updated: Mon Jul 25 2011 21:51:00
After two runner-up finishes, cyclist Cadel Evans became the first Australian to win the Tour de France.
Cadel Evans secured Australia's first ever Tour de France victory after the 21st and final stage of the historic race culminated on the streets of Paris.
Jelle Vanendert of Belgium claimed victory in Saturday's arduous 14th stage of the Tour de France from Saint-Gaudens to the summit of Plateau de Beille, with Frenchman Thomas Voeckler hanging onto the race leader's yellow jersey.
Samuel Sanchez finally won his first stage at the Tour de France on Thursday, but the title hopes of his fellow Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador suffered a surprise blow as the race headed into the mountains.
Young Portuguese rider Alberto Rui Costa was rewarded for his bravery in taking part in a long breakaway as he won the eighth stage of the Tour de France in Super-Besse Saturday.
Frenchman Thomas Voeckler has taken the yellow jersey from Norway's Thor Hushovd after a dramatic ninth stage of the Tour de France which was marred by a series of crashes which led to two of the race favorites pulling out.
With the Tour de France nearly upon us, here's a shout-out to Wordsworth's wingman, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who coined the phrase "willing suspension of disbelief" -- which comes in particularly handy when you're watching a pro bike race.
Alberto Contador wrapped up his second Giro d'Italia victory -- and sixth grand tour success -- after the 21st and final stage time-trial in Milan, won by Briton David Millar.
In his doping confessional to CBS's 60 Minutes, Tyler Hamilton not only tells of witnessing teammate Lance Armstrong's use of the banned blood-boosting agent EPO when they rode together on the U.S. Postal Service team from 1995 to 2001, but he also delivers a blow to Armstrong's longtime defense against such allegations: "Never a failed test," Armstrong tweeted in response to Hamilton's remarks. "I rest my case."
updated: Mon May 23 2011 10:28:00
During a 2005 appearance on CNN's Larry King Live, Lance Armstrong denies ever taking performance-enhancing substances.
updated: Sun May 15 2011 13:10:00
A cycling journalist discusses safety concerns and tribute rides for Wouter Weylandt, who died on the Giro d'Italia.
Team Leopard rider Wouter Weylandt of Belgium has been killed after a horror crash on the third stage of the Giro d'Italia.
Cycling's world governing body is to appeal to sport's highest court against the Spanish federation's decision to acquit three-time Tour de France champion Alberto Contador of a doping charge.
When is a suspension not a suspension? When it is issued in Spain, against a high-profile cyclist. On Tuesday, members of the discipline committee of the Spanish Cycling Federation (RFEC) declared Alberto Contador innocent of doping charges. The defending Tour de France champion had been suspended three weeks earlier for a positive drug test during last year's Tour. Contador's urine showed traces of clenbuterol, a result he attributed to a contaminated steak eaten during the race. It was ruled, at the time, that even though he may not have knowingly ingested the substance, Contador was responsible for its presence in his body.
updated: Wed Feb 16 2011 13:34:00
Cycling champion Lance Armstrong gives advice to cancer patients and discusses Tiger Woods and Andre Agassi.
Three-time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador has been cleared of a doping charge by Spain's cycling federation, the federation president and Contador's press office said Tuesday.
The Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) have confirmed they are to investigate the circumstances surrounding cyclist Riccardo Ricco's admission to hospital over the weekend, amid reports the 27-year-old told doctors he had given himself a blood transfusion.
Alberto Contador has been banned for one-year by the Spanish cycling federation (RFEC) after testing positive for the banned anabolic agent clenbuterol on his way to winning last year's Tour de France.
Lance Armstrong stories in the SI Vault
Three-time Tour de France champion Alberto Contador faces a disciplinary hearing into alleged doping after cycling's ruling body asked his Spanish federation to open a case against him.
updated: Fri Oct 01 2010 11:00:00
Three-time Tour de France champ Alberto Contador talks about testing positive for a banned steroid.
Tour of Spain runner-up Ezequiel Mosquera and his Xacobeo team-mate David Garcia Da Pena have tested positive for banned substances during the race, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) revealed on Thursday.
Tour de France legend Laurent Fignon has died from cancer in a Paris hospital aged just 50.
Alberto Contador will ride for a new team when he seeks his fourth Tour de France title next year, after deciding not to renew his contract with Astana.
Lance Armstrong's RadioShack cycling team must go before a disciplinary hearing after delaying the final stage of the Tour de France on Sunday when team members "[breached] the regulations governing riders' clothing," the International Cycling Union said.
Alberto Contador was crowned Tour de France champion for the third time on Sunday as Mark Cavendish won the final stage of cycling's premier event, which was delayed after seven-time winner Lance Armstrong's team were ordered to change their jerseys.
Alexandre Vinokourov rode away from the peloton in the final 7km to claim victory in stage 13 of the Tour de France, although there were no changes to the overall classification with Andy Schleck retaining the yellow jersey.
Thor Hushovd won a brutal third stage of the Tour de France which saw Fabian Cancellara reclaim the leader's yellow jersey and the hopes of a number of race favorites, including Lance Armstrong, dented.
Italy's Alessandro Petacchi took the first stage of the Tour de France after a series of crashes marred the finish in the Belgian capital of Brussels on Sunday.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- Buck up, Lance Armstrong fans. Maybe your hero was sandbagging. Maybe the seven-time Tour de France winner was trying to lull his rivals into a false sense of security as he ticked off his woes at last Friday's introductory press conference for the eight-day Amgen Tour of California, which starts Sunday.
Astana have confirmed that Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan will return to the team for the Tour of Spain, the third of three major cycling tours, which begins on Saturday.
Former Giro d'Italia winner Danilo Di Luca has been provisionally suspended after testing positive for CERA, the International Cycling Union has confirmed.
Well, that was a trifle anticlimactic, no?
Alberto Contador is a 26-year-old professional bike racer from Spain who in two seasons has won the Tours of France, Italy and his homeland. It's a feat matched by only four other riders in history, and by last fall Contador's performances had depleted the European press of its supply of superlatives. Then, in March, wearing the yellow leader's jersey one week into the Paris-Nice stage race, he did what even the finest racers are occasionally known to do, but Contador since his rise to prominence had not yet done. During a mountain stage, he cracked.
Two weeks before the start of the 96th Tour de France, 1,870 days after his last pro victory, Lance Armstrong soloed to first place in the Nevada City (Cal.) Classic, a brief but brutal 40-lap circuit in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Asked afterward about the upcoming Tour, which starts Saturday in Monaco, the Texan poor-mouthed his own chances, pointing to Astana teammates Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer as clear favorites. After those two, he went on, "they got an old man like me to come around and pick up the pieces."
The most-eagerly anticipated Tour de France in recent history begins with a testing individual time-trial in Monaco on July 4 and fittingly, on U.S. Independence Day, an American will take center stage in cycling's greatest race.
Lance Armstrong and 2007 champion Alberto Contador will head a strong Astana team for next month's Tour de France.
Spain's Alejandro Valverde is the new leader of the Dauphine Libere after a dominant display on the giant Mont Ventoux on Thursday.
Briton Mark Cavendish claimed his third sprint victory of the race when powering away from his rivals to win the 175km 13th stage of the Giro d'Italia.
Levi Leipheimer doesn't need sunglasses at the poker table. The 35-year-old Astana rider, currently enjoying the best season of his career, seems to be under the impression that he will be fined $100 per facial expression.
Controversial Italian Michele Scarponi claimed the biggest victory of his career by coming home alone to win the sixth stage of the Giro d'Italia on Thursday.
World cycling's governing body, the International Cycling Union (UCI), have expressed their concern at the financial situation surrounding Lance Armstrong's Astana team.
Just because he's lean and ripped and far more fit than he's ever been at this time of year, Lance Armstrong won't necessarily regain the form that won him seven Tours de France. Just because those questions about his past have faded from the foreground, they haven't necessarily gone away. And while none of them care to be quoted, there are plenty of cycling people who wish he'd leave and not come back. He is a magnet for attention that might otherwise redound to more deserving riders -- guys like his Astana teammate Levi Leipheimer, who on Sunday clinched his third straight victory in the Amgen Tour of California, but whose next mention in this story is more than a thousand words away. But give Armstrong this: Three-and-a-half years after his retirement, two races into his comeback, he has plunged an IV full of Red Bull into the arm of a sport sorely in need of a pick-me-up. By his mere presence in the peloton, the 37-year-old Texan makes pro cycling an infinitely more interesting
On the one hand, there was J.P. Hayes, plumb-bobbing a putt on page B13 of yesterday's New York Times. Last November, upon realizing that he'd inadvertently played a prototype ball not yet approved by the USGA, the journeyman from Appleton, Wisc., phoned officials from his hotel room between rounds at Qualifying school to turn himself in. He was disqualified, dashing his chances of earning his Tour card this year.
Organizers have scrapped next year's Tour of Germany on the same day that German broadcasters pulled the plug on covering the 2009 Tour de France.
Seven-times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong has been cleared to race in the 2009 Tour Down Under in Australia, the International Cycling Union (UCI) have announced.
Alberto Contador joined an elite group of cycling greats who have claimed all three major tours as he wrapped up victory in the Tour of Spain on Sunday.
updated: Wed Sep 10 2008 12:19:00
Lance Armstrong confirms to Dr. Sanjay Gupta that he'll race in this year's Tour de France to raise cancer awareness.
Grim news for gossip rags everywhere: Lance Armstrong confirmed Tuesday that he is, in fact, coming out of retirement. The immediate result, of course -- aside from a defibrillation of interest in cycling in this country -- will be a marked reduction in late-night sightings of the Lone Star State's most prolific Lothario with celebrity blondes of various vintages on his arm. If Lance is going to take the start at the Amgen Tour of California on Valentine's Day, 2009 -- the first of five stages races he's reportedly eyeballing, culminating with the Tour de France next July -- he'll need to maybe be dial down the night life a bit.
Every year more than 200 professional cyclists set off on the epic Tour de France, some preparing for this brutal and astounding journey by embarking on various programs of extreme workouts, strict diet and intense focus. Plus huge quantities of drugs.
Marcus Burghardt of Germany won the 18th stage of the Tour de France on Thursday, leading a two-rider breakaway as the race left the high mountains of the Alps.
While Lance Armstrong chased his record-setting Tour de France winning streak, a number of American businesses rode victoriously along. For Trek Travel in Madison, Wisc., the mid-'00s were boom times: 500 travelers each year booked $5,000 trips to see Lance in action, giving the two-year-old company $2.5 million in revenue a year from the Tour de France alone.
Norwegian Thor Hushovd has won the 164.5km second stage of the Tour de France from Auray to Saint-Brieuc on Sunday.
Spaniard Alejandro Valverde, one of the pre-race favorites, won Saturday's opening stage of the Tour de France, held over 197.5km of undulating terrain, to pull on the race's leader's yellow jersey.
Rhetorical question posed on the eve of the 95th Tour de France, which begins Saturday in Brest, at the tip of the Breton peninsula: Wouldn't it be surprising if cycling, for so long the poster child of pharmacologically jacked-up sports, turned out to be cleaner than, say, the NFL, or the NHL, or Major League Baseball?
Veteran German Jens Voigt claimed his first-ever Giro d'Italia stage victory when he took the 18th leg -- a 147km ride from the Swiss town of Mendissio, the venue for the 2009 world championships, to Varese, which will host this year's worlds.
Kjell Carlstrom won the third stage of the Paris-Nice race Wednesday, pulling away early and holding off the pack in the mountains.
Belgian rider Gert Steegmans triumphed in a sprint finish after the first stage of the Paris-Nice cycling race was slashed because of bad weather on Monday.
A Spanish court ordered the reopening of Operation Puerto, a widespread doping probe that has implicated some of cycling's biggest stars.
Reigning Tour de France champion Alberto Contador will be unable to defend his title after organizers excluded his new Astana team from competing in cycling's most prestigious race.
Three-time Tour of Spain winner Roberto Heras, whose two-year doping ban ended in October, has confirmed he has decided to quit cycling.
Sports Illustrated will announce its choice for Sportsman of the Year on Dec. 3. Here's one of the nominations for that honor by an SI writer. For more essays, click here.
Giro d'Italia winner Danilo Di Luca faces being stripped of his crown and has withdrawn from the Italian team at the world championships after his national Olympic committee (CONI) recommended that he be banned for four months for alleged doping.
Alejandro Valverde can compete in the world road cycling championships after a decision by the Court of Arbitration for Sport on Wednesday, the chief of world cycling Pat McQuaid announced.
Colombian Leonardo Duque has won the 161km 16th stage of the Tour of Spain as Denis Menchov of Russia retained his overall race lead.
The three-week Tour of Spain begins in Vigo this Saturday but last year's first three will be missing because of proven, or suspected doping offenses.
Spanish climbing specialist Iban Mayo became the latest rider to fail a drugs test after it was revealed he had tested positive for EPO during the Tour de France, it was announced by his Saunier Duval team on Monday.
For three weeks they admired his matador's daring, his dark good looks and his abundant charisma. But as Spain's precocious Alberto Contador stepped onto the podium and the strains of La Marcha Real filled the Champs-��lys�es, cycling fans had one overwhelming thought: Please, God, let this kid be clean.
The team of Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen questioned on Tuesday the legality of drugs tests conducted on the rider by the Danish Anti-Doping Agency (ADD).
The leaders of the Tour de France were playing chicken in the final climb of stage 14 on Sunday when they were briefly overtaken by ... a chicken. To the Borat impersonator in a lime singlet who ran alongside the cyclists during stage 8, waving the flag of Kazakhstan, and the guy who adorned his bike with gigantic racks of deer antlers in stage 10, add the fellow in the yellow-feathered costume to the list of amusing spectators at this, the most unpredictable Tour in memory.
CASTRES, France -- The staging area for Friday's start was in Montpellier's Pavilion Populaire, a spacious, marble-tiled commons shaded by century-old trees, between which were strung colored lights that make every night a festival. Nearby, a glittering carousel. As the gleaming, brightly colored team buses pulled into the Pavilion before today's start, it occurred to me again that the Tour must be most aesthetically pleasing event in all of sport.
The Greek philosopher Diogenes carried a lantern in broad daylight, in the search, he said, of an honest man. I was thinking of bringing a lantern -- or at least one of those little squeeze lights -- over to the Tour de France this year, in search of a clean rider.
Britain's Bradley Wiggins achieved his finest victory as a professional as he took the prologue time trial of the Dauphine Libere in Grenoble on Sunday.
Erik Zabel has kept his place in his current Milram team despite admitting to doping during the 1996 Tour de France when he was riding for Telekom.
Ukraine's Yaroslav Popovych, of the Discovery Channel team, won the fifth stage of the Paris-Nice cycling race in Manosque on Friday, crossing the line just ahead of the main bunch.
Cycling's major teams will be able to compete in the Paris-Nice race without fear of sanctions after the International Cycling Union (UCI) and the race organizers reached an agreement on Monday.
International Cycling Union (UCI) president Pat McQuaid has threatened to punish teams that decide to take part in next month's Paris-Nice race, French sports daily L'Equipe reported on Wednesday.
Rookie Greg Van Avermaet of the Predictor-Lotto team sprinted to his first win as a professional as he took the fifth and penultimate stage of the Tour of Qatar on Thursday.
Former Cofidis cycling team physiotherapist Boguslaw Madejak was sentenced to 12 months in prison, nine of them suspended, for his implication in a doping case, a French court ruled on Friday.
Spain's Astana team will be part of the ProTour peloton next season after being belatedly granted a license by the International Cycling Union (UCI).
Former Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich, a German national who lives in Switzerland, has said he is quitting the Swiss Cycling Federation.
The European Pro Tour series ends on Saturday with the 100th edition of the Tour of Lombardy, a tough 245km trek around Lake Como in northern Italy.
Olympic gold medallist Tyler Hamilton, whose two-year suspension for blood doping ends this month, is to be investigated for alleged links to the Spanish doping scandal dubbed "Operation Puerto."
The second urine sample of Tour de France champion Floyd Landis confirmed a high ratio of testosterone in the American's body before his victory, the International Cycling Union announced Saturday.
Some of the testosterone found in Tour de France winner Floyd Landis' "A" sample is from an external source and not his body's, the New York Times said on Tuesday, quoting an unidentified International Cycling Union official.
Tour de France champion Floyd Landis told CNN that his victory in the world's most-famous bike race had nothing to do with cheating.
American cyclist Floyd Landis urged the media and public to "take a step back" and not rush to the assumption that he cheated his way to the yellow jersey in the Tour de France.
Frenchman Pierrick Fedrigo won a war of nerves, surviving a 145-km breakaway to win a crash-hit 14th stage of the Tour de France over 180.5 kms from Montelimar to Gap on Sunday.
Ukrainian Yaroslav Popovych won Friday's 12th stage of the 2006 Tour de France, as American Floyd Landis held on to the race leader's yellow jersey.
Norwegian Thor Hushovd was the surprise winner of the prologue when the Tour de France, shorn of its pre-race favorites, began under a doping cloud on Saturday.
American Levi Leipheimer confirmed his form for next month's Tour de France with overall victory in the Dauphine Libere on Sunday.
From the Tour de France to the Tour of California, bicycle races are well-known for the festive party atmosphere that springs up around the competition.
Yellow has a mixed history in the Tour de France. The overall leader and eventual winner of the grueling, three-week-long, 2,700-mile bike race wears a yellow jersey. Yellow also signifies a semina...
Former Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich of Germany has dropped a strong hint that he will retire from professional cycling within the next two years.
Italy's Ivan Basso became firm favorite for this year's Tour de France after dominating the Giro d'Italia that ended in Milan on Sunday.
Yellow has a mixed history in the Tour de France.
Belgium's Rik Verbrugghe won the 236km seventh stage of the Giro d'Italia from Cesena to Saltara.
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