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Saeco rider and current leader Gilberto Simoni is cheered on as he climbs

Saeco rider and pink jersey holder Gilberto Simoni pushes to the finish line

Friday’s calm after the storm at Monte Zoncolan served up another chance for Alessandro Petacchi (Fassa Bortolo) to strut his stuff. And strut he did in the 149km 13th stage from Pordenone to Marostica. With Mario Cipollini out of the Giro d’Italia with injuries after setting a new record with 42 career stage victories, it was up to Cipo’s heir apparent, Daniele Bennati, to make a run at derailing Petacchi. At just 22, Bennati is going to be very good someday. But Petacchi is already very good, and he proved it by outsprinting the young protégé to win for the fourth time in this year’s

The UCI has cleared the way for Jan Ullrich to race in July’s Tour de France. On Friday, the UCI officially approved the registration of Ullrich’s new team, Bianchi, and awarded the team Top Club status, essentially guaranteeing it a spot in the Tour. Bianchi stepped in after Team Coast was suspended May 9 after not paying riders' salaries. “As a result of this decision, Team Bianchi retains, as of today, all rights of participation to races on the international calendar, and rights in general linked to a Top Club status,” a UCI statement said. A decision on Bianchi’s status wasn’t

“Good evening, sports fans, Biff Barf here in the Biff Barf Sportlight Spotlight, biffin’ ’em up and barfin’ ’em right back atcha! I call ’em the way I see ’em - and if I don’t see ’em, I make ’em up!” – George Carlin as sportscaster Biff Barf in “The 11 O’Clock News” from “FM & AM” After Jayson Blair got popped for writing fiction in the news columns of The New York Times, America’s legendary paper of record, you’re probably wondering whether anything you read these days can be trusted. Well, rest assured, we here at VeloNews go the extra kilometer to make certain that your cycling news is

Race director Jean Marie Leblanc says the door is not completely shut on the prospect of reigning world champion Mario Cipollini riding in the 100th Tour de France. "The decision at the moment is not 100 percent 'no' to Cipollini," Leblanc said at a Tour de France sponsor's dinner near Marostica, where the 13th stage of the Giro d'Italia ended on Friday. Cipollini's Domina Vacanze team was not given one of the four wildcard spots in the sport's showpiece event which were announced on Monday, but Domina president Ernesto Preatoni had tried to persuade Tour organizers to include the team.

Burke Swindlehurst (Navigators) and Becky Broeder (Intermountain Cycling Organization) won the first stage of Montana’s Ecology Center Classic Friday in a race that was cut short after support vehicles ran out of spare wheels. The 100-mile Pintler Road Race stage near Phillipsburg, Montana, about 40 miles southeast of Missoula, included a seven-mile stretch of newly graded gravel road called Rock Creek Road - and 25 wheel changes on that section alone, almost all the result of punctures. The race had been slated to cover Rock Creek Road once more, but after support vehicles for both the

Number Four

Garzelli attacks on the final hill.

Rosina hill

Petacchi gets No. 4

Petacchi celebrates

Simoni still gets the bottle every day.

Jayson Blair joins the VeloNews.com staff.

One more hint that this is not your average bike race.

Will we see rainbows in July, too?

Gilberto Simoni delivered on his promise to be the main protagonist up Monte Zoncolan, winning Thursday’s 12th stage in the epic shootout between the stars to tighten his grip on the overall lead. The Saeco rider attacked with 3km to go from the menacing summit. The Giro’s strongest men were trading shots on the steepest road in Italy and the tifosi were eating it up. Simoni hoped for more, but he finished 34 seconds ahead of pesky Stefano Garzelli (Caldirola-Sidermec) and Francesco Casagrande, who came across third at 39 seconds in arrears. The win consolidates Simoni’s hold on the

Dutch rider Jans Koerts won Thursday's second stage of the Tour of Belgium, but the headlines tomorrow will be Axel Merckx taking the leader's jersey. Landbouwkrediet seemed to have the stage under control, in order to protect the lead of stage 1 winner Tom Steels. But once the race hit a finishing circuit in Knokke, riders began counter-attacking, including runs by Johan Museeuw (Quick Step), Geer Verheyen (Marlux) and Max Van Heeswijk (USPS). Merckx and Koerts finally escaped the grip of the peloton with 8km to go and quickly opened up a 20-second gap. Koerts gets the win, Merckx gets the

I didn’t have a lot to say about anything this week, so I decided to run with the short-attention-span special. No Snowmass to replace TellurideRegarding the fate of the cancelled Telluride World Cup, all the talk at Big Bear was that a Colorado-based promoter was in talks with the UCI and that there was a good chance the event would end up at Snowmass, a ski area near Aspen. Well, we got a call Wednesday morning from the promoter, CycleCyndicate’s Eric Jean, and he said that it just wasn’t going to work out. “We couldn’t make it happen financially,” Jean told me. “We needed about $225,000,

Editor:Last year I went to France to follow the Tour. I was well aware of the history of Mario Cipollini in the Tour, good and bad - but my feeling was that the Tour de France went beyond what was reasonable and into the realm of personal vendetta when spots for additional teams opened up after the 2002 Giro and Cipollini's team was not selected. I enjoyed my trip to the Tour immensely, but in every sprint, I knew that the best was not there, though Cipollini had done what the Tour had demanded, reinventing himself with breakaway wins, courageously traversing mountains, a grand-tour finish

“Life is what happens when you’re making other plans,” John Lennon once said. Words of wisdom, Lennon’s fortune-cookie philosophy, and lately it seems I’ve been experiencing plenty of life - which, I suppose, beats the alternative. Maybe I should stop making other plans. For starters, with mortgage rates dipping to a 40-year low last week, I’ve been actively looking into buying my first place, which means applying for my first home loan - a procedure that has thus far involved countless conversations with various real-estate agents, lenders, sellers, and my mother - who, in my case,

Dear Bob;Do you have any information regarding the procedures and method inwhich athletes are selected by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency drug testing?What is their authority to test? Is the testing method fair and legal asimplemented? What are the ramifications for an athlete who fails to showup for testing?TJColorado Dear TJ;You raise two separate legal questions:1) What are the limits of the authority of the USADA to requiretesting; and2) What are the limits on the USADA or the National GoverningBody (NGB) for enforcing non-compliance, either after a positive test ora failure to comply with

The former site of the Iraq National Olympic Headquarters, complete with its recognizable five rings on the wall outside and a toppled statue of Saddam Hussein inside the walls, stands a charred wreck. It sits near the Canal Expressway in Western Baghdad, filled with a few poor Baghdad residents sifting through the wreckage for something useful to loot. Already, the head of the statue of Saddam that once stood outside had been sawed off and taken away. According to the New York Times, a metal framework used for administering electric shocks to athletes who didn’t perform, was taken to a

Thursday’s elite national road championships in Seven Springs, Pennsylvania, saw a continuation of the T-Mobile dominance on the women’s side with Amber Neben leading a 1-2-3 sweep by the women’s national team. In the men’s race, Mike Voight brought home the first-ever elite national road champion’s jersey for the longtime East Coast regional powerhouse Snow Valley team, after an epic day of racing that ended in the rain after five hours in the saddle. The brutal 28-mile course beginning and ending in the Seven Springs ski resort featured a wide variety of climbs, from short, steep power

Italian Fabiana Luperini (Aurora RSM) outkicked Nathalia Boyarskaya of the Russian national team in stage 6 of the Tour de l’Aude Feminin, while Saturn’s Lyne Bessette collected her second leader’s jersey with a little help from her team. Luperini and Boyarskaya got away 76km into the 115km circuit race around Castelnaudary, on the Fanjeaux climb, and since neither was a threat to Bissette, Saturn couldn’t have been happier, according to assistant general manager Giana Roberge. “Riding tempo and looking after Bessette's safety, Ina Teutenberg, Katie Mactier and Manon Jutras spent the

... and leaves Casagrande to ride his own race

Glory days in San Francisco.

Simoni shines

Simoni makes his move...

Belli

Marzio Bruseghin

The day's first escape

The climb all have been dreading

Pantani says he's back; Thursday showed he might be right

Thursday was tough... even on the 'easy' parts.

Pantani showed some of his old form

Garzelli minimized the damage.

Simoni established his supremacy in the mountains.

Simoni managed to make even the steep parts look easy.

Simoni wins.

Simoni celebrates.

Voight

Neben on the attack

T-Mobile in control

Neben wins

Domina Vacanze team owner Ernesto Preatori says he's trying to convince Tour de France organizer Jean-Marie Leblanc to include Mario Cipollini in July's race by adding a 23rd team to the peloton. "I think we've got less than a 50 percent chance of getting a place but I'm optimistic and think our chances are increasing," he told Eurosport. "I'm doing everything I can." UCI president Hein Verbruggen and Leblanc are reportedly set to meet to Friday to discuss several issues, including the international outcry at Domina Vacanze's exclusion from four wild-card bids that were announced

There's never an easy day in the Giro d'Italia. Wednesday's 222km dead-flat stage from Faenza to San Dona Di Piave was supposed to be a relatively light day in the saddle before Thursday's difficult stage to Monte Zoncolan. Bad weather and a poorly designed finish with a left turn just 160 meters from the finish line served up a messy conclusion for the 11th stage, with Mario Cipollini (Domina Vacanze) crashing out after Kelme's Isaac Galvez slid into him. Cipollini was later transported to a local hospital for X-rays on his left shoulder, which he was cradling after the spill. No word yet

Eating and drinking properly in the hours before training and racing offer several advantages, from topping off your liver and muscle glycogen levels to minimizing the onset of dehydration. And working out your race-day nutritional strategies in the course of your daily training — what, how much and when to eat — will spare you some unpleasant surprises on the race course. “It is not a good idea to start with too much in the stomach, as it tends to come right back up with a hard effort on the bike,” says U.S. Postal pro Michael Barry. “I generally eat three hours before the start. I try and

In contrast to the broad, sweeping curves of last Saturday’s Terminillo climb, the road ascending to Thursday’s stage 12 finish on Monte Zoncolan is narrow and twisty. This mountain in the remote northeast of Italy, close to the Austrian border, has never been raced up before, so the field will literally be riding into the unknown. The race reaches the base of the climb at Sútrio after already crossing the flank of the mountain on a 6km uphill, followed by a sharp descent to the valley at 1750 feet elevation. The ascent to the finish is 13.3km long (half a kilometer shorter than the Tour de

It’s a story we’ve seen in the U.S. all season long: the complete and total domination of the podium by a single team uniform. But no, this time it wasn’t the yellow-and-red of the Saturn men sweeping the top spots. On Wednesday, the all-American T-Mobile squad took the top five places at the elite time trial national championships, with two-time defending champion Kimberly Bruckner leading the charge. The Saturn men, meanwhile, were denied the top spot at the awards ceremony, as Navigators’ Chris Baldwin had a breakthrough victory, beating Saturn phenom Tom Danielson by 42 seconds. On a

The U.S. Military National Cycling Championships are under way in Pennsylvania - but with America’s armed forces otherwise occupied in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere, is anyone wearing Lycra instead of desert camo’? The 2002 road-race champ, Mike Easter, isn’t defending his crown this year, according to Debra Ponzio, the U.S. armed forces liaison to USA Cycling. Happily, it’s not because he’s somewhere getting shot at - it’s just because the Marine lieutenant separated from the Corps last fall. One of last year’s medalists is overseas, Ponzio says. Army Sgt. 1st Class Jim Sharp, who took

The course profile alone was enough to strike fear in the hearts of many a rider … or at least enough to make you think the promoter was nuts. Either way, the 140-mile climbers’ fest between Boulder and Breckenridge, Colorado, became a favorite in its three-year history. Unfortunately, race promoter Len Pettyjohn said Wednesday, he has been unable to secure a replacement for title sponsor Saturn after the auto manufacturer pulled out in March, forcing him to cancel the race for 2003. “We had a number of companies interested in replacing Saturn as the titlesponsor, but current economic

Saturn’s Lyne Bessette seized the lead in the Tour de l'Aude Féminin Wednesday after finishing fifth in stage 5, a 31.5km time trial in Caustenaldry. “As the times came in it was clear that Sara Carrigan would be the time to beat,” said Saturn’s Giana Roberge. Indeed, at the halfway mark, the Bik Powerplate rider was 1:20 faster than her closest competitor, and Carrigan would win the stage in 45:19, 43 seconds ahead of Olivia Gollan (Australian National) and a further four seconds up on Judith Arndt (Nurnberger Versicherung). Bessette, meanwhile, began the day just nine seconds behind race

I just got back in from Team Big Bear's 15th consecutive National Points Series race. And if you've been following Jason Sumner's online race reports, you know the weekend was full of extremely high-highs (a bevy of fresh faces on the podium) and devastating lows (namely the tragic death of Japanese downhiller Haruko Fujinaka). One event that took place over the weekend that Jason didn't get a chance to write about was the much-vaunted "Super D" downhill held late Saturday afternoon. The event was conceived three years ago by promoters Pat Follet and Tom Spiegel after they saw the need to

Preview: The challenge of Monte Zoncolan

Cipollini got up and finished the final 160 meters

The pack of riders cycle along the Comacchio valley

The Giro d'Italia pack rides under heavy rain clouds

Australian Lotto domo rider Robbie Mc Ewen raises his arms after crossing the finish line

Australian Lotto domo rider Robbie Mc Ewen raises his arms after crossing the finish line

Mario Cipollini arrives at the finish line after he crashed on the last corner

The men from Tenax

The day started nice

Simoni avoided the carnage, but was angry.

Pettyjohn concedes defeat

Baldwin surprised the Saturn boys

Bruckner

Long

Super Big Bear

Super Big Bear

Breaking the all-time Giro d’Italia stage win record couldn’t ease the disappointment Mario Cipollini felt after being snubbed by Tour de France officials Monday. “I want to speak to Tour boss Jean-Marie Leblanc face to face to find out why he didn’t invite me to the Tour de France,” Cipollini told Reuters. “I spoke to him on the telephone in March and he told me that if I wanted to ride the Tour and if I was competitive he’d be happy to (give) my team a place. I think I’ve been competitive but now he has changed his mind. “I’ve heard the reasons he has given for not inviting me and my team