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Guido who?

Elli leads the escape

Leipheimer is the only non-Spaniard in the top-10

For more than two weeks, the numerous Italians in the peloton seemed more interested in chatting with the gorgeous Vuelta a España podium girls than winning stages. The flirting stopped long enough during Thursday’s 95-mile 18th stage from Albacete to Cuenca for an Italian finally to score, a stage victory that is. Cantina Tollo’s Filippo Simeoni profited by an untimely crash by iBanesto.com Santi Blanco, who held a comfortable margin over a 12-man breakaway but slipped on an oil patch while descending off a category-three climb just 12 km from the finish. Simeoni was the lead chaser and

First-time world championship rider Tammy Thomas won through to the last four of the women’s sprint in Antwerp, Belgium on Thursday. Beaten by Germany’s Susan Panzer in the first match of the quarterfinals, Thomas hit back to level the scores and then won the decider with an attacking ride from the front, clocking 12.257 and 12.435 seconds. Also through to the semis is Canada’s Lori-Ann Muenzer, who took the first match against Szilvia Szabolcsi (Hungary) only to be relegated to second place for straying across the sprinters line. Unfazed by the upset, Muenzer took no chances in the two

Simeoni

Sevilla holds the lead

The gates of Cuenca

Zabel's escape gave him back the points jersey

The French Olympic sprint team heads for gold.

The Olympic sprint podium.

Salsa Cycles has issued a recall of 466 of the company’s Alto disc-brake specific mountain-bike rim. The company reports that a faulty extrusion in the manufacturing process could cause the rim to fail catastrophically without warning. The Salsa Alto Disc rim is a black mountain bike rim with a 543 ERD made in 32 and 36 hole models. It is a disc-brake specific rim. The rim is labeled “Salsa Alto” in yellow, red, and white. The rim also has large “Salsa” decals on the side.The rims in question were sold by Quality Bicycle Products and other distributors to retail bike shops across the

The winds of change blew through the 56th Vuelta a España and it was the U.S. Postal Service team at the center of the storm. With 35 km to go in the 159-km 17th stage, U.S. Postal Service attacked hard and split the group in the windy flats from Murcia to Albacete across Spain’s barren meseta. Juan Miguel Mercado (ibanesto.com), who started the day third, and David Plaza (Festina), who started fifth overall, were among the casualties. Postal kept driving and finished 1 minute, 12 seconds ahead the second group. Lampre’s Robert Hunter bounded out of the lead group to take his second

The first rainbow jersey of the 2001 World Track Championship went to Arnaud Tournant of France who won the kilometer time trial for the fourth straight year. Tournant, the final starter in the 21-rider field brought the event to a thrilling climax with a time 1 minute, 2.571 seconds, for a clear victory over last year’s silver medalist, German Soren Lausberg who clocked a 1:03.363 on Tuesday in Antwerp, Belgium. Tournant was the huge favorite, having dominated the event for the past four years since taking Australian Shane Kelly's title in 1998. But the Frenchman went one better than

Heras and the gang join the big move

Hunter takes the win

The 56th Vuelta a España entered its final week with another fast day in the saddle in Tuesday’s 153-km (95-mile) 16th stage that finished well under the expected time following Monday’s rest day. Domo’s Tomas Konecny was fastest to the line while Kelme’s Oscar Sevilla easily retained the overall lead for the sixth day. U.S. Postal’s Roberto Heras and Levi Leipheimer remained in their respective fourth and sixth places overall. A steady breeze pushed the peloton along at a brisk pace to the day’s major obstacle, the category-two Cresta del Gallo just 13 kilometers from the finish line in

Stage 14 This is longest stage of the Vuelta, with a nice profile to boot. The legs seem to be OK this morning on the way down for breakfast. It's a shame sometimes we are not able to enjoy our surroundings and accommodations to the fullest. We were right on the coastline just south of Valencia. After breakfast it was back to the room to try and squeeze in another half-hour of sleep. On the way over to the race everyone seemed a little quiet. I think we all had today's stage on our minds. The team meeting was short and to the point: Benoit, Victor and myself in the early breakaways. It was

American Olympic sprint champion Marty Nothstein and the Chinese national team will not compete at the track cycling world championships, which are slated to begin Wednesday at the SportPaleis in Antwerp, Belgium. Nothstein, who recently turned in a sub-par showing at the Goodwill Games in Brisbane, Australia, has turned down the chance to race at the event in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. The move will reduce the U.S. team to just five men and four women. The Chinese, who won two medals at last year’s championships, apparently bowed

Italian cycling team Mapei announced Tuesday the signing of Kazakhstan youngster Dmitriy Muravyev. Muravyev, 21, inked a two-year deal with the outfit after winning 10 amateur races this year. Muravyev will make the move to Italy after representing his country at the world championships in Lisbon, Portugal, his last competition as an amateur. The move came a day after Mapei announced the signing of Olympic mountain biking champion Miguel Martinez. Copyright AFP 2001

There was talk of staying home, but despite the September 11 terrorist attacks, USA Cycling has decided against bowing out of this year’s world championships, and announced its 24-rider roster on Tuesday. The U.S. will be one of 35 countries competing at the final major road event of the 2001 season slated for October 9-14 in Lisbon, Portugal. The men’s squad will be led by four-time world’s team member and 2001 USPRO champion Fred Rodriguez. Rodriguez recently finished second in the Grand Prix de Fourmies in France. Jonathan Vaughters will also make the trip to Lisbon. The Colorado

Last night was another opportunity to try to catch some extra zzz's, but it wasn't to be with the heavy machinery working outside our window. At breakfast for the first time since the start of the Vuelta a Espana I was at the table before anyone else. Hey, at this point I need all the firsts I can get. Maybe this was a could sign for today’s stage. I signed a couple of autographs on our way to the start and the people replied, "Gracias Victor Hugo Pena." There's only one way to change this confusion amongst the fans: I need a stage win! Even Victor is calling me Victor in the peloton. I

Rubiera and Virenque

Nothstein won't contest world's

Citing “a breakdown in trust,” the Italian cycling team Mapei has fired former world number one Michele Bartoli on Monday. In an apparently unrelated move, the team also announced that it had signed mountain-bike star Miguel Martinez to a three-year road contract. In a statement faxed to news agencies around Europe on Monday Mapei's general manager Giorgio Squinzi said that "it would be advisable for Bartoli to negotiate with his future team right now." The parting of the ways comes at a time when speculation was running high that Bartoli was planning to join Fassa Bortolo. Squinzi

Jonas Carney (Prime Alliance) and Jenny Eyerman (jane Cosmetics) won the pro men’s and women’s races at the Mercury Cycling Classic of Irvine in California on Sunday. Held on a 1.5-mile loop at the Irvine Spectrum in Orange County in front of Mercury's newly-opened international headquarters, each lap included nine turns and an out-and-back section. With the Saturn Cycling Team virtually absent from the inaugural event, the racing was wide open. In the 90-minute men's race, Pro Cycling Tour leader Trent Klasna was the only member of the Saturn team in attendance. He faced domestic powers

Chris Eatough called it the "toughest race" he’d ever done, and Mary Grigson likely would have agreed. But that didn’t stop the pair from taking the 2001 24-hour solo world championship titles at Hurkey Creek Park in Idyllwild, California, on Sunday. Things didn’t go so well for some of the other race favorites, however, as reigning 24-hour national champion Tinker Juarez dropped out after completing just five laps, and mountain-biking legend Rishi Grewal was good for just seven laps before he bowed out. The primary culprit for all those troubles was the heat. Temperatures topped out near

Martinez is hanging up the fat tires.

Carney

Sunday’s 207-km (128-mile) 15th stage was the longest of the 56th Vuelta a España and the accumulation of the kilometers two weeks into the race took its toll on the peloton. It was a good day for U.S. Postal Service but a bad one for Levi Leipheimer, whose chances of finishing on the final podium suffered a setback when he lost contact with the lead group on the final climb to the beyond-category Alto de Aitana. The miles didn’t slow down Milaneza’s Klaus Moller, who followed an attack by U.S. Postal’s Jose Luis Rubiera all the way to the top of the beyond-category Alto de Aitana. “I used

Jose Maria Perez, director sportif of Relax-Fuenlabrada was suspended Sunday by his employers following controversial remarks made about the ONCE team and their former world champion Abraham Olano. Perez claimed on Spanish radio last week that Olano had won the world title in 1995 with a hematocrit reading (the percentage of red blood cells) of 62, and that ONCE had a 2.5 million dollar "pharmacy budget.” Perez, whose team only has an overall budget of 11,000 dollars, also claimed that Swiss rider Alex Zulle, with the iBanesto team, "was not riding well" because he had been deprived of his

Jens Voigt of the Credit Agricole team succeeded Lance Armstrong as Grand Prix des Nations champion when he won the 74km time trial event in France Saturday. Voigt’s American teammate Jonathan Vaughters finished 15th, 4:20 off of the German’s winning time of 1:34:13. Hungarian Laszlo Bodrogi was second, 11 seconds back. Last year, Armstrong cruised to victory in the Grand Prix des Nations while preparing for the 2000 Sydney Olympics in September. The three time Tour de France winner won that contest by 1:41.

Sevilla chases

Stage 11 Today was one of those stages that you try and put in the back of your mind until the day arrives. I remember looking at the entire Vuelta profile on line stage by stage. I thought to myself, OK, oooh, oh that's a good one, and then stage 11 comes up and you don't say anything, you just move onto the next stage as if nothing had been seen. Down at breakfast the mood was relaxed with everyone eating a little extra to help fuel those legs to victory. At our team meeting Johan gave the specific orders to each of the riders as to their role for the stage. Mine was to go with the early

There was no calm before the storm in Saturday’s transition stage along Spain’s Mediterranean Coast. Heavy rains pounded the peloton during the 170-km (105-mile) 14th stage from Tarragona to Vinaros on the eve of the difficult and decisive climbing stage to Alto de Aitana. Lampre’s Juan Manuel Garate won his first-ever professional victory, easily beating iBanesto.com’s Jon Odriozola after the pair pulled away from a 14-man breakaway. Kelme’s Oscar Sevilla retained the overall lead, but racers were already thinking about Sunday’s long, steep climb to Alto de Aitana. “It’s going to be a very

Sevilla still in the lead

Elli drives the break

Markus Zberg was the first rider to abandon the 56th Vuelta a España when he crashed in the opening time trial on Sept. 8 in Salamanca and dislocated his shoulder. In Friday’s 206-km (128-mile) 13th stage, brother and Rabobank teammate Beat Zberg won one for the family. Zberg held off seven other riders in a breakaway in a frenetic sprint to take his first stage victory in a three-week grand tour. But his victory was just as much for his brother as it was for himself. “This victory means a lot to me. My brother was very distraught when he crashed and I dedicate this victory to him,” said

Joseba Beloki is unlikely to start Saturday's 14th stage of the Vuelta a España, a source close to the Spaniard's ONCE team reported Friday. Beloki, who has placed third in the past two editions of the Tour de France and was a co-favorite for the Vuelta here, is thought to have a viral infection. ONCE team officials sent blood tests away for analysis on Wednesday afternoon and Friday's subsequent results indicated that Beloki had the start of a respiratory infection. Beloki was seen in tears on Tuesday as he struggled in the 12th stage in the Pyrenees while he was wearing the leader's

Sevilla still in the lead

Kelme powers the peloton

The great escape

Elli and the Telekoms drove the chase for Zabel

Beloki in happier times

The three-day battle of the Pyrénées is over and Kelme’s Oscar Sevilla walked away standing tall in the overall leader’s jersey. There were no major shake-ups in the overall standings in 12th stage of the 2001 Vuelta a España, a 17-km (10.5-mile) climbing time trial Thursday to Arcalis, deep in the heart of the Andorran Pyrenees. The top-four riders in the overall maintained their positions but defending Vuelta champion Roberto Heras (U.S. Postal Service) slipped to sixth as stage-winner Jose Maria Jimenez (ibanesto.com) continues his steady climb in the g.c. Jimenez won his third

The Canadian Cycling Association announced its rider selections on Wednesday for the UCI Road Race World Championships to be held October 9-14 in Lisbon, Portugal. Roland Green, who became the first Canadian man to win a cross-country world championship with his victory at Vail, Colorado, Sunday, will ride the elite men’s time trial along with national teammate and 2000 Canadian time trial champion Eric Wohlberg. Green is not the only selected rider with impressive palmarés. Michael Barry, 1996 Canadian espoir national road race champion and Mark Walters, 1998 Canadian road race champion,

Chris Horner has been granted clearance by the UCI to leave the troubled Mercury team and finish out the 2001 season as a member of Prime Alliance. Horner is making the move to Prime Alliance in time to race this weekend in Irvine, California, and has contracted to race for the team in 2002. Horner will be joined by fellow Mercury rider John Peters for the 2002 season. Prime Alliance general manager Roy Knickman said Horner will serve as "a sort of co-leader with Danny Pate," the team's most promising young rider. Knickman said that the team's title sponsor has been pleased with the

Green will trade in the fat tires for skinny ones and head to Portugal.

Jiminez has an almost Zabel-like win streak

Sevilla's seventh was good enough to keep him in the jersey

Leipheimer continues to wow 'em

It was the best of times and the worst of times in the 11th stage of the Vuelta a España, depending, of course, on who you talked to. Wednesday was very good for Kelme’s Oscar Sevilla, who regained the overall lead. It was very bad for ONCE’s Joseba Beloki, who bonked and dropped like a rock to 26th in the overall standings after losing nearly 20 minutes to the leaders in the tough, six-climb 154-km (95-mile) stage over the Andorran Pyrénées. It was pretty good for U.S. Postal’s Levi Leipheimer and Roberto Heras, who moved up to fourth and fifth overall, respectively. It was better still

Giro d’Italia winner Gilberto Simoni appears to be on his way out of the Lampre team, which on Wednesday released its official team roster for the 2002 season - without his name. Lampre said it had not received word from the 30-year-old Simoni about his future plans, and seemed to anticipate any decision by thanking him for his two years service and wishing him good luck for the future. The Italian outfit will also be without departing Swiss rider Oscar Camenzind, winner of Liege-Bastogne-Liege. However, Lampre will welcome back former team member Pavel Tonkov of Russia, who arrives from

Sevilla: back on top

Jimenez on his own

Leipheimer

The Vuelta entered Andorra Wednesday

Simoni's plans for next year probably don't include wearing a Lampre jersey.

The first day of the Vuelta a España’s shootout of the Pyrénées ended with puff instead of bang in the first of three-straight climbing stages, but everyone expects the fireworks to begin for real in Wednesday’s six-climb etapa reina. Santiago Blanco won his biggest stage of his career, delivering a dramatic solo victory high in the Catalan Pyrénées during Tuesday’s 168-km (104-mile) 10th stage from Sabadell, a suburb of Barcelona, to La Molina, a ski resort already sprinkled with the first snow of the season. ONCE’s Joseba Beloki easily retained his overall lead for the third day when he

My rest day started at 9:30 on Monday morning with a knock on the door from one of our staff. I think I could have easily slept another 10 hours. That probably wouldn't have been too wise. Breakfast was more on the light side, since in the past I've had a tendency to eat too much between races and then paid the price. Juice, bread, cereal, and fruit were plenty for the training we had planned. Roberto Herras knew exactly where to ride in the busy streets of Barcelona to get us out of town quickly and into the surrounding hills. Johan thought between two and two-and-a-half hours was plenty

The final day of the Tour de l’Avenir in France belonged to a Russian and an Australian, who dashed French hopes at the world’s premier stage race for riders 25 years and younger. iBanesto.com’s Denis Menchov snuck away for the overall victory, snatching the race lead from Frenchman Florent Brard (Festina), while Mercury’s Baden Cooke took his second stage win of the race and the green points jersey. Cooke and Menchov escaped the peloton on the last of five climbs up the Cat. 1 Côte du Chauffaud, escaping 4km from the summit of the climb. They crested the climb with 28 seconds on the chase

Germany’s Judith Arndt won the final round of the UCI Women’s World Cup, the 140km Rotterdam Tour in the Netherlands on Sunday. Saturn’s Anna Millward took the overall World Cup title, despite abandoning the final round on a rainy, windy day in the Netherlands. At the start of the final finishing circuit, with about 20km to go, Arndt escaped from a group of seven which had gone off earlier in the race. Despite the wind and the rain, the German powered away on the final lap, putting more than three minutes on the closest chaser in those closing kilometers. At the finish, Arndt had her first

Riders from the U.S. Postal Service team went on a three-hour training ride during Monday’s rest day to keep their legs fresh for the upcoming battle in the Pyrenees. The 56th Vuelta a España hits a trio climbing stages Tuesday to Thursday that will determine whether or not Roberto Heras can repeat as Vuelta champion. So far, the quiet Spanish rider has had difficulty in the Vuelta’s first two climbing stages and sits in eighth place overall at 2:47 back. “I haven’t thrown in the towel yet,” Heras said. “It’s true I am not going well right now. I don’t know exactly why, but at the same

My apologies for not having any reports for the last few days. Due to the tragedy in New York and the spotty phone and Internet service that followed, my agent – who lives about a mile away from the World Trade Center – was unable to consistently reach me. I will be filing a catch up report tomorrow along with the daily report. Yesterday was the last day before the rest day. The peloton was definitely not ready to rest quite yet. We set a record time of around 55km an hour! The day was extremely windy and everyone -- including our team -- seemed to be on the attack, hoping to split up

Heras

Leipheimer

Strong crosswinds and tailwinds blasted the peloton in Sunday’s 179-km (111-mile) ninth stage of the Vuelta a España from Logrono to Zaragoza, splitting the race into echelons across the flats of northern Spain. ONCE’s Igor Galdeano shot free of the lead group of 40 riders in the final three kilometres. He finished alone to earn his third career Vuelta stage victory as well as the record for the fastest-ever road race at an average speed of 55.17kph. Teammate Joseba Beloki retained the overall lead Sunday and Galdeano says his ONCE team is reinvigorated following Beloki’s big ride

Spanish junior Iñaki Lejarreta says, "Of course my uncle (former Teka and ONCE star Marino Lejarreta, the 1982 Vuelta champion and the last man to complete the Tour, Giro and Vuelta in the same year – all in the top ten) is my hero." Well, the way his nephew dominated the junior men’s field, maybe the roles will soon be reversed. But unlike Marino in his famous 1990 mountain stage win in the Tour at Pontarlier, Iñaki knew that there was nobody ahead of him and raised his arms victoriously as he crossed the line more than two minutes ahead of his nearest competitor. At the end of the first

Great Britain’s Nicole Cooke, the reigning world junior road champion, added another laurel to her collection in the junior women’s cross-country in Vail on Sunday morning. As in Plouay last October, she finished alone, but this time, she got a little help from the confusion of her breakaway companion on the course’s final turn. From the start, Maja Wloszczowska of Poland, last year’s world junior cross-country champion and the reigning European champion, applied pressure on the long, 700-vertical-foot climb of the Vail Village Loop. Wloszczowska crashed on the technical descent but

The under-23 men’s cross-country category is one that breeds rivalries. It’s this middle ground between junior and elite categories where young riders looking to make a career of it have a lot to prove. Junior achievements spell potential, under-23 achievements spell contracts. Past all-star rivalries have included Cadel Evans versus Miguel Martinez, and today’s top battle seems to be the one between 21-year-old Julien Absalon of France and 20-year-old Ryder Hesjedal of Canada. Both are top World Cup threats — Absalon scored his first win at Durango this year — and both came to the world

Alison Dunlap said she started thinking about the 2001 world championships when she hit a tree during the cross-country race at last year’s Olympics in Sydney. On that day, the Colorado Springs, Colorado resident would have to settle for seventh, but she vowed things would be different when the world championships came to her home state. A year later, the 32-year-old made good on that pledge, putting together a stunning last-lap charge to win the cross country on the damp slopes of Vail Mountain. Dunlap entered the final lap of the race in third place, 54 seconds behind race leader Gunn-Rita

With the sun setting on the Vail Valley and the 2001 UCI World Mountain Bike Championships in Colorado on Sunday, Canadian Roland Green put the finishing touches on an historic season that saw many firsts for him and for Canada. First Canadian male to win a World Cup, first Canadian male to win the overall World Cup, and now, first to win the world championship. Green, who made it clear all year long that the world championship was the main focus of his season, started the day as one of a handful of favorites. In the end, the man who put up the toughest battle against the Canadian was Dane

Galdeano

Wind forced the peloton into echelons