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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.

USA Cycling announced the 51 athletes who will compete at the 2011 UCI Mountain Bike World Championships.

Fourteen riders will compete in the elite cross country races, including Todd Wells, who won the elite men's cross country race at nationals. Jeremy Horgan-Kobelski, Adam Craig and Sam Schultz were also automatic nominations because they are ranked in the top 50 of the UCI Individual World Rankings.

On the women's side, Georgia Gould, Katie Compton, Lea Davison, Heather Irmiger and Mary McConneloug received automatic nominations. Gould won the cross country race at nationals, and Davison tops the 2011 USA Cycling Pro Mountain Bike Cross Country standings.

Aaron Gwin, who won four of the five World Cup downhill races, will lead the 10 elite American downhill riders. He will be joined by the leader of the 2011 USA Cycling Pro Mountain Bike Gravity Tour, Cody Warren. Jacqueline Harmony and Jill Kintner will lead the women's downhill contingent.

Worlds will be held in Champery, Switzerland, from Aug. 29 to Sept. 4.

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With exactly one year until the start of the London Olympics, construction has been completed on the six main venues in the Olympic Park: the Olympic Stadium, Velodrome, Handball Arena, Basketball Arena, Aquatics Centre and the International Broadcast Centre.

"To have all six permanent venues complete with a year still to go to the Games is a great achievement, and a firm sign that we are well on track to deliver a truly spectacular show in 2012," London Mayor Boris Johnson said in a statement released by the Olympic Delivery Authority.

Equivalent to the size of Hyde Park, the Olympic Park will have five new permanent venues, 30 new bridges and 4,000 new trees and will be served by 10 rail lines.

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LES ESSARTS, France -- To understand what Garmin-Cervelo's first Tour de France stage win in Sunday's team time trial meant to veteran Christian Vande Velde, it's necessary to go back to the same event in the same race 10 years ago.

At the 2001 Tour, the 25-year-old Vande Velde was a support rider for two-time defending champion Lance Armstrong on the U.S. Postal Service team. Jonathan Vaughters and Thor Hushovd, a newly minted 23-year-old pro from Norway built like a brick barracks, rode in the green-and-white kits of a team sponsored by a French bank, Credit Agricole.

Vande Velde, the son of a track cycling Olympian from Chicago, had been part of Armstrong's inaugural Tour win in 1999. Vaughters, a slender, bespectacled Colorado-bred climbing specialist whose father was a lawyer, had previously been Vande Velde's Postal teammate and roommate in Girona, Spain.

It rained the day of Stage 4 in 2001 as the Tour teams negotiated the 42-mile course in northeastern France from the World War I battlefield of Verdun to Bar-le-Duc. Postal had finished second to the powerful Spanish ONCE team in the TTT the year before and Armstrong and director Johan Bruyneel -- a former ONCE rider -- were keenly intent on winning. Vande Velde was equally intent on restoring his status as a valuable Tour domestique after having to sit out in 2000 due to a freak infection.

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TIFFAUGES, France -- Tyler Farrar is a sprinter disguised as a gentleman. He has all of the drive and passion but none of the abrasiveness often associated with the specialty. At 27, he is one of the most good-natured, composed presences in the peloton, and he is not one to wear his emotions on his jersey sleeve.

That was partly why it was so heartbreaking to see him grieve publicly. Farrar's dear friend Wouter Weylandt, a Belgian from the American rider's adopted home in Ghent, died after crashing in the Giro d'Italia on May 9, leaving behind a pregnant partner. Farrar learned the news in the most jarring manner possible, from a reporter at the team bus. His Garmin-Cervelo teammate David Millar tried his best to console an inconsolable young man that night.

The next morning, Farrar set off with the rest of the field, riding 134 miles at a deliberately neutralized pace to pay homage to Weylandt. It took more than six hours. A short distance from the finish, Weylandt's Leopard-Trek teammates went to the front and beckoned Farrar to join them. They wrapped their arms around each other's shoulders. The images of Farrar inclining his head slightly, making no effort to hide his raw, stricken face, are not easily forgotten.

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In the latest installment of her improbable journey from urban worker bee to one of the queen bees of women's cycling, Evelyn Stevens won her second straight national time trial championship Thursday in steamy Augusta, Ga., securing an automatic berth on the U.S. team for this fall's World Championships.

The official time for Stevens -- who took a 1-second penalty for starting a fraction early -- was just 0.2 seconds faster than her HTC-Highroad teammate, former time trial world champion Amber Neben, over the 18.6-mile course. The pre-race favorite, 2008 Olympic gold medalist Kristin Armstrong of Peanut Butter & Co., came in third after being absent last year due to her pregnancy, while HTC's Amanda Miller was fourth. USA Cycling coaches will select the other rider who will compete at worlds, largely based on head-to-head results this season.

Stevens, 28, was sixth in the time trial at worlds last year.

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Kristin Armstrong didn't know where she stood against her competition as she crested the long hill in the middle of the 15-mile Tour of California time trial course in Solvang a couple of weeks ago. Then an isolated scrap of commentary provided a context clue.

"She's wearing No. 1 for a reason," she heard the race announcer's voice blare. It broke Armstrong's concentration momentarily, and her mind veered down a side path.

"I thought, 'Yeah, there is a reason,'" Armstrong said Thursday. "'Either it's because I'm a former world and Olympic champion, or I'm in the lead. And if I'm in the lead, I better hurry.' I used that all the way down as an incentive to go as fast as I could."

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