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The escapees

Manitou's new technology must be ridden hard to be fully appreciated

Lennard gets dwarfed by Coach Cartwright

I have a question regarding race radios. We have an elite/pro Canadian team that we are just starting up. I have been doing a bunch of research on which race radios are the best for use for our team. I find it strange how little information I can find on this topic. We have tested a few different options and we seem to be coming up short in our quest for a good solution. We have tried the Motorola FRS type radios - they only work when our riders are very close together. If we have one guy up the road they fail miserably. We then tried more robust, higher power radios, which had a better range

Mario Cipollini said he wasn't ready to race for the upcoming Tour deMediterranean (see preview below), so that was enough for the organizers to kick his Domina Vacanze team out of the race. Cipollini said during a press conference Saturday at the team presentation in Egypt he simply wasn't in form to commit to a stage-race so early in the season. Instead, the world champion will make his season debut at Luis Puig (Feb. 23 in Spain). When race organizers heard the word, they decided not to allow his Italian team to the start line. "Cipollini waited at the last minute to tell me

Technical Q&A with Lennard Zinn

Technical Q&A with Lennard Zinn

Technical Q&A with Lennard Zinn

SHARM EL SHEIHK, Egypt -- Mario Cipollini never does anything half-bore. So it was no surprise when his new team - Domina Vacanze - decided to unveil its new sponsorship deal with the world champion, it would be done with typical Italian style and flash. Cipollini and the boys enjoyed a weekend in the warm Egyptian sun, pressing the flesh so to speak with the locals and sponsors and going on two light training rides in the Sinai Peninsula. VeloNews' European correspondent Andrew Hood sat down with a handful of other English-speaking journalists for an audience with the Lion King on

Euro (Egypt) file - Cipollini never does anything half-bore

A view for a (Lion) King on Egypt's Red Sea.

Things got a little crazy at the end of a wild weekend in Egypt with Super Mario

Cipo getting down during the team presentation in Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt

Chances of anything significant happening on the last day of the 2003 Tour de Langkawi were slim when the day started. But when race officials neutralized the race two laps into the 12-lap criterium because of threatening skies, Tom Danielson and his Saturn team could sit back and coast, assured that the 24-year-old from Durango, Colorado was going home with a yellow jersey in his suitcase.

SHARM EL SHEIKH, Egypt - What do you get when you combine sun, sand and sea with a strong dose of Mario Cipollini? One bizarre and very Italian -- with a faux Arab touch - team presentation. Domina Vacanze - an Italian time-share and resort company -- is the new title sponsor for Cipollini's team. This weekend, company president Ernesto Preatoni filled a Boeing 737 with the world champion, seven other teammates, about 40 journalists and a gaggle of VIPs, hanger's-on and friends and flew them down to the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula to formally introduce the team's one-year

The final podium.

Brown and Bongiorno battle in the sprint...

...before having a few words afterwords.

Danielson was quick to credit the work of his teammates.

Saturn started at the front, but didn't have to stay there long.

Cipollini looking like a rock star

Mario Scirea, left, Giovanni Lombardi, center, and Cipollini, meet the locals

One of the girls 'Dances like an Egyptian'

How good could Tom Danielson be? Consider this. In the moments after finishing just an eyelash behind stage winner Hernan Dario Munoz on stage 9 of the 2003 Tour de Langkawi, the 24-year-old seemed more upset by the fact that he’d lost the stage than exultant that he’d just all but locked up the overall title in the fourth richest stage race in the world.

Danielson and Munoz battled all the way to the finish.

Danileson shows the strain of the day.

Green (left) lost touch with less than 3km to go.

Horner was on bottle duty all day.

Saturday's podium.

Stage 10 route

Stage 10 profile

Someday someone will actually pull it off here in Malaysia. Break away from the field early in the race, hammer hard for a few hours, and catch the peloton napping just long enough to grab a solo victory. That day, however, was not today. Despite a Herculean effort from the increasingly famous Koji Fukushima, the eighth stage of the 2003 Tour de Langkawi ended with another mad-dash sprint at the end. And like he did two days before, Australian Stuart O’Grady came away the winner.

I’m stoked.After a weekend of watching the Winter X Games, I’m stoked to learn that, "Dude, great run. Are you stoked?" is apparently a journalistically acceptable interview question. All I can say is, "I’m stoked."I’m just glad the X Games weren’t around when we were kids. Who among us would have survived a childhood of trying to copy those moves? I don’t know how the kids do it. It was bad enough trying to ride no-hands and running into the trunk of a parked car. How can you not watch the Winter X Games, though? Fourteen-year-old kids hucking themselves through the air, all the while

International cycling chief Hein Verbruggen has branded the world sports drug agency as "incredibly weak" and accused it of discrimination in its fight against doping in North America. In a confidential letter addressed to World Anti-Doping Agency president Dick Pound and obtained by The Australian, Verbruggen calls on WADA to lobby the U.S. government and demand it make all of its professional sports fall in line with WADA's doping laws. Verbruggen believes WADA is being soft on pushing the US government to bring its professional ice hockey, tennis and basketball players into line with

"I firmly believe that cyclo-cross is a sport that has a hard core of fans in eight Western European countries. But therefore we must not want to make it a worldwide spectacle." – Hein Verbruggen, the UCI’s Luddite-in-chief, quoted on www.cyclingnews.com I couldn’t agree more. We should leave the worldwide-spectacle thing to Hein, who has been making one of himself for years, with his perverse longing for scratchy wool garments, five-speed friction shifting and shiny steel rims, and keep cyclo-cross where it belongs - in the hands of the deluded little people with their yellow slickers,

Fukushima (center bottom) heads up the day's last climb.

O'Grady got his second TdL win.

Fukushima's face tells the story.

Danielson with team manager Andrzej Bek.

The Telekom Malaysia building.

This long-tailed macaque was one of many seen along Friday's route.

The stage 9 route

The stage 9 profile

Friday’s foaming rant: Our ’cross to bear

Saturn’s plan all along, if it worked, was to have Tom Danielson sporting the yellow jersey come the final day of the 2003 Tour de Langkawi. It just wasn’t supposed to happen this early.

A selection of sights from the middle days of the Tour de Langkawi.

Jan Ullrich seems to be taking baby steps in his long road back to the elite levels of racing. Ullrich hasn't raced since last year's Tour of Qatar but won't be able to race until March 23, when his racing ban is lifted from his positive for amphetamines last summer. Ullrich has been training with Rudy Pevenage and Tobias Steinhauser in Tuscany, riding up to four to five hours per day. So far, the German wires report, there's no major pain in his knees, the Achilles heel that brought Ullrich all his problems last year. According to reports, he's not riding very hard,

Danielson is now in yellow.

Brown was untouchable at the finish.

The break that broke at the end.

O'Neill gets cleaned up.

The stage 8 route.

The stage 8 profile.

The bike room at the Garden Hotel in Kuantan.

A small fruit market along the stage 7 route.

A member of the ever-present police force keeps an eye on things.

Kicked out a day earlier for towing on a team car, iTeamNova’s Ronny Assez checks out the South China Sea during a training ride.

Hawker stall with squid for sale.

South Africa’s team car has seen better days.

The unofficial race mascot.

Figuring out the day’s route.

Stuart O’Grady just shrugged his shoulders when asked the last time he’d won a bunch sprint like the one that concluded stage 6 of the 2003 Tour de Langkawi. “I don’t know,” he said after a brief pause. “It’s been a while.” Indeed, until Wednesday, it had been nearly three years since the Credit Agricole rider had broken through with a win like the one he grabbed at the end of the 136.3km run from Marang to Cukai on another scorcher of a day in Malaysia. Before that you had to go all the way back to the third stage of the Midi-Libre in May of 2000.

Several minutes have passed since the conclusion of the second stage of the 2003 Tour de Langkawi, but Stuart O’Grady’s motor is still redlined. Moments ago two ugly crashes in the last kilometer of the stage left at least a dozen riders bumped, bruised or worse. Among them are several of O’Grady’s Credit Agricole teammates. Normally O’Grady isn’t one for drama, but the cause of all this carnage has been placed on one of his competitors, a young ambitious Argentinean who rides for the Italian Ceremiche-Panaria team. “It was the most ridiculous sprinting I’ve ever seen,” O’Grady recalls.

I am training for my first Ironman (Lake Placid 2003) and am concerned about keeping my iron levels high enough to avoid anemia-which I suffered from this fall, but which is now back to normal. I have also been told that I many not be getting enough protein to sufficiently rebuild and recover after workouts. How much iron and protein do women endurance athletes typically need? TP Dear TP - Since you have already had anemia, it is important that you pay close attention to your iron intake and have your blood work monitored fairly regularly. Iron deficiency is the most common nutrient

Italian sprinter Fabio Baldato spoiled the Frenchies' party Wednesday in the opening stage of the five-day Etoile de Besseges in southern France. Alessio rider Baldato covered the 153.5km stage from St. Cannat to Sainte Tulle in 3 hours, 47 minutes and 6 seconds, edging French rider Franck Bouyer (Brioche La Boulangere) and Mickael Skelde (EDS-Fakta) to score the win. The race continues Thursday with a 150km circuit course in Marseille. Galvez scores second victory in Mallorca Challenge Kelme's Isaac Galvez snagged his second victory in Wednesday's mass sprint in the fourth

I was injured in an accident with a driver who pulled out in front of me while I had the “right of way”. I was unable to avoid the car and ran into the driver’s side door breaking my arm. I missed 6 weeks of work and my bike was totaled out. The driver was ticketed for “failing to yield” and his insurance company accepted liability. I received an offer from the insurance company that seems too low to fully compensate me. I discussed this with the adjuster and she agreed that the broken arm was severe, but that I contributed to the accident by not wearing a helmet and that I was therefore

O'Grady, Brown and O'Neill gave the Aussies a big presence on the podium.

The break that almost stuck.

A dejected Green waits for the KoM jersey presentation.

The stage 7 route

The stage 7 profile

O'Grady before his first Tour de Langkawi win.

Baldato

Leaning against the Ceremiche-Panaria team van 20 minutes before the start of stage 5, Graeme Brown was very matter of fact about the first four days of 2003 Tour de Langkawi. Sure the Aussie, who went neck and neck with Mario Cipollini at last year’s Giro, had been beaten in three straight sprints by a younger, brasher foe. But Brown wasn’t ready to concede anything to Mendonca Pagliarini, the 24-year-old Brazilian Lampre rider who’d won three straight sprint finishes here in Malaysia.

A sampling of sights from the last few days at the 2003 Tour de Langkawi in Malaysia.

QuestionI recently purchased an NOS Time/Look carbon fork to put on my '87 Paramount. I am running a 2002 Record triple group and am wondering about the mounting of the front brake caliper on the fork. With the steel fork I was not worried about the washer with the "teeth" on both sides biting into the fork, as that is what it is designed to do. However, with my carbon fork there is no aluminum plate to mount the brake against and I am wondering if it is smart to use this washer? Will it possibly case problems biting into the composite material? If not this washer, then what should I use to

Don’t tell anyone, but I managed to sneak away from the tidal wave that is the VeloNews 2003 Buyer's Guide. We've been building this monster since early December, and with any luck, we'll have it out the door in two weeks (in your hands at the beginning of March). So far, so good I'd have to say. Even if you're not in the market for a new bike, components or accessories (do I see any hands out there?) I'm sure you'll find the numerous interviews with pro riders and their personal racing setups interesting. We even threw-in a few interviews with a handful of bicycle racing's biggest names

The French racing season opened Tuesday with Ludo Dierckxsens (Landbouwkrediet) winning the GP d'Ouverture La Marseillaise, 150km from Gardanne to Aubagne near Marseille. The race was marked by a long breakaway by nine riders that took advantage of favorable winds to build an insurmountable lead that was more than half-an-hour by the finish. In the closing kilometers, Magnus Backstedt (Credit Agricole) attacked, only to be joined by Dierckxsens, who beat the Swede to the line. Most teams who competed on Tuesday will stay on for the 33rd Etoile de Besseges, which enters the Bouches region

Brown upped his Langkawi stage total to three.