Franzoi facing three-month ban for links to Dr. Ferrari.

The Italian Olympic Committee's anti-doping investigators have requested a three-month ban for cyclo-cross and road rider Enrico Franzoi for his links to Dr. Michele Ferrari.

Franzoi is the first rider to face a disciplinary hearing based on evidence from the Padova and Bolzano police investigations into the infamous sports doctor who worked with Lance Armstrong for much of the Texan's career.

Filippo Pozzato, Giovanni Visconti and Michele Scarponi have already served short bans for their links to Dr. Ferrari.

Pelucchi wins Mallorca Challenge opener in Campos.

Matteo Pelucchi won the bunch sprint in the opening race of the Mallorca Challenge in the Trofeo Santanyi-Ses Salines-Campos on Thursday. The Italian claimed IAM Cycling’s first victory as a WorldTour team by a clear margin over Team Sky’s Elia Viviani and Jose Joaquin Rojas.

A crash in the final three kilometers took down MTN-Qhubeka’s Andreas Stauff, who broke his clavical in the fall.

More cobbles as Paris-Roubaix returns to 2013 route.

Paris-Roubaix will boast even more cobbles for the 113th iteration of the famous race this year, including three secters set to be used at the Tour de France.

Riders will have tackle 253 kilometers of racing between Compiegne and the Roubaix velodrome in total on April 12, with 52.7km of that distance over the iconic pavé.

Orica-AIS aims to keep momentum going at Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race.

The Orica-AIS team will aim to keep its winning momentum going in its next outing, the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race on Saturday.

Coming off the high of three stage wins in the Santos Women's Tour last week, the Orica-AIS squad will remain largely the same, with double stage winner Melissa Hoskins opting to race the national track championships. She will be replaced by Gracie Elvin.

Double Tour de San Luis stage winner Gaviria narrows choice to two WorldTour teams.

Twice a stage victor in the Tour de San Luis, the Colombian sprinting sensation Fernando Gaviria’s vanquishing of riders such as Mark Cavendish in the race catapulted him into the limelight and, according to his agent, almost certainly into the WorldTour.

According to Giuseppe Acquadro, the 20 year old is of interest to teams from cycling’s top level on the basis of his performances.

He won stages one and three in the Argentinean event, stunning Cavendish and others, and finished second to the Briton on the final stage.

“We had several contacts and now the choice has been narrowed to two teams, one French and one Belgian, and both from the WorldTour,” Acquadoro told Tuttobiciweb.

Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race preview.

If it wasn’t already obvious from the name, the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race is a tribute to the long and successful career of one of Australia’s greatest ever cyclists: Cadel Evans.

It’s a course that Evans himself helped design and one that features many of the roads Evans likes to train on when he’s at home in Barwon Heads over the Australian summer.

Despite the name of the event, the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race barely visits the Great Ocean Road at all.

Of the 174km raced by the elite men, just 6.6km of that will be on the famous tourist route — a 2.8km section and a 3.8km section.

When the race does visit the Great Ocean Road it won’t be to the windy and picturesque sections of the road you see in all the tourism brochures and websites — it’s two sections near the start of the Great Ocean Road in Torquay where it’s barely even possible to see the ocean.

Cycling on TV: U.S. viewers may see more, eventually.

With the UCI world cyclocross championships set to start on Saturday in the Czech Republic, a familiar refrain pops up on American cycling fans’ Twitter feeds, Facebook posts, and other sources: “How do I watch?”

Currently, the U.S. rights to many UCI cycling events are owned by Universal Sports Network (USN).

In fact, the network and the UCI recently announced a renewed partnership through 2018.

According to a press release, “The deal gives Universal Sports multi-platform rights, including exclusive TV and digital rights, to the UCI road world championships and UCI world championship and World Cup events in track cycling, BMX, mountain bike, and cyclocross.”

2014-15 Races & Results.

UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships - Jan 31 (Races),

Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race - Feb 1 (Races),

Dubai Tour 2015 - Feb 4-7 (Stages),

Giro d'Italia 2015 - May 9-31 (Stages),

Tour de France 2015 - July 4-26 (Stages),

Santos Tour Down Under 2015 - Jan 18-25 (Results),

Tour de San Luis 2015 - Jan 19-25 (Results),

Santos Women's Tour 2015 - Jan 17-20 (Results),

UCI Road World Championship 2014 - Sept 20-27 (Results),

Vuelta a España 2014 - Aug 23-Sept 14 (Results),

Tour de France 2014  - July 5-27 (Results),

Giro d'Italia 2014 - May 9 - June 1 (Results),

More ...

Porte leads Sky in Algarve.

The Australian time trial champion and winner of the 2012 Volta ao Algarve/Tour of Algarve Richie Porte, is back in the Portuguese race which will be held between the 18th and 22nd of February.

The peloton will be completed with the inclusion of two continental teams, the Polish ActiveJet and the Basque Murias Taldea.

Porte, 74th in the world rankings in 2014, is the strongest name chosen by Team Sky for the 41st edition of the Volta ao Algarve/Tour of Algarve.

He is one of the in-form riders at the beginning of this season, having won the Australian time trial championships and the queen stage of the Tour Down Under race where he finished second overall.

How to Conceive an Olympian.

In an age when the FDA is debating the ethics of mitochondrial manipulation technologies (aka creating designer babies), it appears that some people are willing to go to great lengths to conceive potential professional athletes or other superstar offspring.

This seems a bit extreme and will certainly be extraordinarily expensive if and when the technology becomes available.

In the meantime, if you’re really hoping to give birth to a future Tour contender, you can try your hand at a DIY designer baby on the cheap by planning your conception for a fall birth, ideally in November.

UCI to host inaugural Women’s Teams Seminar.

An American Junior Goes to Tabor Ranked Second in the World: Gage Hecht Pre-Worlds Interview.

Evelyn Stevens Embarks on the Road to Richmond.

Teams lining up to sign Colombian sprinter Fernando Gaviria.

Froome: The Tour is my only goal.

Movers and Shakers: Rochelle Gilmore smooths path for Australia’s female cyclists.

Rochelle Gilmore’s Australian summer break has turned out to be anything but relaxing.

The 2010 Commonwealth Games gold medallist has kept up the pace off the bike in an ongoing effort to smooth the path to the top-level of the sport for riders from her home country.

Gilmore, who founded international professional women’s road cycling team Wiggle Honda, was always going to be a prominent figure this Australian summer road season.

The Last Mohicans.

Cycling seems to be going in a one way direction with teams and riders adopting more and more sports science.

But a few riders still buck the trend against power meters.

Can they hold out?

Local favorite Nash aims for cyclocross worlds win.

An airy three inches of snow fell on Prachatice, Czech Republic overnight Monday, adding a hint of slip-and-slide to Katerina Nash’s training spin. The legs are good, she says. Confidence is high. Pressure is low. The UCI Cyclocross World Championship course in Tabor suits her well.

And a bit of snow, for a veteran of both the summer and winter Olympics, for a rider with handling skills honed by a decade on the mountain bike circuit, only improves her odds.

On Sunday, the world’s best cyclocrossers better watch out for the local girl.

Cavendish and Renshaw to ride the Cape Town Cycle Tour.

The Etixx-Quick-Step team has announced that Mark Cavendish and Mark Renshaw will ride the Cape Town Cycle Tour in South Africa on March 8.

The one-day event combines a road race and mass-participation ride for 35,000 people. It covers a 107km route around Cape Town and the iconic Table Mountain.

The event falls on the weekend of the Strade Bianche race in Tuscany and comes just three days before the start of Tirreno-Adriatico. However Cavendish is expected to ride the Italian stage race as he prepares for Milan-San Remo.

Jack Bobridge Q&A before Hour Record Attempt.

"Fourty-eight hours before his World Hour attempt on Saturday we spoke with Jack Bobridge at the BikeBug store grand opening in Melbourne.

Bobridge made a brief appearance in-between the Team Pursuit qualifying rounds and the finals (with his new Budget Forklifts team) during the Track National Championships and had a word with us about how he's feeling coming into his Hour Record attempt."

Tour champion Nibali’s 2015 campaign starts in Dubai.

Reigning Tour de France champion Vincenzo Nibali will kick off his 2015 race season at the Dubai Tour, February 4-7.

“I’m convinced that Dubai represents a great opportunity for cycling and vice versa,” Nibali said at the route presentation in November.

“Dubai Tour, which I raced last year too, will be my seasonal debut in 2015. The course is very interesting, and the third stage, with the final steep climb, it’s something very nice, [and] very hard to find in these surroundings.”

FDJ aiming to win the Tour de France in the next five years.

The FDJ team held its official team presentation in Paris on Wednesday, with team manager Marc Madiot convinced that the French squad can win the Tour de France in the next five years.

Last year Thibaut Pinot finished third in the Tour de France behind Vincenzo Nibali and fellow Frenchman Jean-Christophe Peraud.

"The Tour has been unreachable for years, for reasons you know as well as I do. But now we have the potential.

This can be done in the next four to five years, if we continue to progress and if fate is in our favor,” French newspaper L'Equipe quoted Madiot as saying.

Is milk a good rehydration option?

Milk-based beverages can be more effective than traditional sports drinks at replacing fluid lost during exercise, according to a study by Griffith University, one of Australia’s leading sports universities.

The study compared the rehydration potential of different milk-based drinks to a carbohydrate-electrolyte beverage.

It claims that Pauls brand full cream milk, So Good brand soy milk, Nestle milk-based liquid meal supplement and Sustagen Sport, were more effective rehydration options than Powerade.

The Bike Place 2015: new products from Santini, Chris King and Knight.

We’re expecting power meters to really break into the mainstream market in 2015, with a range of budget options due for release or selling well already.

However the best could be still to come with the new Precision power meter from 4iiii.

The Precision isn’t quite ready for release quite yet, but 4iiii say they are aiming to sell it for an astonishingly low price.

What’s more they claim that despite the bargain-basement price-tag, accuracy will be >99%.

The system will be crank-based, somewhat resembling the Stages system, but unlike Stages can be fitted to existing cranks, and comes as either a single- or double-sided option.

 Powered by coin cell batteries with a claimed battery life of 200+ hours, and compatible with Bluetooth or ANT+, 4iiii certainly seems to have its bases covered.

Why Isn’t Road Tubeless More Popular? Part Two – Current Options, Challenges & What’s Coming Down the Road.

Part One of our Road Tubeless series seemed to spur a lot of discussion, especially around the statement that a Road Tubeless standard does not exist.

Most of us believe if a product says “Road Tubeless” on the side, it will work with other items that say the same.

Unfortunately, that’s not necessarily the case, and a lot of this confusion has come from the companies themselves, using the common term - either with caps (Road Tubeless) or without (road tubeless) - to market dissimilar products.

So we checked in with the producers of the most common products and asked them about the future of Road Tubeless.

Do they see standardization coming? Is there any standard now?

Changing the Business Model: Rethinking pro cycling’s governance.

Challenge Mallorca preview.

Daily Distractions.

PEZ: EuroTrash Lance Thursday!

Lance Armstrong: From Paris to pariah to pardon?

They meet at his shop every week, buy his kit and drink his coffee, but most of the guys who have rolled up for the oldest group ride in Austin do not want to utter his name.

We are in the Juan Pelota Cafe, which is at one end of Mellow Johnny's  bike shop. That is "Mellow Johnny" as in the French for yellow jersey, "maillot jaune"; and "Juan Pelota" as in "one" and the Spanish for "ball". Guess who?

"Have you read 'Seven Deadly Sins'?" Andrew, a member of the Violet Crown  cycling crew, asks me, referring to the Irish journalist David Walsh's  most recent Lance Armstrong expose.

"For me, he went from being complicated to evil."

Lance Armstrong subpoenas those who testified against him.

Lance Armstrong said that he wants to “try and make it right”, but is sending subpoenas to those who testified he doped to win seven Tour de France titles.

As part of his defence in a $95.7m (£63.2m) US Government whistleblower lawsuit, Armstrong has been sending out subpoenas to those that helped bring him down.

The subpoenas demand testimonies, documents and sworn statements that were used against Armstrong in the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) cases.

Former team-mate Frankie Andreu received one and others are reportedly next.

Cyclocross worlds in a word? Unpredictable.

If ever there was a wide open cyclocross world championships, this is it.

Who could have predicted in September that we would arrive at the four championship races that will unfold here starting Saturday, in this village of 35,000 people about an hour’s drive south of Prague, without a single defending world champion standing as a clear favorite to repeat?

Some might have predicted the absence of defending men’s champion Zdenek Stybar, who is chasing classics glory on the road this year, especially after his nasty crash in Ardooie in October.

Some might have predicted the rise of defending under-23 champion Wout Van Aert, who abandoned his eligibility for that category to race among the big boys in the elites.

Some might even have predicted that Marianne Vos’ frenetic pace, winning nearly every race in sight, more or less year-round, would leave her vulnerable to injury.

But all of the above, at the same time?

Elite Women Rider & Start Lists: 2015 Tabor Cyclocross World Championships.

Start lists aren’t officially released until Friday afternoon, but we’ve mucked with spreadsheets and entry lists to create our own.

Ages listed are as of the race, not UCI racing age.

Interview: Aru ready to take on Contador at the Giro d'Italia.

Fabio Aru is the rising star of Italian cycling but in 2015 he will again be overshadowed by his Astana team leader and fellow Italian Vincenzo Nibali.

The two are very similar riders with similar temperaments and are now even neighbours after Aru also moved to Lugano in Switzerland during the winter.

Many would like to see them on separate teams and so go head to head on the roads of the Giro d'Italia, sparking yet another rivalry that would fire up the tifosi.

But that is unlikely to happen. Aru is keen to plough his own furrow, secure his own place in the palmares of cycling, without getting into a fight with Nibali.

He already has the backing of the Astana team and was given the role of team leader for the Giro d'Italia for 2015, putting an end to Nibali's hopes of returning to the Giro this season.

Talk: Katusha’s Marco Haller.

"Marco Haller is starting his fourth professional season and is only 23. He has the experience and is still young enough to have a long career and is already in one of the best WorldTour teams. We caught up with him in Spain to find out more about the pro from Austria.

At 23 Marco has a nice palmarés: In 2012 he won stage 4 Tour of Beijing, then in 2013 the Mountains classification in the Three Days of De Panne, 7th Overall Tour des Fjords with a win in the stage 3 team time trial and 7th Overall Arctic Race of Norway and then in 2014 he got his home win in stage 8 Tour of Austria.

After a hard days training in the Spanish Mountains we sat down for a good chat on just about everything."

Sutton: Wiggins can reach his aims in Paris-Roubaix and Hour Record.

British Cycling’s Shane Sutton has insisted that Bradley Wiggins will take on Paris-Roubaix with the same belief and determination that served him so well during the rider’s previous three Olympic campaigns.

Wiggins has made Paris-Roubaix the number one target during his final season on the road, and he plans on returning to the track after the race in order to concentrate on the Hour Record and the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

Sutton has been a longstanding friend, coach and confidant for Wiggins over the years, and helped him towards Tour de France and Olympic successes.

Last year Wiggins finished a creditable ninth in Paris-Roubaix and was a key protagonist in the race.

Upgrade Your Shorts.

I love a good pair of boy shorts. They’re full coverage, but flirty; comfortable, yet somehow kinda sexy.

And honestly, how often do you find cycling gear that makes you want to dance in front of the mirror?

Those are the reasons I'm psyched about the trend of briefs-with-chamois—Club Ride, Aerotech Designs, Vulpine, and KOR NYC to name a few—and I was excited to check out Giro’s offering.

They’re an awesome addition to any female cyclist’s wardrobe, but in particular, they’re great for two types of people: those who commute mid-range distances, and those who are just getting into cycling but already own plenty of tights and sporty shorts from other athletic activities.

Lee’s Lowdown: Cycling In The Smog.

Three-time Irish Olympian brands Lance Armstrong "self-serving" over latest doping comments.