Final Amstel Gold race wildcards announced.

Five teams have been awarded the final wildcard slots for the Amstel Gold race, which will take place April 19, the race organization announced Monday.

MTN-Qhubeka, CCC Polkowice Sprandi, Nippo-Vini Fantini, Cult Energy, and Bardiani-CSF will join previously-announced wildcards Team Roompot, Wanty-Groupe Gobert, and Topsort Vlaanderen-Baloise as well as the 17 UCI ProTeams at the start line in Maastricht.

The wildcard invites hold three former Amstel winners in their ranks. Damiano Cunego of Nippo-Vini Fantini won in 2008, while CCC’s Davide Rebellin and Stefan Schumacher won in 2004 and 2007, respectively, before both riders failed doping tests at the 2008 Summer Olympics and served two-year bans.

Cult Energy will back Fabian Wegmann, according to its sport director Michael Skelde.

Rider protest at Tour of Oman could lead to some non-invites in 2016.

Speaking in the wake of the rider protests which eventually led to the neutralization of the penultimate stage of the Tour of Oman, Eddy Merckx said that some teams involved could see their invitations revoked in next year’s edition.

On Saturday sandstorms caused the start of the 151 stage from Al Sawadi Beach to the Ministry of Housing to be cancelled, with the riders being transported to a new point prior to the flag being dropped.

However strong winds continued to make things nervous and when extreme heat caused some teams’ tires to explode, the riders wheeled to a halt under the shade of a large bridge and said they would not race.

Thomas delivers on stage racing ambition with Algarve win.

One of Geraint Thomas’ aims coming into the season was to develop his skillset as a week-long stage race rider and two months into the campaign his target received a welcome boost with the Welshman taking a stage and the overall victory in the Volta ao Algarve.

Thomas entered the race as a potential foil for teammate Richie Porte but on stage 2, the Commonwealth Games road race champion jumped clear to win in Monchique.

Froome v Contador: Round 1 finishes in Brit's favor.

The Vuelta a Andalucia over and Chris Froome stands triumphant, but with Alberto Contador seconds off the pace, the stage is set for a thrilling rivalry between the two as both riders hone their form for the European Spring.
   
The race ended overnight with Froome defending the lead he earnt the stage previous, and Contador settling for second overall at two seconds.

The performances of the two Tour rivals however stands out the tightness of the contest, a paper thin margin separating them, and indeed in strength of their glowing early-season form.

Contador won in the mountains, and took the racing to Froome, but the Brit punched back with his own superlative performance toward the race's close.

Both men mean business.

2014-15 Races & Results.

Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne - Mar 1 (Start List),

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad Elite - Feb 28 (Start List),

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

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

Vuelta a España 2015 - Aug 22-Sept 13 (Stages),

UCI Road World Championship 2015 - Sept 20-27 (Stages),

Volta ao Algarve - Feb 19-23 (Results),

UCI Track World Championships - Feb 18-22 (Results),

Tour of Oman 2015 - Feb 17-22 (Results),

Vuelta a Andalucia - Feb 18-22 (Results),

Women's Tour of New Zealand - Feb 18-22 (Results),

UCI Cyclo-cross World Championships - Jan 31-Feb 1 (Results).

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Saddling Up with the 2015 WTB Silverado and Volt for Cyclocross.

WTB revamped its extensive saddle line for 2015, with an update to the look, and reorganization of the models, sizes and rail material.

Nine models exist covering every discipline from recreational riding to racing, and most are available in three widths and a variety of rail materials.

The models are divided into Carbon, Team, Pro, Race and Comp, with the levels based on rail material and type of shell and padding material.

The Volt and Silverado models are at the top of the heap for cyclocross, with the Volt available in each of the five levels and the Silverado only in the top three levels.

Revamped Salsa Cycles Warbird.

Salsa Cycles was one of the first companies to embrace North America’s burgeoning gravel race scene when it introduced the Warbird in 2012.

As the popularity of riding back roads has grown, so too have the number of companies offering purpose-built gravel or 'all-road' models.

For 2015, Salsa has updated the Warbird with a number of features intended to give the bike, and more importantly, the rider, a competitive edge.

Boston Cyclists Excavate Massive Snow Tunnel To Restore Bike Path.

For every pedestrian and cyclist who’s had your journey interrupted by an impassable mound of snow, we bring you this story from Boston.

Earlier this month, Beantown resident Ari Goldberger found his journey to the Wellington Station T stop impeded by a ”15-foot mountain of snow.”

He registered his complaint to the powers that be, but he got the run-around.

“Rather than waiting on hold for a million years calling the MBTA, I posted the picture online and said, ‘If nothing is done about this, it’s going to take months to melt.’”

So Goldberger and his friends took matters into their own hands, and after a long, beer-fueled digging session, tunneled their way through.

Improve Your Sleep Quality.

Sleep helps you build muscle, recover from training, and even maintain a healthy weight, but most of us don’t get enough of it.

While people generally equate "good sleep" with getting eight consecutive hours, a University of California–San Diego paper on sleep research and aging reviewed data from 1.1 million people and determined that there is no statistically significant reason to sleep longer than six and a half hours per night.

In fact, the people in the research who slept six and a half hours a night lived longer than the ones who slept eight!

Rafael Valls jubilant after winning 2015 Tour of Oman.

Spanish climbing specialist Rafael Valls experienced the greatest moment of his career in winning the Tour of Oman on Sunday as Matthias Brandle clinched the sixth and final stage.

Valls, who seized control after winning the feature stage of the race, the climb to Green Mountain on Friday, finished with a nine-second advantage over American Tejay van Garderen, while Alejandro Valverde was third overall, 19 seconds adrift.

Tour de France champion Vincenzo Nibali finished in the top 20, more than three minutes off the pace.

Tejay van Garderen rues lost opportunity in Oman.

Kreuziger on biological passport case: ‘Very few believe in the UCI’.

Roman Kreuziger questioned the objectivity of journalists and the UCI, and said he hopes the CAS will act appropriately when it rules on his ongoing biological passport case.

The case and Kreuziger’s past involvement with doping doctor Michele Ferrari, however, have created a controversial image for Tinkoff-Saxo’s Czech cyclist.

“Very few believe in the UCI, that’s the problem,” Kreuziger told VeloNews, “but I hope that the CAS is objective.”

Kreuziger finished 12th Sunday at the Tour of Oman, his first race of what he hopes is a full season.

Last year, ahead of the 2014 Tour de France, the UCI forced him to a stop for suspect biological passport readings.

Brent Bookwalter Q&A: Pro Cyclists ‘need a voice’.

Brent Bookwalter was there when mud-caked glasses and silt-filled eyes dropped visibility to zero on Kebler Pass at the USA Pro Challenge last August. He was at the Giro d’Italia, too, where the rain seemed endless until it turned to snow, and controversy, atop the Stelvio.

It’s easy, sitting as we do behind computer screens and television sets, to forget just how unsympathetic and how utterly heartless cycling can be to the men and women who put on the show.

It’s a sport that revels in stoicism, puts the hardman on a pedestal, and has always fought through wind, rain, sleet, and snow.

We applaud a grimace, cheer for pain, and beg for suffering. It’s what makes the sport unique — and beautiful.

Wiles closes out dominant USA performance in New Zealand.

American Tayler Wiles was untroubled on the final day of racing in the Women's Tour of New Zealand, closing out a dominant performance from her USA National Team team-mates, to win the Women's Tour of New Zealand.

USA won four of five stages, and led the race from start to finish, Katrin Garfoot, who collected the race's third stage, the only rider able to break USA's dominance at the Oceania women's event.

The Women's Tour of New Zealand is the only UCI categorized race in Oceania, and after a two year absence returned to the international calendar this year.

It's been run intermittently since 2005, and boasts Kristin Armstrong, Judith Arndt and Evelyn Stevens as former winners, among others.

Greg Van Avermaet: The time is now.

Just over a bike length. That’s the distance that separated Greg Van Avermaet from victory in two of the biggest one-day races in world last year but such are the minute margins for error that the East Flandrian was left ruing his sprint finishes in both Omloop Het Nieuwsblad and the Tour of Flanders.

Out-shone by Ian Stannard in the former, out-foxed, andn out-thought by Fabian Cancellara in the latter, Van Avermaet was the nearly man of last spring.

Baugé eyes Olympic gold in Rio after Worlds success.

Grégory Baugé has only just been crowned World Champion but already his sights are set on bigger and better things.

The Frenchman rode to his fourth sprint world title on home soil in Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, but insisted that it’s the prospect of an Olympic gold medal that really spurs him on.

“[My obsession] has always been the Olympics,” he told L’Equipe. “I shouldn’t say that, with these World Championships but you want to be Olympic Champion and that’s what you work for.

Could Tony Martin succeed in the cobbled Classics?

Tony Martin says that he is “open” to attempting a campaign at the cobbled Classics in the next few years, but admits that it might be difficult to find a place for him an Etixx – Quick-Step team filled with Classics specialists.

Though he’s never ridden the likes of Paris-Roubaix or the Tour of Flanders, Martin impressed with his performance on the cobbles during stage five of the 2014 Tour de France, and it was that experience (despite crashing) that helped curb the ‘reservations’ he had about the cobbles.

Moreover, the German seemingly has the power and ability akin to other time trial and Classics specialists such as Fabian Cancellara and Niki Terpstra, that could allow him to succeed on the pavé.

Phil Gaimon's Diamondback Podium Equipe.

Phil Gaimon's move to Optum p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies this year meant another new bicycle in the rider's stable, including the team issue Diamondback Podium Equipe frameset decked out with SRAM Red 22 components.

Gaimon got his first chance to compete on the new machine last week at the Volta ao Algarve, where he played a crucial role in setting up teammate Michael Woods' fifth-place finish on the Queen Stage and 12th-place overall finish.

Schleck lowers Paris-Nice ambitions after crash in Andalucia.

After falling victim to a massive crash in the opening stage of the Vuelta a Andalucia last week, Trek Factory Racing rider Fränk Schleck is doubtful he can be on top form for Paris-Nice next month.

The Luxembourg champion was part of a pile-up near the finale of stage 1a when a Team Sky lead-out man swung off and took out Blel Kadri.

Kadri was only the headpin, and when he fell, almost the entire peloton came tumbling to the ground as a result.

Mavic CrossMax SL wheelset.

BikeRadar verdict: 4 out of 5 stars. "Expensive, but a dramatic XC speed/responsiveness boost with outstanding user-friendly toughness ."

Vuelta a Andalucia: Lobato scorches to victory on final stage.

Daily Distractions.

PEZ: EuroTrash Froome Monday!

Former Giro race director Acquarone: “race organizers have too much power.”

Picture cycling as a scale. On one side sit multi-national corporations, race organizations full of lawyers and revenue projections and daily budgets.

On the other, 180 or so loosely organized but mostly factionalized men in twenty different colors of lycra, tasked with putting on a show.

It’s not difficult to imagine which side is heftier. Or which side wins most disputes.

Michele Acquarone, former head of the Giro d’Italia race organization, RCS Sport, believes the scale should be tipped in the riders’ favor.

“Today race organizers have too much power. It must be regulated, at least in [WorldTour] races,” he told VeloNews.

Acquarone, who is currently fighting his dismissal from RCS in an Italian employment tribunal, and denies he perpetrated the fraud RCS accuses him of, has been on the commercial side of the scale for most of his career.

The future of Astana still hangs in the balance.

Big week for the Astana team.

The UCI will next week release details of the University of Lausanne’s report in to Astana and from that update its position on the Kazakh team’s license.

In December, Astana received his World Tour license under the condition of being independently assessed by the department of sports science of the University of Lausanne.

“We have had the report from ISSUL.” UCI President Brian Cookson confirmed on Friday. “That report has gone back to the license commission and we are looking at that at the moment.

We expect to be in a position to make an announcement about that in the next few days”, according to Cycling Weekly.

Hinault sees non-white Tour de France winner in near future.

For the past eight years, Bernard Hinault has acted as ambassador for the Tropicale Amissa Bongo event in Gabon and admits that over that period he has witnessed a rapid rise in the level of competition at what is Africa's biggest stage race.

In the wake of a second victory in a row by an African rider, with Tunisia's Rafaa Chtioui succeeding Eritrea's Natnael Berhane, Hinault believes African riders are getting ever closer to capturing the biggest titles on the calendar, including the Tour de France.

In an interview with Ouest France conducted during the 10th edition of the race, which concluded at the weekend, Hinault suggests that the day when an African or a Chinese rider wins the Tour is not too far away.

Talk: Brian Vandborg.

Brian Vandborg retired at the end of 2013 after a career that saw him compete for CSC (twice), Discovery Channel, GLS, Liquigas-Doimo, SpiderTech and Cannondale.

Two teams folded and a season was ruined due to mononucleosis, but he was a strong team rider to the end.

E3 Harelbeke advert causes controversy.

The organizer of the E3 Harelbeke classic has courted controversy with its advertizement for the 2015 race, which attempts to poke fun at Peter Sagan’s podium antics from the 2013 editon of that race and at the Tour of Flanders in the same year.

Having finished runner-up to Fabian Cancellara in both instances, the Slovakian, then riding for Cannondale, mimed patting the podium girl on the backside as she congratulated the E3 winner, before pinching podium girl Maja Leye while on stage in Flanders.

How To: Descend quickly and safely.

Descending is obviously full of risks but when done correctly with good technique it will make your ride downhill much more safe. 

Remember out on the open road there are many variables that you have no control over and I’ve seen far too many serious accidents on descents that should never have occurred.

Bardet continues steady progress at Vuelta a Andalucia.

Amid all the media fuss about Alberto Contador and Chris Froome at the Vuelta a Andalucia, other top stage racers such as Romain Bardet have been flying under.

Sixth in the Tour de France last year, in Andalucia’s hilly stage on Saturday the 24-year-old finished a strong eighth despite an untimely puncture at the foot of the final, very difficult, climb to Allanadas.

How well Bardet would have done without having to waste energy by fighting to get back on after his puncture therefore will remain an incognito but Bardet’s strong third place behind Contador and Froome at 1:39 on the ultra-hard Hazallanas climb the day before suggests that he could have done very well.

10 of the world's most expensive bikes.

Like Bike is a little different from most bike shows, in that it celebrates the most luxurious and expensive bikes on the market – and that it takes place in Monte Carlo.

The Secret Pro: Let the season begin!

It's been a couple months since we've heard from The Secret Pro as an intense early-season race program have kept him rather busy.

In this instalment, he speaks about how the riders feel about racing in the Middle East, the Hour Record, disc brakes, Lance Armstrong, Oleg Tinkoff and tells some of the young cowboys in today's peloton where they stand.

Kreuziger looks to focus on racing as he awaits CAS appeal.