rumsas, but the international cycling federation (the Union Cycliste Internationale) did not agree with this and recommended a four-year ban," said Valentinas Rutkauskas, the secretary general of the Lithuanian cycling federation. The federation had sent

Britain's David Millar said he was battling with breathing difficulties as he finished a disappointing seventh in the Tour de France time trial on Friday. The Cofidis rider, who had predicted he would finish in the top two in the 47 km sprint from Gaillac to Cap Decouverte, ended up nearly four minutes adrift of Germany's stage winner Jan Ullrich (Bianchi). "I've been sick since the (Wednesday) rest day and just couldn't breathe during the time trial," Millar said. "I set off good, but after 20 kilometers my plans all went up in smoke. It was very hot today, but to be honest it was the