Bart Wellens retires from cyclo-cross.

The 36 year-old Belgian has spent the last 12 years of his career with the Telenet Fidea team.

He was world champion in 2003 and 2004 after being Under 23 world champion in 1999 and 2000.

He also won two editions of the World Cup in 2002 and 2003 and the Superprestige series in 2003 and 2004.

His last victory was at the 2011 GP Rouwmoer in Essen.

He has struggled to finish in the top ten in major races this season as new generation of riders emerged lead by 19 year-old Mathieu van der Poel.

2014-15 Races & Results.

Le Samyn - Mar 4 (History),

Le Samyn des Dames - Mar 4 (Start List),

Driedaagse van West-Vlaanderen - Mar 6-8 (Start List),

Strade Bianche Women - Mar 7 (Race),

Paris Nice - Mar 8-15 (Stages),

Tirreno-Adriatico - Mar 11-17 (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),

Kuurne-Bruxelles-Kuurne - Mar 1 (Results),

Omloop Het Nieuwsblad Elite - Feb 28 (Results),

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

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

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Sagan leads Tinkoff-Saxo at Strade Bianche.

The Slovakian has racked up a series of placings in his early season racing in Qatar and Oman but is still in search of his first victory since signing for the squad.

Sagan finished second in both the 2013 and 2014 editions of Strade Bianche.

Last year Michal Kwiatkowski dropped Sagan on the final climb into Siena after the two distanced the rest of the peloton after the testing sections of dirt roads, while he took second after helping teammate Moreno Moser to victory in 2013.

Sky nearing classics zenith with monuments approaching.

With Ian Stannard’s Omloop Het Nieuwsblad win Saturday in Gent, Belgium, Sky showed it is reaching a new level in classics racing after dominating in grand tours over the past five years.

With the monuments on the horizon, the result boosted the British team’s morale and sent a warning out to established squads like Etixx-Quick-Step.

“We were all quite young at the start of the team in 2010, but we’ve been growing together and learning the races,” Stannard told VeloNews in February.

“It comes down to experience, knowing and learning the races.”

Gerrans returns at Strade Bianche.

After his longest break from racing since turning pro 11 years ago, Simon Gerrans returns to competition this weekend at Strade Bianche.

The veteran Australian crashed three months ago, leaving him with a broken clavicle, and with a snap of the bone, he was forced to forfeit a chance to defend his title at the Santos Tour Down Under in January.

Coming off an intense training camp in South Africa, Gerrans vows to make up for lost time.

“I’m always excited to get racing underway, but this year more so than ever,” Gerrans wrote on his personal website. “Now that I’ve gone such a long period without racing, I’m really looking forward to getting back into it again and getting the season started.”

Women's news shorts: Racers head to Le Samyn des Dames, Strade Bianche and Omloop van het Hageland.

The classics season is now underway and the women’s peloton will head next to Le Samyn des Dames on Wednesday in Belgium followed by the inaugural Strade Bianche on Saturday in Italy and then back to Belgium on Sunday for the Omloop van het Hageland - Tielt-Winge.

A thrilling start to the classic’s season at Omloop Het Nieuwsblad last Saturday saw Anna Van der Breggen take the win ahead of Ellen Van Dijk in a two-up sprint. Lizzie Armitstead took third in a bunch sprint.

News shorts: Andy Schleck to open bike shop.

Five months after he announced his retirement, Andy Schleck is making plans to open a bike shop. According to Luxembourgish website Paperjam.lu, the former rider hopes to open the doors of a new shop in Itzig in 2016. Along with the bike shop, the article states that Schleck wants to open an adjoining café.

"The store will not only be a lobby with bikes that will be on display," Schleck told the website. "We want to give great importance to the service.

I want to transfer to the customer service my skills and my athletic experience."

How a team and its sponsors prepare equipment for the new season.

One team that’s had a massive overhaul for the 2015 season is MTN-Qhubeka, the African Pro Continental team that has been riding on Trek with SRAM and Zipp for the past few seasons.

With Trek focusing its efforts and finances on its in-house Trek Factory Racing Team, MTN-Qhubeka managed to pull together a bunch of brands that many will recognise as the suppliers that were part of the initial Cervelo Test team of 2009.

That team eventually morphed into Garmin-Sharp and is now known as Cannondale-Garmin.

Brian Smith was brought on late last year as general manager for MTN-Qhubeka and has been instrumental in securing the sponsors that now supply the team. Cervelo, Rotor, KMC, 3T, Castelli and CeramicSpeed were all part of that initial Cervelo team; a team Smith helped bring together.

Specialized Issues Voluntary Recall.

Specialized has issued a voluntary recall of the clamps that secure the bar extensions to the base bar for both models of Shiv - the time trial bike and the triathlon-specific bike - built between 2012 and 2015.

Clamps for both carbon and aluminum bars are included in this recall. Cockpit configurations that include the low-stack option are not affected.

2015 Le Samyn LIVE.

2015 GP Le Samyn LIVE Wednesday, March 4, Belgium.

Men's race starts at 12:05pm CET (6:05am U.S. Eastern).

Finish at around 5:02pm CET (11:02am U.S. Eastern).

Live video from 3:15pm CET (9:15am U.S. Eastern, 6:15am Pacific).

Guide to the 2015 Spring Classics.

Opening the action was Omloop Het Nieuwsblad. The 2015 route had a total of 11 climbs or "hellingen," with course designer and former winner Peter Van Petegem keeping the circular route but tweaking the order of the climbs and adding the Bosgat ascent.

After a tumultuous year, 2014 winner Ian Stannard returned to the race as he searched to get his career back on track after breaking his back at Ghent-Wevelgem and spending three months off his bike.

There is still plenty more action to come in the Classics over the next two months, so let Cyclingnews guide you through the important races from Milan-San Remo to Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

Spectator dies after Belgian feedzone crash.

A 54-year-old woman was killed in a racing feedzone in Belgium on Sunday after a rider lost control of his bike in the wind.

The woman, who was the wife of former Tour de France stage winner Ludwig Wijnants, was struck by 18-year-old Jordi Van Dingenen at the Brustem-Sint-Truiden race.

Van Dingenen was riding the race, which is for elite riders without a contract, for the Vastgoedservice – Golden Palace team, whose team leader, Roger Loysch, witnessed the incident.

Talansky headed to Paris-Nice with 2015 season built around Tour de France.

After a rollercoaster 2014 season that brought American Andrew Talanksy his greatest sporting achievement to date and also his lowest moment, the Cannondale-Garmin rider heads into the 2015 season with one objective in mind — success at the Tour de France.

What success at the Tour look would look like for Talansky, against a field that is expected to include three former winners, remains to be seen.

A 10th-place finisher at the 2013 Tour, Talansky, 26, won the 2014 Critérium du Dauphiné, taking advantage of the rivalry between Alberto Contador and Chris Froome to pull of a daring final-stage coup.

He headed into last year’s Tour as a contender for, if not the podium, then perhaps a top-five finish.

Business as usual for Luis León Sánchez ahead of Paris-Nice.

Despite the UCI's request to revoke Astana's WorldTour license, Spaniard Luis León Sánchez says the team is still acting as if the situation were normal, planning to compete in Paris-Nice next week, a race that Sanchez won in 2009 and took second place the following year.

The UCI announced last week that it appealed to its Licensing Commission to revoke the team's license because of the team's connection to the Padova doping investigation.

The team was given a provisional licence for 2015 after the doping positives of Valentin and Maxim Iglinskiy last year and was subject to an independent audit.

You Can Ride Off-Road.

This time last year the UCI had brought in new rule requiring riders to stick to the road.

This time last year the peloton ignored it. The result is that the UCI changed the rule and riders can use paths as long as it’s safe to do so.

Also Ian Stannard appears 10 times harder than the rest in the image above.

But he ended up on the cobbles by accident, briefly missing a move adopted by everyone else.

Paris-Nice is Wiggo’s Warmup.

Bradley Wiggins, the first Briton to win the Tour de France, was named Tuesday in Sky’s team for the six stage Paris-Nice event which begins Sunday.

Sky leader Chris Froome meanwhile will take part in the Tirreno-Adriatico, which begins in Italy on Wednesday and which also features Vuelta champion Alberto Contador, Tour de France champion Vicenzo Nibali and Giro d’Italia champion Nairo Quintana.

Wiggins won the Paris-Nice in 2012 prior to his Tour triumph.

The race is a key part of his farewell schedule before he leaves Sky to set up his own team. Australia’s Richie Porte, who won the Paris-Nice in 2013 and Welsh rider Geraint Thomas, who led last year’s edition, are also part of a strong Sky line-up featuring Bernhard Eisel and Nicolas Roche.

Storey plays down suggestions of a repeat bid for the world hour record.

She made an extremely strong impression in going within 563 metres of equalling the long-standing hour record of Leontien Van Moorsel, but British Paralympian Sarah Storey has ruled out another tilt at the mark.

Storey, who covered 45.502 kilometers in Lee Valley VeloPark in London on Saturday, said that once was enough for her, although she did leave a small possibility open after 2016.

“It’s a once in a lifetime,” she said, speaking to Press Association. “I won’t be considering doing it any time soon. If I ever did it again it would be well after Rio.”

Gocycle is now a go for U.S.

Six years since its introduction at the Taipei Cycle Show, the distinctive Gocycle e-bike is available for distribution in the United States.

“The profile of a successful bicycle shop for us is usually one that’s into different niche categories. They may have super-cool urban bikes, folding bikes and e-bikes. Those people do very well with Gocycle,” company founder Richard Thorpe said.

The small-wheeled folding bike, now in its second generation, is unusual in many ways. Called the G2, its frame and wheels are made of magnesium. A small, 500-watt front hub motor pairs with a pedal-powered rear hub.

The Death of Cantilevers.

The recent World Cyclocross Championships may not look like a major turning point in many respects. The race was held in a safely traditionalist bastion of 'cross (Tábor, Czech Republic) and the winners were reliably from old-guard 'cross nations (excepting the Junior Men's victor, Simon Andreassen of Denmark).

But viewed another way, the race may mark a major shift: the last World Championships that saw the majority of competitors race on traditional rim brakes.

That seems counterintuitive. Three of the four winners rode discs, with U23 men's champion Michael Vanthourenhout being the only holdout.

But the majority of starters still raced on cantilevers.

Disruption to Van Avermaet’s schedule likely due to anti-doping hearing, could Sanremo be affected?

Although Greg Van Avermaet is one of the BMC Racing Team’s biggest guns for the spring Classics, it remains to be seen how his preparation and thus form will be affected by his implication in the doping matter involving Dr. Chris Mertens.

On Saturday it was confirmed that the Belgian rider had been summoned to appear at an anti-doping hearing held by the Belgian cycling federation Koninklijke Belgische Wielrijdersbond (KBW) on Tuesday March 13.

This date clashes with two major races on the spring calendar, Paris-Nice and Tirreno-Adriatico. Both of these are used by Classic riders as an important part of the build-up to Milan-Sanremo and other events.

Paris-Nice runs from March 8 to 15 while Tirreno-Adriatico will be held from March 11 to 17.

Milan-Sanremo will itself be held on March 22.

Report: Armstrong’s lifetime ban unlikely to be reduced.

Daily Distractions.

Steve Tilford: Bromont’s Pathology was Bad.

Preview: Rich field set to race Paris-Nice.

Paris-Nice, the 'Race to the Sun', gets underway this weekend without its defending champion but with many of the biggest talents in the world of professional cycling.

Missing will be Carlos Betancur who will instead line up in Italy for the Tirreno Adriatico, but Paris-Nice will feature Australians Richie Porte, Rohan Dennis and Michael Matthews).

In one of his last races as a road professional for Sky, Bradley Wiggins will ride in support of the 2013 winner Porte, adding some much needed muscle and experience to the Australian’s chances.

Bouhanni looking to open 2015 account at Paris-Nice.

Nacer Bouhanni is yet to taste victory after 15 race days for his new Cofidis team but will be aiming to end his drought on home roads in Paris-Nice.

The sprinter has won stage one of the Race to the Sun for the last two editions which also saw him pull on the yellow leader's jersey. While Bouhanni will lead the team's mission for sprint wins, Luis Ángel Maté will look to finish high up on the overall classification.

Bouhanni won 11 races last year, including five grand tour stages, although is yet to reach the same heights with Cofidis since transferring from FDJ at the end of last year.

The 24-year-old's best results so far this season is third place on the final stage of the Tour of Qatar.

Optum-Kelly Benefit Strategies starts season with wins on two continents.

Optum-Kelly Benefit Strategies started its 2015 season with convincing wins in both California and Portugal.

Across the pond, Canadian Mike Woods won Sunday’s Clássica Internacional Loulé, soloing away from the field to claim his first professional victory. And just 10 days prior, Woods notched a fifth-place result in the fifth stage of Volta ao Algarve, which was won by Team Sky’s Richie Porte.

Meanwhile in California, Scott Zwizanski won the overall title at the Chico Stage Race, a four-stage, three-day event, which finished on Sunday.

“My form may be good, but this was certainly a team win,” Zwizanski said. “We worked together well and took advantage of every opportunity that was given to us to win the race together. The behind-the scenes guys like Soladay and Selander might not be on the podium, but their hard work and tactical savvy made everything possible.”

De Weert not implicated in Mertens inquiry, says LottoNL-Jumbo.

The statement came in response to a report in Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws on Tuesday, which linked De Weert to the inquiry.

De Weert confirmed that he was a patient of Mertens in 2012, when he raced for Omega Pharma-QuickStep, but stopped being treated by him when the investigation began in 2013.

The Belgian, who signed for LottoNL-Jumbo this winter, added that he later provided a DNA sample to investigators and said that he has not been summoned to either a civil or sporting hearing on the matter.

Lucy Martin: Returning to racing with a new team.

Lucy Martin is a fifth year professional cyclist with Matrix Fitness Pro Cycling. Martin rode for the British Olympic Development team until 2011 when she began her career with the Cervélo Test Team. The 24-year-old was selected to ride with the British team at the 2012 Olympic Games, where her teammate Lizzie Armitstead won silver.

"I started my 2015 campaign back in November when most of the team came together in Limoux, France. It’s a quaint little French village just a couple hours north of where I’m based in Girona.

This was a great camp for the team to get started on serious base training guided by the legend Chris Georgas - aka 'brows' - as I learnt later on- no explanation needed."

BBC pays tribute to cycling great Beryl Burton in series on women sporting pioneers.

Perhaps the greatest female cyclist the UK has ever produced, Beryl Burton, is the subject of a short biographical film by the BBC as part of a series paying tribute to pioneering women in sport in the run up to International Women's Day on March 8.

Burton dominated women's time trialling and track racing for decades, winning 96 national titles and the best British all-rounder for 25 consecutive years.

She picked up seven world titles along the way too.

Le Samyn preview.

After the big opening of the Flemish cycling season last weekend, racing in the Walloon part of Belgium kicks off in more modest surroundings on Wednesday.

With several pave sectors and short, steep climbs, Le Samyn resembles a Flemish race more than a typical Walloon classic and usually allows some of the lesser known riders to shine in the absence of their captains.

Specialized adds to saddle lineup with Power model.

Specialized’s line of saddles is getting close to being as large as its line of bicycles. The newest model, the Power saddle, takes design elements from Specialized’s time trial saddle, the Sitero, and Specialized’s popular Phenom saddle.

At first glance, the Power saddle stands out with its wide cutout. Then you sit on it and feel the Power’s extremely stiff carbon shell.

“The Power saddle is made using a new construction that combines carbon and advanced polymers, achieving the stiffness of carbon and the durability of plastic,” Specialized’s Lucas Hartman said.

Hartman went on to claim the Power saddle’s base is 20 percent stronger than other S-Works saddles and is 12 percent stiffer.

"While I cannot corroborate the claim in regards to strength, as I’ve only ridden the Power saddle for a few hundred miles, I can say it’s the stiffest saddle I’ve ridden. But don’t misconstrue that to mean it’s uncomfortable because it’s not."

Bianchi Intenso Dura-Ace Mix.

BikeRadar verdict: 4 out of 5 stars. "All the best traits we expect of Bianchi but without the premium price."

PEZ: EuroTrash Flemish Monday!