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Chris Carmichael is predicting Lance Armstrong will win his fifth consecutive Tour de France if the Texan arrives in the same form as years past. Carmichael – Armstrong’s longtime coach and trainer – said the four-time winner is on track to arrive in top condition. The Texan is currently training at altitude in Switzerland to hone his form and will leave Thursday for Paris for the start of the 2003 Tour. “I think if Lance is at the same condition as last year, barring incident, injury or illness, I believe he’ll win,” Carmichael told VeloNews. “I think if he’s back at that same level as

Published Jun 27, 2003

News

Court rejects Bortolami appeal

Italy's Federal Court of Appeal on Friday rejected Gianluca Bortolami's appeal against a six-month ban for failing a drug test earlier this year. The Vini Caldirola rider was suspended by the Italian Cycling Federation after anti-doping officials found traces of cortisone in his urine sample. The test was carried out during the Three Days of La Panne stage race in Belgium in which Bortolami won the first stage. The 34-year-old Italian cyclist wore the leader's jersey until the final time-trial when he was pushed into second place by Latvian Raivis Belohvosciks. Bortolami is a very

Published Jun 27, 2003

News

Historic firsts at the Tour

In its 100 years, the Tour has created countless pages of sports history. Some are astonishing (the first ascent of the Pyrénées in 1910) and some banal (first TV coverage, 1952). Here are some significant firsts of the Tour.1903 (July 1) – The first stageof the inaugural Tour de France, sponsored by the sports newspaper L’Auto,leaves Montgeron, just outside the Paris city limits, at precisely 3:16p.m. with Maurice Garin taking the monumental 467km opening stage to Lyonin 17:45:44. Note that this is an estimate, as Garin crossed the line beforeGéo Lefèvre, the race director, and the time

Published Jun 27, 2003

News

Notes from the road: The mail bag

Last week’s column about the USPRO Championship drew a flood of e-mails. Sorry I couldn’t respond to everyone, but here’s a dip into the mailbag for some of the best, along with my take. It feels very unfulfilling to me to award the USPRO champ jersey to a guy who doesn't win the race. I am in favor of an all-U.S.-citizen race -- perhaps somewhere else than Philly, or just on another day. Your point about attracting riders like Fred Rodriguez is a good one. How do they do it in Europe? Surely there are similar cases. What about talented riders like Allan Davis or Jorg Jaksche, who are the

Published Jun 27, 2003

Road

Panel backs Tour organizers, spurns Cipo’

World champion Mario Cipollini's hopes of joining this year's Tour de France peloton were dashed Friday after an international arbitration body rejected an appeal by the Italian's Domina Vacanze team. Tour bosses did not award Cipollini's Italian outfit one of the four remaining wild-card invitations for this year's centenary race (July 5-27), causing uproar in Italian cycling. Domina Vacanze appealed, with lawyers saying that as world champion he should have been given an automatic entry. But a body set up by the Professional Cycling Council (CCP) to rule on the decision said Friday in

Published Jun 27, 2003

Road

Ullrich, Simoni skipping national championships

Jan Ullrich has pulled out of the German national road race championships because he wants to spend the few rest days he has remaining before the Tour de France with his pregnant girlfriend, he said Friday. Ullrich, the reigning Olympic road race champion, will return to the Tour after being absent last year due to injury. With the Tour starting Saturday July 5, the 29-year-old Bianchi rider feels that taking part in Sunday's national championships would be unfair to his pregnant girlfriend, Gaby Weis. The 1997 Tour winner and four-time runner-up said he was "aware a lot of people would be

Published Jun 27, 2003

Road Gear

Pinarello: Winning Doctrine

With three teams in the Tour de France, Fausto Pinarello is very busy in the months leading up to the race, especially this season. Pinarello's company builds the bicycles for the Telekom, iBanesto.com and Fassa Bortolo teams, and the preparation details are almost too numerous to comprehend. Every single bike requires custom dimensions, and specific needs have to be addressed with each rider, particularly high-profile stars like Erik Zabel, Ivan Basso and Unai Osa. This year, the task has been particularly challenging because Pinarello planned to deliver a fully custom version of his

Published Jun 27, 2003

Road Gear

Cannondale: Custom is customary

Ever since Mario Cipollini, adorned in the yellow jersey of the Tour de France leader, leaned into a television camera during a 1997 stage and said, “Cannondale is best bike,” it was clear that the Bedford, Pennsylvania, company could make bikes capable of scoring victories in the Tour. Cannondale paved the way for other American bike makers such as Trek, Specialized, Klein, GT and Litespeed into the European peloton. But then came the bankruptcy. Following an ill-fated decision to enter the motorsports market, Cannondale found itself deeply in debt with an unsalable motorcycle, struggling

Published Jun 27, 2003

News

A guide to scoring the jerseys

YELLOW JERSEYThe yellow jersey — or maillot jaune — is worn by the overall race leader, the rider who has covered the overall distance in the least amount of cumulative time. Time bonuses (12 seconds for winning a road stage, six seconds for winning an intermediate sprint) are deducted, and time penalties (for infractions like dangerous riding or accepting pushes from spectators on the climbs) are added to riders’ stage times before calculating their GC (general classification) times. 2002 winner: Lance Armstrong, U.S. Postal Service POINTS LEADERThe green points-leader’s jersey is awarded

Published Jun 27, 2003

News

Italians sanction three riders in doping violations

Italian Vincenzo Di Falco, who rides for the Mercatone Uno team, has been banned from competing for a year by the Italian cycling federation's disciplinary commission, the panel announced on Friday. The 22-year-old Di Falco, a teammate of former Tour de France and Giro d'Italia winner Marco Pantani, tested positive for Nesp, a banned endurance-enhancer similar to EPO (erythropoetin) during a stage of the Lombardy International week race on May 10. His compatriot Giampaolo Caruso, a 22-year-old with the Spanish ONCE-Eroski team, was handed a six-month ban for testing positive for nandrolone

Published Jun 27, 2003

News

Coach Carmichael: From one Tour to the next

With each passing year, winning the Tour de France gets more and more difficult for Lance Armstrong. To win, Lance has to be prepared to handle every racing strategy devised to defeat him. One of my jobs as his coach is to work with him in collecting and analyzing data each year. Some of our most useful information came two years ago during Lance’s victory in stage 10. Before the Tour that year, Lance selected the Alpe d’Huez stage as one he really wanted to win. As someone with a true appreciation for cycling history, Lance saw winning on the Alpe as a way to honor the race and the great

Published Jun 27, 2003

Road Racing

RAAM: Finally, the finish

They rode 2922 miles, climbed more than 82,000 feet, and crossed 14 states to get from San Diego to Atlantic City. Some sped across, fighting to be first. Others crawled across, battling simply to finish. A few withdrew, their bodies failing their intentions. One lost his life on a desolate stretch of New Mexico highway. They were drenched by rain, slowed by wind, and torched by the desert sun. But everyone who crossed the finish line of the 2003 Insight Race Across America on the Boardwalk in Atlantic City shared a victory for even completing what Outside magazine once called the world’s

Published Jun 27, 2003

News

Join us at Tour time

If you’re reading this, you’d probably give anything to be in France this July. For most of us, however, jobs, family and budgets don’t allow for a month of tromping around the Alps and the Pyrénées, sleeping on the sides of mountains or snapping a photograph of the peloton as it speeds through fields of sunflowers. But if you can’t make it to the Tour, at least keep track of it on VeloNews.com. This year, VeloNews.com continues its tradition of providing live up-to-the-minute coverage of each stage throughout the Tour. Keeping track of events will be even easier this year, with clear

Published Jun 27, 2003

Road Racing

Saturn sweeps Canadian ITT

Saturn made it a double on the first day of the Canadian nationalchampionships, with Eric Wohlberg and Lyne Bessette taking the men's and women's national time-trial titles. The event is being held in Hamilton, Ontario, on the same course planned for the road world’s in October, so in addition to the numerous titles on the line, the organization was trying out its plan to close down the center of a city of more than 600,000 people for the first time. Overall, the indications are that the test was successful. The 21km course that the elite men and women raced (two laps and one lap,

Published Jun 27, 2003

Road Racing

Horner, Ulmer take a hot one at Fitchburg

It was hot, hot, hot at the second stage of the Fitchburg-Longsjo Classic – so hot, in fact, that the officials clipped three laps from the women’s race and one from the men’s as temperatures boiled past the 100-degree mark. Despite the trimmings, the racing would get even hotter on the 3.1-mile course, with its sharp finishing climb. The 74-mile men’s race saw attacks from the gun, though nothing stuck until Mike Sayers (Health Net) and Chris Horner (Saturn) got away. The twosome opened a gap of about a minute on a chase group containing race leader Chris Baldwin (Navigators), until

Published Jun 27, 2003

News