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Stage 6 Today was the Tour’s first major day in the mountains. Rain was fallingwhen we woke up, but by the start the skies were just plain gray and therewas no rain.It was another odd start. They had us ride three laps along the boulevardthat ran in front of the start stage for  5km. Then they stopped usagain, and restarted us for 11km of neutral heading out of town and finallya running start into the actual race.Attacks started even before the first sprint bonus at 10km, with a brilliantone coming from Dede Demet-Barry.That started the trend and attacks kept going well into the first

“I think we’re just gonna bank on a horrible day that makes everybodywant to quit, go home and cry.” Saturn’s Tim Johnson, discussing this weekend’s Saturn Cycling Classic during an interview with VeloNews senior writer Bryan Jew In the wake of public outrage over revelations that steroids are ascommon in pro baseball as televised cup adjustments, the players’ unionhas finally proposed submitting to a regimen of unannounced dope testingthat at first glance seems every bit as rigorous as the accounting oversightat WorldCom. This should be entertaining. Judging from the tone of the ongoing

Of the hundred or so starters, most are happy to be there!

OUCH!

Since the middle of July, New Englander Tim Johnson of Saturn has been camped out in the Boulder, Colorado, at the home of teammate Will Frischkorn, preparing for this Saturday's epic, 140-mile Saturn Cycling Classic from Boulder to Breckenridge. Four days before the race, VeloNews caught up with Johnson, who was doing his best to prepare for the nearly 14,000 total feet of climbing over seven mountain passes. "When I got out here after Cascade, the main thing was to try to get used to the altitude.," Johnson said. "I'm not an altitude boy, but given enough time, I think I can do okay. Long

Defending Vuelta a Espana champion Angel Casero is currentlyracing in the two-week Tour of Portugal to get ready for Spain's three-weeknational tour.Casero has been dogged with injuries this year and underwent knee surgery in April. His Team Coast was overlooked for an at-large bid for the Tour de France and Casero has a lot riding on a strong Vuelta.“This Tour of Portugal is 14 very demanding days and is perfect formy preparation for the Vuelta,” Casero told the Portuguese daily Publico.“The Tour of Portugal is very hard and it will help me recover from myknee operation I had in

VeloNews.com welcomes your letters. If you run across somethingin the pages of VeloNews magazine or see something on VeloNews.comthat causes you to want to write us, dropus a line. Please include your full name and home town. By submittingmail to this address, you are consenting to the publication of your letter.  A crime of omission Editors: You forgot to mention Mariano Friedick in your article (see "Dominguezwins, but Lance is the hit on Wall Street") on the race today...JellyBelly is a hard working team (remember the U.S. Pro) on a small budget,they need to be  the exposure when they

Welcome to VeloNews's live coverage of the Saturn Classic, a 140-mile nightmare from Boulder to Breckenridge. Stay with us for updates as often as technology permits until the last dawg is dead. 11:00 a.m. Jesus returns and decrees Tammy Thomas the winner. 10:50 a.m. Scott Moninger explodes after being struck by an Iraqi Scud missile.

Bike riders, tramps and thievesYesterday, after a long day in the saddle and a long drive afterward,we arrived at our very quaint French hotel last night only to find outthat the front desk manager had mistakenly been told that our team wasa bunch of thieves. So he refused to open any of our phone lines for fearthat we wouldn’t pay our bills. And he asked our team director for paymentin full as soon as we arrived. As we later found out, after a bit of argument, one of the Italian teamshad left the Dutch hotel without paying for about 200 euros worth of phonecalls. So the faxes had been

Quebec riders dominated the time trial event at the National Cycling Championshipson Thursday, taking three of six medals in the elite categories.Leading the way was Rona's Genevieve Jeanson, winning her first everelite national title in the women's category after battling back from aknee injury that forced her to drop out of the Commonwealth Games. Defendingchampion Lyne Bessette (Quebec) finished third in the women's category,while Alexandre Cloutier (VW-Trek) took the silver medal in the men's eventbehind Eric Wohlberg (Saturn), who took his seventh consecutive title.Mountain biker Ryder

Roller Coaster - Wet or dry, the Saturn Classic will be tough

Wet and wild: Tim Johnson's Saturn Classic predictions

It's gotta be the suit.

Okay, so maybe when the rain started it helped Van Moorsel.

ONCE’s Joseba Beloki says he wants to be in position to win Saturday’sClassica San Sebastian. That means he has to be in the front over the punishingJaizkibel climb towering over the Atlantic Ocean just east of the finishline in San Sebastian. “Maybe this is my year, at least to try to be at the front at the Jaizkibel,which is where everything is decided,” Beloki told the newspaper El Dario Vasco. “I really hope to be at the front over the climb and then we’ll see what happens.” The Jaizkibel is a long, difficult climb up a lonely, windswept summitsome 20 kilometers from the finish line on

Stage 4 - What a long day in the saddle. I think we pedaled close to fivehours today, including the neutral. Granted, the 20km of neutral was casualpace at best, while the actual race yo-yo’d depending on the terrain andthe mood of the riders. The Saturn girls were kind of hoping a non-threatening break would beallowed up the road so we wouldn’t have to cover attacks all day. Afterthe first sprint at 12km, American Mari Holden and a French national teamgirl made a break and got up to 50 seconds before the pack got nervousand chased them down. Mari’s done very well at this race before and

Four days after her brutal practice run crash at the NORBA mountain cross race in Durango, Colorado, American Tara Llanes updated VeloNews with her final injury tally. The damage: broken left collarbone, three fractured ribs, two partially collapsed lungs, one severely bruised lung, torn MCL in the right knee. Her season — and her shot at the NORBA mountain cross title — are almost certainly done. Llanes suffered her injuries on one of the huge double jumps near the finish on Durango's famed Chapman Hill. "The crash happened in the last five minutes of mountain cross practice before the

The escapees - Madeleine Lindberg (Farm Frites), Iryna Chuzhynova (Edilsavino) and Ghita Beltman (Accua Due O) -- were either five minutes up the road or just ahead of the field, depending who was looking at the watch.

While he would have loved to have raced in New York close to family andfriends last Sunday, U.S. Postal's George Hincapie opted to stayin Europe and take on Germany's World Cup race, the HEW Cyclassics in Hamburg. The choice appears to have paid off nicely. Hincapie made the rightmove, joined the winning break on Sunday and rose to third in the overallUCI World Cup standings after finishing fifth behind winner Johan Museeuw. “I really wanted to race in New York. It would have been great to seeall of my friends and family and the people I grew up racing with. Beforethe Tour started,

Stage 3 -- So to sum up yesterday, now that I have the resultsin front of me, Judith is in the yellow jersey with 28 seconds over Polkhanovafrom Iterra. Leontien Van Moorsel is in third, 1:28 back. Judith’s moveyesterday was great, as it put many of the GC threats a few minutes behindher..which is a great cushion to have before heading into the mountains.Every day is a good day when it starts off with our soignuer, Ellen,making us Swiss muesli. She made a huge bowl of it for us to share...withyogurt, rice pudding, cereal, and fruit. With that kind of breakfast inour stomachs, we can make it

Editor's note: T-Mobile's Dede Demet-Barry is sending regular reports back from the Grande Boucle Feminin -- once called the Women's Tour de France. This is the first of her reports I am three days and four stages into La Grande Boucle Feminin.It’s been neat to be back at this race, as it presents the utmost challengesin women's cycling. We will race for fifteen days – starting in S’Hertogendenbosch, The Netherlands traveling through Belgium and into France, hitting the Alps and the Massifs Centrales before finishing in Paris. All the best women in the world are here.I am

Hein Verbruggen, the president of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), has resigned from the board of the World Anti-doping Agency (WADA) in protest at Dick Pound's leadership, he told AFP Monday. The UCI president strongly criticized WADA and its Canadian president for what he termed recent "irresponsible" statements concerning cyclists and said that future association with the UCI was uncertain. "Pound maybe thinks that he can run the WADA presidency like a sheriff in the Wild West, firing with a revolver at all targets," complained the cycling chief, one of WADA's founding

The espoir and junior national road championships concluded on Sunday in Clemson, South Carolina with the time trials for all categories. In the men's espoir race, Prime Alliance's Michael Creed beat Saturn's Will Frischkorn by more than a minute to take the national champion's jersey. In the 17-18 races, Saturn Development riders Zak Grabowski and Larsynn Staley won the men's and women's races, respectively. Grabowski beat teammate Oliver Stiller-Cote, while Staley beat Magen Long, to whom she had finished second in both the road race and criterium. For results from other categories,

Leontien Zijlaard-Van Moorsel made the home crowd happy in Sunday’sopener of the the 2002 Grande Boucle Feminine, winning the secondhalf of the two-part opening day stage to take the race lead. Saturn’s Petra Rossner won the morning sector and Zijlaard-VanMoorsel’s Farm Frites team won the team time trial to put the Dutch riderinto the leader’s jersey. The Grande Boucle Feminine is the most important stage race on the women’scalendar and continues through Aug. 18. After starting in Netherlands onSunday, the race heads through eastern France toward the Alps for a pairof tough climbing days

Two-time Paralympian Dan Nicholson of the United States won a world title and set a world record for CP3 cyclists Monday, August 5, at the International Paralympic Committee’s World Cycling Championships in Altenstadt, Germany. Nicholson captured the 1 kilometer time trial for cyclists with cerebral palsy in a world record time of 1 minute, 19.75 seconds. Meanwhile, teammate Dory Selinger also claimed gold in the LC2 1 km time trial for cyclists with a single-leg amputation below the knee in 1:12.67. Selinger led an impressive U.S. barrage in the LC2 category. Paul Martin (Boulder, Colo.)

Stage 2For reasons I still don’t fully comprehend, the race director – whose name I really should learn – just loves to make long stages even longer by adding 20km of neutral before our actual race begins. So we need toremember to not pay attention to depart rèal in our racebibles, but to depart fictif, the actual time of departure withhowever many extra neutral kilometers he’s decided to tack on. Mr. Race Director really wants longer stages for the women, but as theUCI won’t let him make stages too terribly long, he just adds onmore neutral kilometers to make up for it. Fortunately, the

Monday's Euro-file: Grande Boucle; Euro MTB titles; Dekker in doubt and Horrillo is out

Arndt takes the stage and the lead.

Johan Museeuw skipped the Tour de France to be fresh for the second half of the season. The 36-year-old veteran proved just how fresh after winning Sunday’s HEW Cyclassics race, the sixth round in the 2002 World Cup series. On a 253-km flat course that was supposed to be a rematch of the battle for the Tour’s green points jersey between Lotto’s Robbie McEwen and Telekom’s Erik Zabel turned into another inspiring win by the Belgian, who consolidates his lead in the 10-round World Cup. The hyped showdown between the Australian and the German wasn’t in the cards. McEwen crashed early in the

Top five –1. Ivan Dominguez (USA), Saturn, 62km in 2:04:402. Vassily Davidenko (Rus), Navigators3. Gord Fraser (Can), Mercury4. Alex Candelario, (USA), Prime Alliance5. Kevin Monahan, (USA), 7UP-Nutrafig Check back soon for a complete race report from VeloNews editorial director John Wilcockson and photos from Casey Gibson. 3:40 p.m. Wow! Saturn, which was no where to be seen on that last lap, timed it perfectly. As Navigators and Mercury fought it out, Saturn's Ivan Dominguez scoots right up the middle and takes the win. 3:39 p.m. Mercury is still leading the front of the field. 3:38

The USCF junior national championships continued on Saturday in Clemson, South Carolina, with Mercury's Josh Kerkhof taking the men's 17-18 road race and Magen Long (OBRU-The Bicycle Store) winning the women's race. Long's win made her a double winner on the weekend, with her road victory going along with the criterium title she earned on Thursday. Kerkhof, meanwhile, bounced back from a crash in his criterium race to take the road national title. The championships conclude with the junior and espoir time trials on Sunday. For road race results from all categories, click on "view results"

Editor’s note: - Saturn’s Kimberly Bruckner will bewriting a regular diary for VeloNews.com throughout this year’s La GrandeBoucle Feminin International – originally known as the Women’s Tour de France.This is her first report. Sunday August 4 And so it begins...15 stages in 14 days, one “rest” day, 12 transfers,racing our bikes through Holland, Belgium, and, for the most part, France.They call it La Grande Boucle Feminin International ...the "bigloop." And this is my first time racing it...the women’s version of LeTour de France. Seven Saturn women and our support crew are ready to

Lance Armstrong was the biggest draw of the inaugural New York City Cycling Championship presented by BMC Software, which was the first major sports event to take place in lower Manhattan since September 11. But on a hot, humid Sunday afternoon after a 50-lap, 100km circuit race watched by a crowd estimated to be anywhere between 50,000 and 125,000 fans, the four-time Tour de France champion was 16 seconds and 27 places behind the brilliant sprint winner, Ivan Dominguez, the 26-year-old Cuban who races from Saturn. The $10,000 winner’s check along with the prestige of a nationally televised

There was no change in the overall GC at Sunday’s final stage of the International, a 30-mile criterium won by Charles Dionne of 7UP/Nutrafig and Sarah Konrad of DeFeet/Cycles de Oro. Prime Alliance’s 23-year-old Danny Pate took top honors over the seven-day event, finishing 1:45 ahead of teammate Matt Decanio, while on the women’s side Heather Albert of Goldy’s finished an impressive 8:42 in front of Maria Calle, largely on the strength of her solo breakaway in Wednesday’s road race. In the men’s criterium, Prime Alliance set the pace and led the pack, looking to guard their team lead,

Former Durango resident Missy Giove and Australian Chris Kovarik each captured downhill wins on the final day of racing at NORBA No. 4 in Durango, Colorado on Sunday. After two days of racing on and around the Fort Lewis College campus, the pros headed 30 miles up highway 550 to compete on the same downhill track that was used at last year's World Cup race here. And like last year there were plenty of eye-popping problems that wowed fans, but gave many riders fits. One such section was a tricky off-camber rock garden that killed all your speed if you didn't find a clean line. Giove was one

Museeuw solidifies his hold on the World Cup lead.

Live updates - New York City Cycling Championship

Letters from the Big Loop - Kimberly Bruckner's Grande Boucle diaries

Not bad for a guy who doesn't like field sprints

There's Tour winner in there somewhere.

Racing in the urban canyons.

Dominguez wins, but Lance is the hit on Wall Street

Hincapie joined the right break.

Simoni marked his return to the peloton in Hamburg.

Giove's signature was in high demand after her win.

Gerolsteiner's Michael Rich and Uwe Peschel won the 72km Grand Prix timetrial in Karlsruhe, Germany, on Saturday, leaving a field of top riders,including Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong and his teammate FloydLandis, in their wake.Rich and Peschel timed 1:23:02 topping the second-placed French pairLaurent and Nicolas Jalabert by 1:35 with Spaniards Joseba Beloki and Igorde Galdeano third at 2:25.Armstrong and Landis managed an eighth place finish, coming in 4:13behind the leaders and just behind another American duo, Telekom ridersBobby Julich and  Kevin Livingston, who took

Willy Voet, the man who achieved notoriety as the Festina soigneur found with a carload of drugs at the start of the 1998 Tour de France, claims that cycling is no cleaner today than it was four years ago, despite the fact that not a single rider in this summer's Tour tested positive. Voet, in an interview in Sunday's edition of the Swiss weekly Dimanche.ch, said that little has changed since the scandal that nearly stopped the 1998 Tour de France in its tracks, "I've always proclaimed loud and clear that nothing has changed in cycling,” Voet told the paper. "No one takes the

Goldy’s Heather Albert assumed her race leader’s jersey with style Saturday, winning the hilly 100-mile sixth stage at the International in severe heat. In the men’s race, Jason McCartney of Bianchi-Grand Performance pulled off a surprise victory 16 seconds ahead of race leader Danny Pate (Prime Alliance.) “Winning ‘The International’ has been my intent since the beginning of the cycling season,” said Albert moments before the women’s race, adding that she was ready to take on any challengers. “To see my goal reaching fruition is quite gratifying.” From the gun, Team Rona began attacking,

The inaugural year of NORBA's new mountain cross discipline rolled on Saturday in Durango with some big crashes by two of the sports top stars, and a pair of big wins for Eric Carter and Sabrina Jonnier. Before racing even began, then series leader Tara Llanes met with disaster, going down hard during the warm-up session on the steep Chapman Hill course and suffering what was initially diagnosed as a broken collarbone. According to several eyewitnesses Llanes came up short on one of the big double jumps that preceded the finish line and went sailing over her bars. The Yeti-Pearl Izumi rider

Start with the fact that the short track at NORBA NCS No. 4 was held almost entirely on the track around a football field, then add the kind of extremely muddy conditions usually reserved for wintertime European cyclo-cross races, and you have a picture of the racing in Durango, Colorado on Saturday. After a torrential mid-afternoon rainstorm soaked the Fort Lewis College campus, riders lined up in front of the small stadium's grandstand for a 20-minutes, plus 3 laps race that was thoroughly entertaining to watch, but hell to ride in. When all was done Alison Dunlap (Luna) and Ryder Hesjedal

Carter heads for his third straight four-ride win.

Lopes came back from his crash and put on a show for the fans.

Jonnier was out front for the entire women's final.

Dunlap blasts through the mud.

Florit managed a smile despite the elements.

Dunlap heads around the Fort Lewis track.

Vanlandingham's look was shared by many.

Hesjedal leads the pack.

The Vuelta a Espana promises to be a highly competitive after the releaseof the official team start list this week. With the absence of Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong, a dozen topriders will be looking to step up for a stab at victory in the final three-weekgrand tour of the 2002 season. Topping the list will be defending champion Angel Casero. Casero'sTeam Coast had hopes of earning an at-large bid to the Tour, but it never materialized, so the team has a lot riding on the Vuelta. Casero will be joined by two-time Vuelta winner Alex Zulle andperennial stage-hunter Fernando

Lithuania's largest daily on Friday slammed the French judiciary and media for the jailing of the wife of Lithuanian cyclist Raimondas Rumsas, calling the move revenge for his third place finish in the Tour de France. "The operation only against the wife of the cyclist appears to be an attempt to crucify him, especially as he is an upstart from a country without influence," the daily Lietuvos Rytas wrote in an editorial. Edita Rumsas, the rider's wife, was charged on Tuesday after being caught with performance-enhancing drugs in her car and is currently in police detention. She has

One got here 10 days ago, while the other arrived at 2 a.m. this morning. But when racing on Friday was done, the result was the same for Jimena Florit and Roland Green, as both took impressive cross-country wins at NORBA No. 4 in Durango, Colorado. Florit (RLX-Polo Sport) was the early arrival, rolling into this tourist town in southwest Colorado more than a week ago to get used to the altitude and learn the ins and outs of the tough Durango course. And when race day finally did arrive, she was on form from beginning to end, out-dueling reigning world champion Alison Dunlap in a

On Friday, Saturn’s Will Frischkorn won the espoir national championship road race in Clemson, South Carolina, beating out Patrick McCarty of the U.S. national team. Frischkorn, McCarty and Jonathan Erdelyi (Brielle Cyclery) broke away on the fourth and final lap of the 21-mile course, and Frischkorn dropped the other two on the difficult 3-mile, 15 percent climb to the finish. McCarty took second and Erdelyi third. The espoir and junior national championships began on Thursday in Clemson, with the juniors' criteriums on the campus of Clemson University. Blake Caldwell (Mercury) won the

For the third time in five stages, the leader’s jersey of the seven-day International stage race traded hands within the Prime Alliance team. After sweeping the opening stage’s time trial-- Svein Tuft narrowly edged out teammate Matt Decanio, and U-23 world time trial champion Danny Pate finished third – the team has led the race consecutively in that order. Tuft passed the jersey to Decanio after the opening two stages, and Friday, it was Pate’s turn. Riders began the day tentatively, slowly rolling into the scenic four-lap, 80-mile circuit race around Martinsburg, Pennsylvania, a few

“You have hurt my feelings with your filthy fish-wrapper….”a cane--wielding Patrick Fitzpatrickto editor Deke Patwell inThomas McGuane’s "Nobody’s Angel" Lance Armstrong’s fourth consecutive Tour triumph was the prelude toa cacophony of chin music in the public prints, a symphony scored for smallminds playing big mouths, over who is the world’s greatest athlete — indeed,over who is an athlete and who is not. It didn’t help that Lance makes Le Grande Boucle look like aSunday spin on the bike path. A miser where his physical capital is concerned,Scrooge McTour spends no more than is

Only the TV moto could keep up with Green.

Florit crusing alone at the front.

Grigson pulled away from Sydor to take third.

Racing started and finished inside the Fort Lewis College football stadium.

Hesjedal had a tough day, but still managed to finish second.

Brown sails through the culvert ahead of Horgan-Kobelski.

Brown nips Horgan-Kobelski for third.

Florit leads Dunlap up the Chapman Hill climb.

O Iron Mike, Where Art Thou? Maybe Tyson is someone who could bring “athletic credibility” to cycling.

Sport directors from the top Spanish teams are convinced Lance Armstrong will win a record-tying fifth Tour de France. A quick survey by the Spanish sports daily AS checked the barometer of Spain’s top teams. “He will win two more because he’s ambitious and he wants to break the record,” said Vicente Belda of Kelme. “I also don’t see anyone behind him who can beat him.” Manolo Saiz, the ONCE director who’s team has come closest to Armstrong in the podium, said Armstrong is without a doubt cycling’s top dog. “You can’t say he can win as many as he wants, but it’s practically true,” Saiz

The Prime Alliance cycling team maintained race leadership today at the fourth stage of the International, a 60-mile circuit race in Holidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Taking the approach of covering moves, instead of riding a defensive tempo, Prime Alliance effectively forced the other teams in the peloton to ride at the front to keep the field intact. Right from the gun, race leader Matt Decanio covered a four-man break away group, which was caught after five miles. Soon after, a nine-man escape formed containing Svein Tuft, Prime Alliance’s former race leader. The group gained a maximum of 1:45

After a month long hiatus while the World Cup circuit took center stage, the NORBA National Championship Series reconvenes for the second half of its season, with stop No. 4 in Durango, Colorado this weekend. Pro racing gets going Friday with the women's cross country at 11 a.m., followed by the men at 2 p.m. The short track and mountain cross are Saturday, followed by the downhill on Sunday. This year's revamped 7.89-mile cross-country circuit features much of the same terrain used at last year's World Cup event, save for the start/finish, which has been moved from the center of the Fort

Australia smashed the world 4000 meter team pursuit record in the final of the Commonwealth Games at Manchester Thursday night. Graeme Brown, Peter Dawson, Mark Renshaw and Stephen Wooldridge clocked 3:59.483 to beat the old world mark of 3:59.710 set by Germany at Sydney Olympic Games in 2000. Australia took the gold medal ahead of England, whose 4:02.665 was a national record. "At last year's world's we didn't even finish the first round because we crashed -- and I caused it -- so this is great," said Renshaw. "For Australia to pitch four guys together, get them to train for three weeks

Decanio wearing the leader's jersey

Raimondas Rumsas, whose wife has been charged with doping offenses after being caught with performance-enhancing drugs, showed absolutely no traces of doping in tests taken during the Tour de France, sources told AFP Wednesday. Rumsas, who finished third in his Tour debut, was due to face a round of police questioning but his lawyer said he would not arrive until the afternoon after missing his flight. Rumsas's wife Edita was arrested on Sunday after French customs officials found a number of doping products including corticoids, testosterone and EPO in her car. She is now being held

The seven-day International stage race continued on Tuesday with the 74-mile second stage in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, with Rona’s Nicole Freedman and 7UP-Nutra Fig’s Charles Dionne taking the stage wins in the women’s and men’s races, respectively. The women’s race came down to a big field sprint finish in Johnstown, with Goldy’s Heather Albert the first to jump, with about 400 meters to go. Freedman came through 150 meters from the line to take the win, followed by Gina Grain (Boise) and Andrea Hannos (Rona). Race leader Manon Jutras stayed in the yellow leader’s jersey for her Rona