ESPN Olympic Sports

Veteran Christian Vande Velde is one of three Garmin-Sharp riders who will start this week's Tour of Catalunya in Spain, their first race since serving doping suspensions that were reduced in exchange for cooperation with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency's case against Lance Armstrong. Vande Velde, 36, of Lemont, Ill., signed with the U.S. Postal Service team before the 1998 season and rode in support of Armstrong at the Tour de France in 1999 and 2001. He subsequently competed for two European-based teams before joining the Garmin organization in 2008, and finished fourth at that year's Tour.

In 2010, Vande Velde was among numerous witnesses interviewed by federal investigators then gathering evidence in a criminal investigation of organized doping on the Postal team. Last year, he and 10 other former Postal riders gave sworn testimony, including their own admissions to performance-enhancing drug use, that collectively formed a crucial and compelling part of USADA's case.

The five riders who were active at the time received six-month suspensions and had some past results nullified. Armstrong's longtime teammate George Hincapie has retired. Levi Leipheimer was fired by his Omega-Pharma-Quick Step team and remains unsigned. Vande Velde, David Zabriskie and Tom Danielson, whose suspensions ended March 1, will compete at Cataluyna this week. It marks the beginning of what Vande Velde says will be his final professional season. His tentative schedule includes the Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France and the USA Pro Cycling Challenge in Colorado, a race he won last year in dramatic fashion in a time trial on the last day.

Vande Velde spent much of his suspension in suburban Chicago with wife Leah and daughters Uma, 5, and Madeline, 4. He also trained by himself (and occasionally with Zabriskie) in Southern California, where he struggled emotionally. "It finally dawned on me that I really enjoy this, and I'm really thankful I have my health and have the opportunity to race at the highest level cycling has to offer,'" he told ESPN.com in a telephone interview Saturday from Girona, Spain.

"I don't want pity from anyone. That's my biggest fear of saying these kinds of things, and that is the farthest thing from the truth. I'm just saying what I was going through. There were plenty of times when I questioned what I was doing at this stage of my career and why I was doing this. I definitely stumbled for a while there."

The following are excerpts from Vande Velde's conversation with ESPN.com.

What have the last six months been like?

It's been hard. I'm not going to lie. And I didn't foresee a lot of the things that would be hard. Like, for example, a training camp in November-December that a lot of times I didn't want to go to. I've been at a training camp at that point in time for the last 20 years of my life. Having that gaping hole there and not being retired, it blindsided me. I know I'm going to race this year, that'll come, and I wasn't freaking out about that. But it was definitely being away from the team, having that communication like I always have, that was hard, much more than I thought it would be.

I put myself out there and did quite a few public speaking [engagements] and it was all met really well. I was happy to do it, too, because there aren't too many questions I get asked now that I can't answer honestly. [Editor's note: USADA still has pending cases against former Postal director Johan Bruyneel and other staff members that could involve evidence from riders.] I enjoyed it, and I think most of the people I spoke to enjoyed it too. That was a different side that I didn't foresee being so positive.

I spoke to the Challenged Athletes Foundation [charity ride] three or four days after [USADA's evidence] was announced. That was one that I was pretty scared about, in all honesty. Of course people threw some hard questions out there and I addressed them. I definitely made it so that I wasn't that elephant in the room: "Come up and ask me, I don't want you to be avoiding me.'"

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Two-time track cycling Olympian Bobby Lea of Topton, Pa., recommitted to a third bid in his mind before he even got home from the London Games, where he finished 12th in the demanding two-day, six-event omnium. The 29-year-old trains with Philadelphia-based coach Brian Walton, a 1996 Olympic track cycling silver medalist for Canada. Lea looked ahead in a recent chat with ESPN.com:

Question from Ford: What was the biggest contrast between your experiences in London and Beijing [in 2008]?

Answer from Lea: The single biggest thing was just knowing what I was in for. I knew the details would be different, but the bigger picture was the same, and I was much more prepared to handle it. In the run-up to the actual event, it was much more calm and quiet and easier to focus on the task at hand than it was for Beijing. As far as the performance was concerned, I really wanted to get inside that top 10. But when I take a step back and look at the event as it unfolded, five of the six events were the best I'd ever done, so it was hard to argue with that. Two-tenths of a second in one event [the kilo, or 1-kilometer time trial] would have made the difference.

That's bike racing, that's track racing. I went to London thinking if I turned in a performance I was satisfied with, I could walk away from track racing in the Olympics and say it's been a good run and made up for a performance I wasn't really happy with in Beijing [Editor's note: He finished 16th in the Madison]. But by the time I touched down in Newark, I was already thinking about Rio [in 2016]. I wasn't anticipating that, but that's kind of how it unfolded. The placing was nothing to write home about, but the finer details showed a pretty significant jump in performance from where I was in the two years leading up to the Olympics. My takeaway from that is if I can do that in three months, if I can take the next four years and really dial in my support structure and work even harder, then I can go to Rio and actually be a contender instead of someone just shooting for a top 10.

Q: If you were king and had control over the Olympic program, what would you create?

A: I've made my peace with the omnium. I certainly struggle to deal with all the different elements, learning how to prepare and how to handle myself in the midst of the event. But if the omnium remains unchanged in Rio and that's the event, I know what I'm dealing with and I know how to work for it. I'm not too fussed about what the event's going to be. If I can make it four more years and I can set up that support structure, then I'm ready to take a run for Rio. Part of the question I've been dealing with since I got home is, what does that mean? It's easy to answer that question if you're part of a big national federation that has an endless budget, but as basically a privateer trying to put together a program, it's an entirely different question. I've got a year or two to sort that out.

Q: How does this affect your road racing aspirations? That was at the top of your future agenda when we last talked.

A: At this point, I'm still treating the rest of my career like an open book and it's day to day, month to month, year to year. I've got a job riding with SmartStop-Mountain Khakis next year on the road, so between that and a couple of winter sixes (six-day races) with my Madison partner [Jackie Simes], we'll see what happens. We're hoping to get a start in Rotterdam in January. It's been a long time since there were Americans racing on the six-day circuit. That would be a really neat thing to do that doesn't conflict with road racing.

My team for next year is really supportive of my extracurricular activities on the track. It's a good place for me to race the road and have a lot of fun and get back into domestic road racing and [Simes] is going to be joining me on that team. Where it goes, who knows, but I'm not writing anything off. 2010 was my last full season on the road. I'm ready to jump back in, I miss it.

Q: Do you feel like you're in a situation where you can compete clean at the Continental level in this country?

A: Absolutely. It's not something I would be doing if I thought I was trying to swim upstream.

Good! The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency finally got that bad, bad Lance Armstrong. Now, I hope they’ll finally go after Babe Ruth for all those beers he drank during Prohibition.

I am no Lance apologist, but I am an avid cyclist and cycling fan, and frankly, I wonder what good can result from USADA’s decision Thursday night to strip him of his seven yellow jerseys. Three of those Tour de France victories came a decade or more ago, while the most recent was seven years ago. That's so long ago it would have been considered ancient history even in the pre-Twitter world.

It’s not like taking away Lance’s victories will correct a past injustice. With the rampant use of performance-enhancers, we cannot automatically say the second-place finisher each year rode clean (yes, Jan Ullrich, I’m talking about you). In fact, combine this latest decision with all the Floyd Landis, Alberto Contador, Ullrich, Bjarne Riis, Operation Puerto scandals/mia culpas, and as far as I can tell, no one actually won the Tour de France from 1996 to 2007. The cyclists rode 20,000 miles and climbed countless mountains to exhaustion for no reason whatsoever. Tour de France announcers Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen should have spent those 12 Julys at the beach instead.

There are two reasons why cyclists are busted so often for performance-enhancers: One, they obviously use them to excel in a sport that demands they race more than 100 miles a day for three weeks during the biggest stage races. The other reason is that, like track and field, cycling actually tries hard to catch the cheaters by testing them repeatedly. You can even be banned just for not letting people know where you are on a given day (2007 Tour de France leader Michael Rasmussen was dropped by his team for that very reason). Get caught doping and you can be banned anywhere from several years to life.

This is unlike American team sports, especially football, where the players grow ever bigger, faster and stronger despite assurances that they are regularly tested. And even if they are caught, the players miss as little as four games. And fans prefer it that way. They don’t want a sport’s biggest names regularly banned -- particularly if they have them on their fantasy teams.

That’s what concerns me most about the fallout from this latest Lance decision. I don’t worry about the sport, but I worry for the fans, specifically the potential fans that will be lost.

Lance’s Tour success inspired many Americans, myself included, to get on their bikes and ride. Forget about his considerable work in raising funds for cancer research (I think we still will all treat cancer as a serious issue regardless of what happens to a bicyclist), Lance also turned many of us onto cycling and got us hooked on a healthier lifestyle. Thursday night’s news will not stop us from riding or from following races. But what about those potential fans who will be turned away from cycling and never get on a bike to experience the joys and health rewards of the sport (not to mention the gas-saving benefits)?

On the one hand, these intense testing programs are necessary to keep the competitive playing field at least semi-level. On the other hand, the sport eventually winds up eating itself, turning every single one of its athletes into a suspect, making all top performances suspicious and driving away potential fans to other sports.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying that we should not test. I applaud baseball for cracking down -- the recent Melky Cabrera and Bartolo Colon bans are proof the sport takes testing seriously -- and appreciate that home run and other batting statistics have returned to the norm.

We must test. But we also must draw a line somewhere. And going after athletes for something they might have done seven to 13 years ago clearly crosses that line. Stripping Lance of his titles does far more harm than good. USADA should have let this one go. The agency exists to police sports, not destroy them.

Rather than investing so much money and effort chasing an athlete from the previous decade, perhaps we should be more focused on catching the current cheats.

Track cyclist Sarah Hammer’s best chance at a gold medal evaporated three years ago when the International Olympic Committee dropped the individual pursuit, the event in which she has been world champion since 2008.

“It’s my pet event, what I love, and I thought it was a great Olympic event,’’ she said. “But once it was over and done with, it was over and done with. I moved on, and I would say I moved on pretty well.’’

She did. Hammer powered the U.S. to a silver medal in the team pursuit this past weekend and took home another silver medal in the six-race omnium that concluded Tuesday afternoon.

“Everything that I had been dreaming of and wanting for the last two years had been dedicated to this omnium event,’’ she said. “I am now the proud owner of two of these silver medals. It’s an amazing dream I’ve been dreaming about since I was 10 years old. Now I get to go home and share this with my family and friends.’’

Hammer came close to winning gold Tuesday, holding a two-point lead over Great Britain’s Laura Trott heading into the final race. In the omnium, riders receive points based on their order of finish in each race. You get one point for finishing first, two for second, three for third and so on, with the lowest cumulative score winning. That meant that, to win gold, Hammer had to finish within two places of Trott in the final 500-meter time trial.

Unfortunately, the 500 meters is probably Hammer’s weakest event in the omnium. “I’m not as naturally explosive from the start,’’ she said. “Once I get rolling, I’m good, but to get off the line and ready to go [is the issue]. But I’ve been in the gym training because I knew that was going to make the difference in the Olympic medal.’’

It did. Hammer rode a personal best 35.90, but that was only good enough for fourth place in the event. Trott, meanwhile, finished with the best time to win the gold medal.

Hammer was clearly disappointed at missing gold, but these Olympics went far better than in 2008, when she and three fellow U.S. track riders were left out to hang after they inadvertently caused an incident by wearing masks upon their arrival in Beijing -- as they had been instructed to do to protect against pollution. She went home without a medal from Beijing but has two medals as souvenirs this time.

Hammer, who turns 30 this month, said that she isn’t sure whether she will try to compete in Rio in 2016 but that she definitely will keep riding a bike. “The great thing is my whole family rides. My husband, my mom, my dad. Now I get to go back home and we all get to ride together.’’

ESPN.com's Prim Siripipat and Bonnie Ford assess the Olympic medal count so far, the debut of Olympic women's boxing and Sarah Hammer's chances at the Omnium:

Dotsie Bausch and her fellow U.S. women’s team pursuit riders didn’t stand much chance in Saturday’s gold-medal race against the British squad, which is clearly the best in the world. But just reaching the final was a minor upset, and that Bausch later stood on an Olympic podium with a silver medal around her neck was nothing less than astonishing.

When she was in her early 20s, Bausch was so anorexic and bulimic that her 5-foot-9 body wasted away to a skeletal 90 pounds. The former runway model became so depressed that she attempted to commit suicide by running across the interstate near her home in Philadelphia.

She found life in cycling though, and her reborn body recovered to take her to the Olympics at age 39. And Saturday, she not only won a silver medal, she did so with Paul McCartney later joining the sellout velodrome crowd as it sang “Hey Jude.’’

“I don’t think the reflection has started yet,’’ Bausch said. “This is completely surreal. I keep waiting for someone to pinch me.’’

The U.S. pursuit team finished a very disappointing fifth at the world championships this spring, a result that prompted them to change their strategy. Although the pursuit team lives all across the country, they agreed to move to Spain to train in Majorca together for two months to develop cohesion. “We knew we had to do something,’’ Sarah Hammer said.

Reaching the final required a tremendous comeback against Australia in the classifying round, when the Americans trailed by more than a second early in the race. Hammer, however, buried her head and powered her teammates to clip the Australians at the end. The finish was so close Bausch said she didn’t know who won until she heard random fans in the crowd congratulating her on the win.

“We knew it was tight,’’ Hammer said. “Our strategy was to keep it within range and then launch it at the end. And we did that. We knew it would be a race to the finish.’’

“Sarah brought it home like no other,’’ Bausch said. “Not all these teams got to pack a Sarah Hammer in their luggage for the Olympics. She was phenomenal.’’

There was nothing Hammer could do to bring the U.S. back against Britain, which broke the world record in each of its three races. Steadily extending its lead with each lap of the race, Britain won the gold in 3:14.051, more than five seconds faster than the Americans.

“To beat them was going to take them crashing, they were in another league,’’ Bausch said, adding they were delighted with the silver and content to let the next generation of U.S. riders try to knock off the Brits.

Bausch often speaks publicly about eating disorders and what the body can do if you treat it right. Asked Saturday what the lesson from her medal is, she replied, “Just hope and faith. Those are the two things to always hang on to. If you keep hoping and having faith in God, it’s just limitless.’’

USA Pro Cycling Challenge CEO Shawn Hunter is adamant -- the name will stay the same on the race many reporters and fans have been referring to, with fond irritation, as "that race in Colorado."

"There is some method to our madness," Hunter said earlier this week in the midst of an East Coast swing to talk to sponsors and media about the 2012 edition of the race, which runs from Aug. 20-26. "At the end of the day, we want to build the biggest and best race in America."

There's a long tradition of putting place names in bike races, and many (including me) have pointed out that USAPCC doesn't exactly trip off the tongue or make for a sexy Twitter hashtag. Plus, in the next sentence or next breath, the name has to be qualified as ... you know, that race in Colorado. But Hunter, who helped create the Tour of California when he was president of AEG Sports and has extensive experience with professional team sports, insists that with time, the race will carve out its own identity.

We agreed to disagree, and ultimately, Hunter may deserve the benefit of the doubt. When he took over the organization, the race then known as the Quiznos Pro Challenge was hanging by a thread, stumbling PR-wise and minus supporting corporate sponsorships or a TV deal.

"I started every meeting with an apology,'' Hunter recalled.

The owners of the sandwich chain are still the chief bankrollers of the USAPCC, but the race is on firm financial footing now and the last two hours of each stage will be broadcast live on NBC Sports (during the week) and the parent network on the final Sunday. Invitations will go out to eight Pro Tour teams and eight more lower-tier teams (mostly domestics) in the next month to six weeks.

And the race has significantly upped its competitive credibility this year by adding a mountaintop finish in Stage 6, which will start in Golden and end on Flagstaff Mountain on the outskirts of Boulder. City officials gave their approval to the plan earlier this week.

The absence of Boulder -- the de facto cycling capital of the country -- from last year's route was an obvious gap. This year, the peloton will do two circuits in Boulder before heading uphill (Joe Lindsey of Bicycling Magazine breaks it down here), and the backdrop and Saturday crowds should make for a banner day.

Stage 7 is a time trial in Denvee. More route details will be announced in the last week of March.

On Thursday, USA Cycling announced the 30 athletes who are eligible to be nominated to represent the United States at the 2012 Olympic Games in mountain biking and women's road cycling.

"The hard work and determination of these athletes has helped USA Cycling advance its vision of making the U.S. the most successful country in the world of competitive cycling," USA Cycling's vice president of athletics Jim Miller said. "They are evidence of the United States' ability to be a legitimate medal contender across all four disciplines of competitive cycling in London. The athletes on this list have either proven their capabilities to win medals in major international events or illustrated the potential to do so in the future."

The long team rosters for men's and women's track cycling are set to be unveiled on Dec. 15. The long team for men's BMX will be announced on May 31, 2012, before the BMX Olympic Trials in Chula Vista, Calif., on June 16.

Women's Road Long Team
Kristin Armstrong (Boise, Idaho/Team Exergy 2012)
Theresa Cliff-Ryan (Cedar Springs, Mich./Colavita-Forno d'Asolo)
Andrea Dvorak (Crozet, Va./Colavita-Forno d'Asolo)
Robin Farina (Charlotte, N.C./NOW and Novartis for MS)*
Megan Guarnier (Mountain View, Calif./Team TIBCO)*
Janel Holcomb (San Diego, Calif./Colavita-Forno d'Asolo)
Kristin McGrath (Durango, Colo./Team Exergy 2012)
Amanda Miller (Fort Collins, Colo./HTC-Highroad)
Amber Neben (Irvine, Calif./HTC-Highroad)*
Shelley Olds (Gilroy, Calif./ Diadora-Pasta Zara)
Carmen Small (Durango, Colo./Team TIBCO)
Evelyn Stevens (Dennis, Mass./HTC-Highroad)*
Lauren Tamayo (Asheville, N.C./Team Exergy 2012)

Men's Mountain Bike Long Team
Jeremiah Bishop (Harrisonburg, Va./Cannondale)*
Michael Broderick (Chilmark, Mass./Kenda-Seven-NoTubes)
Adam Craig (Bend, Ore./Rabobank-Giant)*
Stephen Ettinger (Cashmere, Wash./BMC)
Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski (Boulder, Colo./Subaru-Trek)*
Spencer Paxson (Seattle, Wash./Kona)
Sam Schultz (Missoula, Mont./Subaru-Trek)*
Todd Wells (Durango, Colo./Specialized)*

Women's Mountain Bike Long Team
Katie Compton (Colorado Springs, Colo./Rabobank)*
Lea Davison (Jericho, Vt./Specialized)*
Judy Freeman (Brighton, Colo./Kenda-Felt)
Georgia Gould (Fort Collins, Colo./Luna) *
Heather Irmiger (Boulder, Colo./Subaru-Trek)*
Mary McConneloug (Fairfax, Calif./Kenda-Seven-NoTubes)*
Krista Park (Madison, S.D./Cannondale-No Tubes)
Willow Rockwell (Durango, Colo./Trek World Racing)
Chloe Woodruff (Tucson, Ariz./BMC)

* - Automatic Nomination

Alberto Contador will have his day in court next week, at long last, or more accurately, his four days before the Court of Arbitration for Sport in Lausanne, Switzerland, starting Monday. The ratio of time spent on a doping case versus picograms of banned performance-enhancing drug has to be a record.

The 50 trillionths of a gram per milliliter of clenbuterol found in Contador’s urine during the 2010 Tour de France -- a race he eventually won, capturing his third title by mere seconds over Andy Schleck -- has preoccupied the cycling world for more than a year now. This case has provided another litmus test of how an athlete of Contador’s stature would be treated in a system that is supposed to treat the powerful the same way it treats the obscure. The CAS ruling expected in January could provide the final answer to that, but on a few counts, the system has already flunked.

Three CAS arbitrators will weigh the credibility of Contador’s explanation that he consumed contaminated meat in the form of a Spanish steak carried over the French border. Their decision will determine whether the Spanish star gets to keep the 2010 Tour trophy, and other racing results including his 2011 Giro d’Italia championship, which could be stripped if CAS metes out the maximum two-year penalty.

However, those looking for closure and clarity on how to handle the growing number of clenbuterol cases in sports will almost surely be disappointed.

To review: Contador’s test result floated in a still-unexplained bureaucratic limbo for two months before German press reports forced cycling’s international governing body, the UCI, to release it.

Predictably, Contador was exonerated by the Spanish cycling federation, the body that had jurisdiction over his case. Even though the committee that examined it (through an exchange of paperwork, not a live hearing) was purportedly independent, there was overt pressure from the grassroots all the way to the highest levels of Spain’s government to let Contador off the hook. The committee made it known that it was considering a one-year suspension; Contador and his lawyers said that was unacceptable, and the prospective sanction evaporated.

Both the UCI and the World Anti-Doping Agency appealed that decision. After several postponements requested by both sides, here we sit -- even though clenbuterol is supposed to be a zero-tolerance substance and the principle of strict liability that is the bedrock of the WADA code puts the burden on the athlete to explain how it got there. Contador hasn’t done that definitively, and it’s hard to see how he can without bringing a bovine spirit back from the dead to testify about its food supply.

The fact that Contador wasn’t suspended floodlit one of the key weaknesses in anti-doping jurisprudence: There is no uniformity in who gets to judge the athletes in the first round of hearings. National sporting authorities have an inherent conflict of interest that legalistic bodies like the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency do not. Ask American swimmer Jessica Hardy, who showed to an arbitration panel’s satisfaction that she tested positive because of a tainted supplement, yet served a year’s suspension and missed the 2008 Olympics.

A list of 23 witnesses combined for both sides in the Contador case was leaked to the Spanish press this week. It doesn’t include Hardy, and more’s the pity. The Contador panel might have been informed by hearing her testify about a year she lost and can never get back.

Instead, the panel will hear from hematology experts, nutritionists, anti-doping analysts, police investigators, a biostatistician, a polygraph expert (for the defense, although there is no confirmation that Contador has yet submitted to a lie-detector test), a small convoy of Contador’s 2010 Tour teammates, a representative from the Spanish beef industry and the butcher who sold the steaks to one of Contador’s friends. No word yet on whether either side plans to call a baker and a candlestick maker.

It’s been widely speculated that WADA will present evidence linking Contador’s positive to a banned transfusion using evidence of plasticizers that leach from blood bags. That would be a first, and another chapter in the long and tortured scientific pursuit of a reliable means to detect autologous (from one’s own body) transfusions.

In the past few years, thanks in part to improved detection technology, a number of doping cases involving clenbuterol have been considered around the world. The decisions have been all over the map. There’s little dispute that clenbuterol contamination in livestock is a reality in China and Mexico, and the U.S. Olympic Committee has openly warned its athletes to beware of what they eat there.

But until and unless those countries are persuaded to clamp down on their agricultural establishment (and shouldn’t they do that for the sake of their general citizenry as well as elite athletes, since clenbuterol can cause some nasty side effects and is nothing to mess with?), doping cases that originate there involving resident or visiting athletes will continue to be headaches for anti-doping authorities.

In my opinion, neither that reality nor the Contador case, whatever its outcome, is an argument for rewriting the WADA code to set a threshold for clenbuterol. That kind of tweak would only result in athletes inclined to dope (and their enablers) trying to figure out how they could cheat up to wherever the new line was drawn. Tempting as it is to want to dispense with these kinds of protracted, expensive cases -- cases that dent the morale of the sport and take away from other storylines -- the rule as it stands is the right one. And in the absence of any new and compelling evidence on Contador’s side, if CAS does the right thing, he’ll be sanctioned for breaking it.

Alison Tetrick Starnes is brainy enough to be a molecular biologist. She has the diploma, the published research and the white lab coat from a previous job (with her name embroidered over the pocket, thank you very much) to prove it. Those smarts have also made her a realist, and she knows her chances of making the U.S. Olympic cycling team next year are relatively microscopic.

"To be honest, 2012 probably isn't my goal," she said in a phone interview last week. "I'm looking more towards 2016. But the Pan Ams are really important for me to show my ability to medal at a major international event -- train, prepare, do the whole [athletes'] village thing."

Starnes, 26, is confident she's capable of a top-three performance in Sunday's time trial at the Pan American Games in Guadalajara, Mexico, but she tried to leave nothing to chance. The third-year pro did a block of altitude training in Lake Tahoe and feels good about her form.

The podium finish Starnes is gunning for would represent a significant climb back from a year ago, when she was riding for Team Tibco. She was careening along on a descent during the Cascade Cycling Classic in July 2010 when she crashed heavily on her hip, fracturing her pelvis in two places, and had to be airlifted off the course.

The injury immobilized her for a few weeks, but bones heal. More worrisome was a concussion whose effects lingered for months, affecting her eyesight and concentration (and oddly, breaking her lifelong habit of biting her nails). The trauma was psychological, as well. When veteran Chris Horner rode the final 20 miles of a Tour de France stage last summer with a concussion and was filmed, clearly disoriented, at the finish, Starnes found the footage so upsetting she had to leave the room.

But the gregarious Starnes, who laughs easily and often when she talks about herself, said she never seriously considered quitting. "I have some goals in the sport, and I'm going to go for it," she said. "You can't ride scared."

The daughter of cattle rancher and former UCLA nose guard Steve Tetrick, Starnes was born in Solvang, Calif., and grew up with her nose buried in books until she hit high school and decided she wanted to play tennis. Pragmatic even then, Starnes decided she would aim for a college scholarship rather than entertain fantasies of being a pro.

"I started too late, and I struggled with tennis -- there wasn't a direct correlation between time spent on the court and performance, or skill set," she said.

She was competent enough to get a ride at Abilene (Tex.) Christian University, and graduated in December 2006 with a degree in biochemistry. She worked in that field the following year, but soon found herself drawn to triathlon and had some early success, largely because of her strength in the cycling leg.

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One of the best women's cycling teams ever assembled will survive to sprint another day.

Confirmation came late Monday that two new sponsors -- California-based bike manufacturer Specialized and Vancouver, B.C.-headquartered women's apparel company lululemon athletica -- will back the former HTC-Highroad team in 2012.

Canada's Clara Hughes, a multiple Olympic medalist in cycling and speedskating, will be the most notable addition to the roster. U.S. time trial champion Evelyn Stevens and former world time trial world champ Amber Neben are staying put. Newly crowned world road champion Judith Arndt of Germany and American Amanda Miller are departing, while German veteran Ina-Yoko Teutenberg will remain with the team.

It's a critical lead-out for women's road cycling heading into London 2012.

The news that HTC-Highroad was folding its tent after failing to secure new sponsorship was jarring for cycling as a whole given the team's consistent excellence. But while most of the male riders and staff were assured of finding new jobs (and have), the women, with far fewer options, saw the pavement cracking under them at the worst possible time.

Performing well on the Olympic stage is more important for the women than for the men, who under truth serum would surely admit they attach greater prestige to the Grand Tours, the world championships and selected one-day classics. Amid the elite women's sparse, under-funded and under-the-radar racing schedule, the Summer Games provides competition and marketing exposure that even the most casual fan can glom onto.

Seven or eight riders on the soon-to-be rebranded team are clear contenders to represent their respective countries in London. And while they can rely on their national federations for some support and racing opportunities, competing with trade teams lifts them to and keeps them at a higher level.

Kristy Scrymgeour, the personable Australian and former rider who served as press officer for the HTC men's and women's teams (and their previous incarnations as T-Mobile, Highroad and Columbia) under the ownership of wireless entrepreneur Bob Stapleton, will manage the team's business operations through a new company, Velocio Sports. Stapleton, an avid women's cycling advocate, won't have any formal role but Scrymgeour said he will continue to contribute in both tangible and intangible ways.

Specialized has an interest in continuing to be a strong presence in the women's peloton because of its women's product line (a rider in HTC garb is featured prominently on that section of the company's website) and looks to reap the benefits of the Olympic limelight. Lululemon, best known in the fitness world for its yoga apparel, had already waded into cycling by providing casual clothing for the BMC and Saxo Bank men's teams and will supply racing apparel for the new team.

The fact that the new Specialized-lululemon squad won't be affiliated with a men's team will mean tighter fiscal restraints. Scrymgeour said she couldn't disclose the team's total budget, but confirmed that all 13 riders (one slot is yet to be filled) will be paid. If that sounds like a no-brainer, think again -- many of the women racing in the U.S. and Europe aren't salaried at all or make so little that they have to hold other jobs or dig into their own pockets for expenses.

The women's game is an afterthought at best for the sport's governing body, the UCI, which has shown no interest in exploring two avenues that could help grow it -- mandating or offering incentives for top teams to field women's programs, or instituting a minimum wage for female riders. (Cervelo co-founder Gerard Vroomen, whose women's team joined the Garmin train this season, is conducting a lively discussion of the minimum wage issue on his web site.)

So for the time being, it's up to the women to sell their sport without a lot of corporate or institutional support. Many of these riders have the kind of compelling, self-made stories that will appeal to the Olympic audience. This new team will give a baker's dozen of them a better chance.

All Andrew Talansky had to do to feel better during the first half of the hardest race of his life -- and perhaps the hardest-ever edition of the Vuelta a Espana -- was to check out what fellow U.S. rider Taylor Phinney was writing about it.

Both were competing in their first three-week Grand Tours, and both were blogging almost daily from neighboring houses of pain. Phinney detailed how he was dropped with a handful of other struggling riders with 85 miles to go in Stage 5. Talansky discussed briefly fearing he wouldn't make it to the next day's finish line in Madrid during Stage 20.

"I'd think I was having a rough day, and then I'd read what he was writing and say 'I need to stop complaining,'" Garmin-Cervelo's Talansky said Friday from Lucca, Italy, the Tuscan town that has become the in-season home for a small colony of young U.S. riders, including Phinney.

BMC's Phinney, whose big frame makes him less suited for climbing, wound up abandoning the race out of exhaustion during Stage 13, while Talansky was able to complete the race. After what they just survived, the upcoming world championships -- their first at the senior elite level -- won't seem nearly as intimidating.

Talansky and Phinney will be the two U.S. representatives in Wednesday's 28.8-mile time trial event at worlds in Copenhagen. Both will also ride in support of Garmin's Tyler Farrar in the one-day road race on Sunday. At 22 and 21 years old, respectively, their combined age isn't that much more than some of the veteran Americans in the pro peloton.

Both have excellent and ever-lengthening resumes in the time trial. Talansky won the under-23 national championship last year and had top-10 time trial results in several prestigious races this season, including the Criterium International, Paris-Nice and the Tour of Romandie, where he also scored Best Young Rider honors. Phinney was the 2010 national champion and under-23 world gold medalist in the discipline last year.

In the 29.2 mile Stage 10 time trial at the Vuelta, Phinney finished fifth and Talansky 16th, 1:33 and 2:28, respectively, behind winner HTC-Highroad rider Tony Martin of Germany, a two-time world bronze medalist who will be a favorite next week.

The two young Americans owe their world team selection in part to the fact that more experienced riders like Garmin's Dave Zabriskie -- winner of six of the last eight national championships in the discipline -- opted not to compete, but their presence is also a sign that the long-awaited generational transition in U.S. cycling is finally taking root.

Phinney and Talansky had very different neo-pro seasons. Hampered by injury early on, the much-heralded Phinney realized a few months into the season that he'd gone into it unprepared and unduly confident -- a bad combination.

Once he was physically sound, Phinney re-committed himself to a more professional training schedule. In a recent telephone interview, he said he didn't ride enough in the offseason and uttered the words every parent longs to hear: "I should have listened to my Dad," (Davis Phinney, who was on the leading edge of the first wave of American riders in the 1980s).

"I'm glad I made the bulk of my mistakes this year," Taylor Phinney said. "I was fairly blinded to what I was doing and what I should be doing. I finished last year on top of the world and maybe it was a little bit too much success. Yes, I'm very talented, but I also have to put in the necessary work.

"In the offseason, I wasn't partying or fooling around. I was at the gym lifting weights and I gained too much muscle. I had a new girlfriend I was probably trying to impress too much, and I had just signed a contract for a lot of money. It all just kind of fell into my legs."

Talansky began racing in February, stayed healthy except for a minor back issue in Paris-Nice, made his presence known by getting into a few breakaways at the Vuelta and won't dismount until next month (he plans to race in the Tour of Beijing in early October). It's been a heady year for the Florida native, who broke into the pro ranks via an unconventional path that included a collegiate national championship in 2008.

With a few days of rest and perspective, Talansky said the Vuelta "made me really excited for the future -- it was really important to me to get the start, and to finish. A year ago I was doing U-23 races.

"If you go in [to a debut Grand Tour] thinking you're going to set the world on fire, well, only a handful of guys in the world can do that. I can see why everyone says the third week is what makes a difference -- every miniscule detail of recovery and rest will pay off in the third week. It's not that somebody gets better in the third week. They just get less tired."

MADRID -- Alberto Contador called his season "very positive," and marked next year's Tour de France as his top priority despite the doping charges hanging over him.

Contador, speaking on Spanish state TV, was very happy with his second Giro d'Italia win and a fifth-place finish in the Tour this year.

"Next year, the objective will be the Tour, and it's probable I'll race in the 2012 Vuelta," Contador told RTVE on Wednesday. "I already want to [race the Vuelta]."

Despite feeling "very positive, very positive" about his 2011 season, Contador has a November date with the Court of Arbitration for Sport hanging over him and his last two big wins.

Contador is facing a two-year doping ban after failing a drug test on his way to winning a third Tour in 2010. Contador has continued to compete since then with his case dragging. He won this year's Giro after the Spanish cycling federation cleared him of doping for successfully arguing that he tested positive for clenbuterol because of contaminated meat.

The World Anti-Doping Agency and the International Cycling Union appealed the federation's decision and CAS has twice postponed the hearing. Contador hopes to attend the Nov. 21-24 hearing in Lausanne, Switzerland.

"It's in the hands of my lawyers now, and I have confidence in them," said Contador, who hopes a decision will be reached before the close of 2011.

There Rebecca Rusch lay, in the dirt, writhing in pain. It was around this time last year. She was 90 miles deep into a 100-mile bike race, her competition in hot pursuit. But at the final water stop, her calf caught a major cramp, sending her toppling off her bike and into the dirt and rocks ... leaving here there, in the dirt, writhing in pain, struggling to get the calf to relax.

"I was tired, hot, thirsty and in so much pain," she said, reliving the moment. "The volunteers were looking at me like I was an alien, but at that point I just didn't care." Instead, she yelled at them to get her a saltshaker. "I just shoved a bunch of salt in my mouth, hoped it would loosen the cramp, forced myself back on the bike and took off," she said. "By Mile 90 in that race, you're just reacting in a primal way. It's all about survival -- you're not thinking like a rational, polite human being."

Twenty minutes later, her animal instincts paid off as she won -- with relative ease -- Colorado's Leadville Trail 100, setting a course record with a time of 7 hours, 47 minutes.

Leadville is no ordinary race. It's known as one of the most grueling mountain biking events in the world, and can humble you in an instant. Rusch, 43, likes it like that. "I take the good days with the bad," she said. "If racing was always wine and roses, it wouldn't be nearly as addicting. You have to be prepared for the times when it's not going your way, and learn to shut off that negative voice that fills your head with doubts."

What she lives for: The magical feeling when the start gun goes off. "The brain shuts off and adrenaline takes over," said Rusch. "I become a different person. Nothing else in life gives me that feeling."

But don't take her for your ordinary thrill-seeker. "I don't bungee jump. I don't skydive," she said. "I take calculated risks." Yes, calculated risks like competing against women half her age -- and crushing them -- in grueling events such as the 24-Hour Solo Mountain Bike World Championships (which is just what it sounds like: cycling up and down steep, rock-covered, root-littered dirt trails along the ragged edges of mountains for 24 hours without stopping).

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DENVER -- Top cyclists George Hincapie, Christian Vande Velde and Robert Gesink are in the field for the inaugural USA Pro Cycling Challenge later this month.

The trio boosts an already strong lineup for the race through the Rocky Mountains and the Colorado Front Range that includes Tour de France podium finishers Cadel Evans and Andy and Frank Schleck.

Hincapie is on the BMC Racing Team and Vande Velde is on the Garmin-Cervelo team and Gesink races for Rabobank Cycling Team.

The provisional rosters are subject to change.

In all, 136 riders will compete in the weeklong race that begins Aug. 22. They'll traverse 518 miles at altitude, gaining more than two miles in elevation before finishing in downtown Denver on Aug. 28.