Category: Racing

Leipheimer repeats Tour of the Gila championship; Lill wins monster stage

Levi Leipheimer won his second Tour of the Gila championship on Sunday while Aussie Darren Lill won the Stage 5 Gila Monster Road Race.

High winds and snow flurries, instead of high winds and heat, greeted the cyclists on the final day of bike race based in the Silver City, New Mexico, that has become a domestic training race for elite cyclists.

Lance Armstrong, who launched this retreat to southwestern New Mexico last year to test his recovery from a broken collarbone, finished in 17th, 6:53 behind Leipheimer. Finishing second and third overall were Tom Danielson and David Zabriskie. ….

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/05/03/leipheimer-repeats-tour-of-the-gila-championship-lill-wins-monster-stage/

Taylor Phinney wins Stage 4 at Tour of the Gila

Taylor Phinney won the Stage 4 criterium at Tour of the Gila on Saturday. A member of the Trek-Livestrong development team, it's the second win in a row for the under-23 development team.

Phinney's teammate Jesse Sergent won Friday's individual time trial.

After Saturday's 43-mile criterium, Levi Leipheimer had the overall lead by 59 seconds. Tom Danielson was second …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/05/01/taylor-phinney-wins-stage-4-at-tour-of-the-gila/

Leipheimer continues to dominate Tour of the Gila

New team kit for Team Mellow Johnny's for Tour of Gila on TwitpicLevi Leipheimer won the leader's red jersey in the Tour of the Gila after the first stage in 2009; he's still wearing it in the New Mexico bike race after Stage 1 in 2010.

Riding once again for Mellow Johnny's (a proxy team for the RadioShack pro cycling team), Leipheimer took the Stage 1 mountaintop finish on Wednesday ahead of No. 2 finisher Tom Danielson, a member of the DZNuts team (a proxy for Garmin-Transitions pro cycling team) …..

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/29/leipheimer-continues-to-dominate-tour-of-the-gila/

Lance Armstrong returns to Tour of the Gila next week

Lance Armstrong helped shine an international spotlight on the Tour of the Gila in New Mexico last year when he showed up to compete in the five-day race with two compadres from the Astana team.

He's returning to the bike race again this year from April 28 through May 2 with defending champ Levi Leipheimer and Jason McCartney from the RadioShack pro cycling team. They'll be joined among the elite cyclists with three from Garmin-Transitions — David Zabriskie, Danny Pate and Tom Danielson.

The arrival of the pros will definitely spark more interest in the race located in southwestern New Mexico near the Gila National Forest …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/21/lance-armstrong-returns-to-tour-of-the-gila-next-week/

Bainbridge Island cyclist wins Thailand bike race

April is turning out to be a great month for pro cyclists from the Pacific Northwest.

Tyler Farrar of Wenatchee, Washington, won the Grote Scheldeprijs in Belgium last Wednesday, and Chris Horner of Bend, Oregon, earned a hard-fought championship at the six-day Tour de Basque in Spain on Saturday.

A reader informed me that they aren't the only cyclists scoring championships this spring, however. Bainbridge Island native Kiel Reijnen, left, of the Jelly Belly-Kenda cycling team won the six-stage Tour of Thailand last week.

Reijnen, 23, has been a member of the team with the happiest name in cycling for about 3 years. He emerged as the Tour leader …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/13/bainbridge-island-cyclist-wins-thailand-bike-race/

Cancellara cobbles together second victory at Paris-Roubaix

Hats off to Fabian Cancellara for winning the second Paris-Roubaix of his career on Sunday.

The Swiss time trial specialist escaped from his rivals on one of the 27 sections of cobblestones that interrupt the 160-mile bike route and led all the way to the finish.

That the Swiss cyclist is one of the few cyclists to win the race multiple times is a testament to the difficulty of the aptly named “Hell of the North.”

If the distance and uncertain weather along the course doesn't get you, the cobblestones surely will. …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/11/cancellara-cobbles-together-second-victory-at-paris-roubaix/

Oregon's Chris Horner wins Tour of Basque Country

Team RadioShack's first multi-stage tour win came at the hands of Oregon's Chris Horner on Saturday.

The 38-year-old blistered the 14-mile time trial course that marked the finale of the six-day Tour of Basque Country in Spain, taking the championship from Spain's Alejandro Valverde, who dropped to second place.

Basque Country is considered one of the more difficult multi-stage races in Europe because of the terrain. Horner put himself in a position to win early in the contest by hanging with the leaders in the first stage on Monday.

He stayed comfortably within reach of first place until Thursday's Stage 4. That's when he attacked on the final climb, only to be passed by stage winner Samuel Sanchez, Valverde and Gesink. But that move put him within 1 second of the overall race leader Valverde.

In his ride to victory in Orio on Saturday …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/10/oregons-chris-horner-wins-tour-of-basque-country/

Promising amateur cyclist killed as teens race cars

The future must have been looking pretty bright for Jorge Alvarado on Thursday morning as he headed south on his bicycle for a solo training ride on Greenspot Road in California's eastern San Bernardino County.

The 27-year-old cyclist from Mexico had made it onto the roster of the Bahati Foundation cycling team in March. He recently had won the UCLA Road Race and finished 5th at the Redlands Classic pro/am crit.

On tap was this weekend's Dana Point Grand Prix and the upcoming SRAM Tour of the Gila at the end of April. There he'd get the chance to race against Dave Zabriskie, Danny Pate, Tom Danielson and other pros preparing for the Tour of California.

But this Thursday morning, Sheriff's investigators say a high school senior made the decision to pass a classmate's car at 70 mph. He lost control ….

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/10/promising-amateur-cyclist-killed-as-teens-race-cars/

Horner 2nd in Basque; Farrar wins sprint; flu beats Armstrong

A round-up of some spring cycling news:

Tyler Farrar

Wenatchee, Washington's Tyler Farrar claimed his second victory of the year at the Grote Scheldeprijs in Belgium on Wednesday.

The 122-mile bike race from Antwerp to Schoten is a flat route that pretty much designed for a sprint finish. Farrar became the first American ever to win the race, and beat the likes of Australia's Robbie McEwen (Team Katusha), Germany's Robert Forster (Team Milram), and New Zealand's Greg Henderson (Sky pro cycling).

 In the video above, you can see Farrar just blasting past Belgium's Tom Boonen …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/04/08/horner-2nd-in-basque-farrar-wins-sprint-flu-beats-armstrong/

Four US-based cycling teams in 2010 Tour de France

In case there was any doubt, the US-based teams of Lance Armstrong, George Hincapie, Cadel Evans, Christian Vande Velde and Mark Cavendish will compete in the Tour de France this year.

Organizers of the Tour de France named four US-based pro cycling teams among the 22 chosen. HTC-Columbia had an automatic invitation; Team RadioShack, BMC Racing, and Garmin-Transitions were all invited as wild cards.

Although the teams are by no means exclusively manned by American cyclists, it does mean the US will be well-represented when the three-week race rolls out in the Netherlands on July 3. The bike race ends in Paris on July 25.

Other wild card teams invited to the race are Team Sky, Katusha, and Cervelo TestTeam …

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Permanent link to this article: https://www.bikingbis.com/2010/03/30/four-us-based-cycling-teams-in-2010-tour-de-france/