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.
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.
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.
Italian rider Alessandro Petacchi has had an operation on the left kneecap he fractured in a crash during last Monday's stage of the Giro d'Italia.
Germany's Jan Ullrich has confirmed he will take part in the three-week long Giro d'Italia starting on Saturday.
Switzerland's Fabian Cancellara has won the Paris-Roubaix classic ahead of Belgian pair Leif Hoste and Peter van Petegem, who were both later disqualified.
World champion Tom Boonen of Belgium won the 90th Tour of Flanders, the second one-day classic of the Pro Tour season.
Belgium's world road race champion Tom Boonen outsprinted breakaway companion Alessandro Ballan to win his third Harelbeke Grand Prix one-day race in a row.
The 2006 Giro d'Italia will start and feature four stages in Belgium before heading for tough mountain stages in the Dolomites and Western Alps, organizers revealed on Saturday.
Germany's Erik Zabel is quitting the T-Mobile cycling team, the veteran star announced after finishing out of the leading positions in the latest round of the ProTour in Hamburg.
German rider Danilo Hondo has filed an appeal with the Court of Arbitration for Sport against his two-year doping ban.
Sprint leader Tom Boonen has pulled out of the Tour de France after crashing in Wednesday's 12th stage and the Belgian's green jersey goes to Norway's Thor Hushovd.
Axel Merckx once again stepped out of his father's shadow to win a tough 219km fifth stage of the Dauphine Libere.
SALEM, Ore. (CNN/Money) - In less than a month Lance Armstrong will chase an unprecedented seventh straight victory of the Tour de France, the 21-day bike race covering 2,241 miles in France.
Olympic cycling time-trial gold medalist Tyler Hamilton has appealed to world sport's top tribunal to overturn a two year ban for blood doping imposed last year.
Christophe Le Mevel took a small breakaway group by surprise to win the 16th stage of the Giro d'Italia at the seaside resort of Varazze on Tuesday.
Ukrainian Yaroslav Popovych coasted through a trouble free seventh and final stage to win the Tour of Catalonia.
Record six-times Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong said on Monday he would quit professional cycling after this year's Tour in July.
Columbian mountain specialist Victor Hugo Pena says he may miss the Tour de France after injuring his back while falling before Sunday's Paris-Roubaix.
American Bobby Julich maintained his superb start to the cycling season with victory in the prestigious Criterium International event.
American cycling superstar Lance Armstrong has confirmed that he will be taking part in this year's Tour de France as he bids for an unprecedented seventh win in a row.
Troubled Swiss cycling team Phonak have parted company with their team manager and sporting director after a season blighted by doping incidents.
Italian Dario Cioni, one of the 10 team members set to help in Paolo Bettini's bid to win the world championship title, has been replaced after returning an abnormal blood test.
The all-conquering U.S. Postal squad left arch-rival T-Mobile trailing to win the opening team time trial stage of the Tour of Spain (La Vuelta) cycle race on Saturday.
Lance Armstrong created Tour de France history with his sixth consecutive victory as the 2004 edition finished with the customary sprint finish on the Champs-Elysees in Paris.
Tyler Hamilton, one of the favorites to prevent Lance Armstrong from winning a sixth Tour de France, dropped out of the race during Saturday's 13th stage.
German cyclist Fabian Wegmann will enter his first Tour de France starting on Saturday, replacing the injured Markus Zberg in the Gerolsteiner team.
Former mountain bike world champion Michael Rasmussen has won the sixth stage of the Dauphine Libere after breaking away from the start.
Germany's Patrik Sinkewitz won the Tour of Germany on Sunday with 1997 Tour de France winnner Jan Ullrich trailing by 59 seconds in seventh place.
Spanish cycling team Kelme's future is in jeopardy after the Giro d'Italia followed the example of the Tour de France and barred them from this year's race .
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