Bike World News

Matti Breschel of Team CSC-Saxo Bank won today’s stage, but all of the attention will be on Alberto Contador, who won the overall title, becoming only the fifth man to win all three of the grand tours. It is also Contador’s home tour, making the victory all the more thrilling.
Contador’s win is also great boon for his Astana team, as teammate Levi Leipheimer finished in second place, just 46 seconds behind. Spaniard Carlos Sastre had hoped to follow up his victory in the Tour de France with another win on …

Today’s stage is relatively short, just a little over 145 km from Las Rozas to Segovia. The route is nicely split with the day’s two category 1 climbs coming at km 45 and km 89 (the Puerto de Navacerrada and the Puerto de Navafria, respectively). From there, it’s basically downhill into Segovia, where there is a bit of an uphill finish. We’ll see how this affects the sprinters at the end of the race.
Paolo Bettini (Quick Step), Stefan Schumacher (Gerolsteiner) and Filippo Pozzato (Liquigas) all dropped out of the race overnight. …

Today’s stage travels from yesterday’s arrival town of Valladolid to the city of Las Rozas. The road tilts gently upward for about the first 85 kilometers and then the stage gets a little more bumpy, culminating in the climb up Category 3 Alto des Leones at the 128km mark. From there, the riders will have a 38km downhill ride into the town of Las Rozas. The sprinters will have some time to recover before the finish. 
As anticipated this morning, Tom Boonen dropped out and headed home to rest up for …

The Vuelta continues its rush to Madrid. Today’s stage from Zamora – Valladolid is relatively short at 148 km and should not present a significant challenge to the competitors. While you couldn’t call it a flat stage, there are very few bumps along the way.
The pace was a little quicker than yesterday’s laconic march. Perhaps the riders are ready for this thing to be over. 
Pedro Horrillo (Rabobank) decided early that he wanted to go for it, and escaped at km 12. José Ruiz (Andalucía-Cajasur) chased and caught him a kilometer later and …

Today’s stage travels south towards Madrid, encompassing 186.4 kilometres from Ponferrada to Zamora. Alberto Contador (Astana) started the day comfortably in the lead, with teammate Levi Leipheimer 1′17 behind.
It’s a hot day in Spain, and temperatures on the road are said to be upwards of 28 C (that’s 82F for those of you in the states). There is only one significant climb on today’s route, the category one Alto del Acebo, which comes just 1.6 km into the stage and heads up for the next 14 km. 
France’s David Moncoutié (Cofidis) was first …

Bike World News headquarters got waylaid by the remnants of Hurricane Ike yesterday afternoon, so there was no power, cable or phone. As a result, no race results.
Here’s the summary for Stage 14 (courtesy of CyclingNews.com): Spaniard Alberto Contador of Team Astana put a golden mark on this Vuelta a España with a counter-attack of Ezequiel Mosquera’s strong effort to arrive solo and win stage 14 atop the Puerto de San Isidro. He added further time into his overall classification lead with both Carlos Sastre and Alejandro Valverde dropped in the …

With one week to go in the Vuelta, today was the day to make big moves, and that’s exactly what Alberto Contador did today. One the day with the most intense climb (the HC Alto de l’Angliru) he moved past his competitors in the final 3500 meters to take the stage and the overall lead.
The day started in San Vicente de la Basque under cloudy skies and 17º temperatures. The riders were facing a 209.5 km journey in Asturias to the finish on the Alto de l’Angliru. Between the towns …