Chris Froome confirms he testified to CIRC.

Chris Froome has confirmed that he was one of the riders who talked to the Cycling Independent Reform Commission (CIRC), whose report into doping in the sport is due next week.

The Team Sky rider waived his right to anonymity by telling the Daily Mail that he sat down with CIRC to give his perspective on the state of cycling at present.

And Froome insists the sport is cleaning up its act, with positive drugs tests simply proving the detection systems are working.

“I sat down with CIRC after the end of the season last year and spent a good few hours with them, just talking about the state of the sport and how, from a rider’s point of view, they can try to improve on things,” he said.

Alex Howes: I'm not a neo-pro anymore.

When the merger that led to the formation of Cannondale-Garmin was confirmed last summer, it seemed apt that the only man signed up to the team for the next three years was the lone rider to have been a part of the Slipstream project from its very outset.

Alex Howes was part of the first crop of juniors to ride for Jonathan Vaughters’ 5280-Subaru team in Colorado in 2003, and he has remained part of the structure, through its various guises, almost all of the way since.

Cavendish to ride drastically shortened Cape Town Cycle Tour.

Mark Cavendish is traveling nearly 14,000km this weekend to take part in a 47km race.

Cavendish - and Australian lead out man Mark Renshaw - are making the trip to South Africa to compete in the Cape Town Cycle Tour.

The event, which consists of a road race and the world's largest participation ride with 35,000 cyclists, has been forced to shorten the course to 47km after fires swept across Cape Town's Table Mountain. .

Strade Bianche: Cancellara faces Sagan, Nibali, Stybar and Valverde.

The spring Classics season kicked off with Omloop Het Nieuwsblad last weekend, and many of the same riders who competed in Belgium will head to Tuscany for Sunday’s Strade Bianche, which race organiser RCS Sport has dubbed “the northern Classic at the most southern point in Europe.”

Officially now called Strade Bianche Eroica Pro, after the creation of an accompanying sportif and a women’s version of the race, Strade Bianche is a unique race on the packed European calendar.

Elisa Longo Borghini and Valentina Scandolara preview Strade Bianche.

Strade Bianche is a race full of history.

It began as an amateur fondo called l’Eroica, which is held in October in Tuscany each year following the Road World Championships.

The ride is a throwback to earlier days. All participants ride bicycles built before 1982. Many wear vintage clothing and accessories.

The professional event began as a men’s only affair in 2007 – and for the first time this year, the women have been invited to the party.

Strade Bianche ‘too hard’ for Ian Stannard, says Team Sky sports director.

After winning Omloop Het Nieuwsblad last weekend, Team Sky’s Ian Stannard will take part in Italy’s Strade Bianche and Tirreno-Adriatico in the coming week. He will race there without the expectation or pressure to win, as he continues his important build-up to the classics.

“Strade Bianche is probably too hard for him, we also don’t want to always put the pressure on him,” Sky sports director Servais Knaven explained.

“He had pressure in Nieuwsblad and in Kuurne-Brussels-Kuurne, so he will have free role in Italy. To say he can go for the win, is asking too much.”

Omloop van het Hageland – Tielt Winge 2015.

Omloop van het Hageland is the second race in the Lotto Cycling Cup and wraps up the first block of racing in Belgium before the teams head north for the Drenthe races next week.

Many riders will be making their way back from Siena and the first Strade Bianche as the race gets underway in Tielt but many of the larger teams have sufficient strength in depth in their squads to field very competitive teams for both races.

2014-15 Races & Results.

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

Strade Bianche - Mar 7 (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),

Le Samyn - Mar 4 (Results),

Le Samyn des Dames - Mar 4 (Results),

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).

More ...

Uran says he ‘loves’ Giro’s stage 14 TT course.

Rising Colombian star Rigoberto Uran previewed the potentially decisive 59.2km individual time trial course slated for this year’s Giro d’Italia, and the GC favorite said, “It’s a nice parcours that I really love.”

Riding alongside Etixx-Quick-Step teammate Gianluca Brambilla in Treviso, Italy this week, Uran said the time trial “can be key, because energy levels of all riders will be at the limit after that amount of racing.

It could be important for the GC because, after about an an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and 20 minutes of time trialing, time differences can be pretty significant.”

2015 Strade Bianche LIVE.

2015 Strade Bianche LIVE Saturday, March 7.

Race starts at 10:30am CET (4:30am U.S. Eastern)

Finish at around 3:30pm CET (9:30am U.S. Eastern)

Live video from 2:00pm CET (8:00am U.S. Eastern, 5:00am Pacific).

2015 Paris-Nice LIVE.

Sunday's Paris-Nice Prologue, a 6.7km Individual Time Trial at Maurepas, gets underway at 1:35pm CET (8:35am U.S. Eastern) with the departure of the first rider.

Paris-Nice live streaming video should get underway at around 2:00pm CET (9:00am U.S. Eastern, 6:00am Pacific).

Vinokourov to leave Astana?

The Astana affair continues to evolve and is still lacking a lot of clarity.

First the team has been granted a later deadline for sumbitting their dossier to the UCI License Commission and they will now have to present their defense before Friday, March 20.

However, La Gazzetta dello Sport now presents a possible loophole that could save Vincenzo Nibali's and Fabio Aru's team.

If general manager Alexandre Vinokourov steps down from his position and allows a new management to take over, it may be enough for the UCI to accept Astana in the WorldTour.

This could be an easy way for the team to avoid being relegated to pro continental level or losing their license completely.

No More Pirates.

March is a busy month for pro cycling. Even if you had the free time and inclination trying to watch as many races as possible would not be easy.

Races are spread over many channels and for many fans there’s sometimes no legal way to watch a race because it’s not on TV.

The internet’s changed expectations and fans want watch every race going and thanks to the web it’s often possible.

Many people resort to so-called pirate feeds. But there’s a better way: use a VPN.

UCI announces changes, modernization to Athletes’ Commission.

The UCI’s Athletes’ Commission, a group tasked with providing a direct link between riders and the governing body, will see an organizational shakeup and a modernization this season.

The new-look Athletes’ Commission will place its members on the corresponding UCI commission overseeing their discipline — the road representative will sit on the UCI’s road commission, for example — providing a direct line to top-level decision making.

The president of the Athletes’ Commission, who will be elected by the other commission members, will sit on the UCI Management Committee.

Prime opportunities await sprinters, GC riders at Paris-Nice.

Beginning Sunday, twin plot lines will course south from Maurepas, a suburb outside Paris, toward Nice and the Mediterranean Sea. One is doused in yellow, built around two time trials and a tough mountaintop finish.

Another is green, a matchup of the sprinters, fighting for the four stage wins on offer. The two combined will tell the story of the first real stage race of the year.

Paris-Nice, or the “Race to the Sun” as it has been optimistically dubbed, races across France from March 8-15.

A Tour de France in miniature, it often provides insight into climbs and stages Tour organizers Amaury Sport Organization will use for the grand boucle in coming years. The race compresses sprints, mountaintop finishes, and time trials into a single week.

Contador, Sagan link up for first time at Tirreno-Adriatico.

It was the blockbuster trade of the season. Peter Sagan’s move to Tinkoff-Saxo gave the already-loaded team another deadly weapon.

Cycling’s latest super-duo will match up for the first time this season as Tinkoff-Saxo will bring Alberto Contador and Sagan together in the same jersey in the same race for Tirreno-Adriatico next week.

Contador made his season debut at Ruta del Sol, where he went mano-a-mano with Chris Froome in a gripping battle that saw the two grand tour favorites separated by two seconds. Sagan, meanwhile, opened his season in the desert, with seven top-fives during the tours of Qatar and Oman, but no wins. Sagan lines up this weekend in Italy at Strade Bianche to make his European debut before linking up with Contador for Tirreno-Adriatico (March 11-17).

Lampre-Merida deny interest in Dekker.

Lampre-Merida team manager Giuseppe Sarroni has denied that his team are interested in signing Thomas Dekker for this season.

On Thursday, Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf quoted Peter Koperdraad, the managing director of Merida Benelux, saying that they may reignite talks with Dekker after his attempt at the Hour Record but Sarroni says the team is going in a different direction.

"We never thought of Thomas Dekker,” Saronni told Tuttobiciweb.

“Our philosophy is different. Maximum respect for Thomas, who has had the courage to face a challenge such as an Hour Record attempt despite not having a professional team behind him, but the philosophy of the Lampre-Merida is to invest in young talents, add new pieces to the team of the future and to improve promising riders.”

Adding salt to sports drinks can improve performance, research suggests.

Adding salt to electrolyte sports drinks can improve performance for endurance athletes, with many top drinks not containing enough sodium.

Researchers in Spain have found that athletes who supplement their electrolyte drinks with extra salt perform better in endurance events than those who rely on the drinks alone for rehydration.

They found that the leading sports recovery drinks did not contain enough electrolytes to replenish those lost during long distance events, meaning the body will run on a sodium deficit.

The 25 most stylish cyclists of all time.

Style is a word used a lot in cycling. On one level it’s very practical. It helps quantify form and efficiency.

A good riding style is efficient because more power goes into the pedals per calorie of energy burned, but the style we are talking about here is so much more than that.

Cycling is very visual. It’s quite graceful too when you think about it. A bicycle transfers the up and down motion of the rider’s legs into smoothly spinning wheels, and the most stylish riders do that with the greatest grace.

Canyon Aeroad CF SLX 9.0 SL long-term.

BikeRadar verdict: 4.5 out of 5 stars. "Swap out the old-school wheels and you've got an utterly fantastic aero road machine."

Kreuziger faces difficult defense based on WADA and CAS history.

Daily Distractions.

Steve Tilford: Bored with the Sport?

Dave Brailsford backs UCI’s Astana stance.

Dave Brailsford welcomes the UCI’s stance on Astana’s WorldTour license, insisting it is acting in the best interests of cycling’s credibility.

Astana has until March 20 to prepare their response to the UCI’s request for the License Commission to withdraw their right to race, which comes after after the Institute of Sport Sciences of the University of Lausanne returned its audit of team procedures.

Team Sky principal, Brailsford, says Team Sky are playing their role in moving cycling into a new anti-doping era, but insists only the UCI can decide on the best course of action for Astana.

Van Garderen '100 per cent ready' for Paris-Nice.

On paper, Tejay van Garderen sets out from Maurepas this Sunday as one of the outstanding favorites for final overall victory at Paris-Nice, but the Race to the Sun rarely plays out according to a preordained script.

Twelve months ago, van Garderen’s race was ended prematurely by a bout of illness that forced him to abandon on the second day, but even without such misfortune, BMC directeur sportif Yvon Ledanois warns that Paris-Nice can never be reduced to its set-piece stages.

Book Excerpt: Ned Overend on high-intensity training for masters.

"I turned 59 in 2014, and I have maintained a high level of fitness since I first began endurance racing in the late 1970s.

Training with an emphasis on high-intensity intervals has been my preferred method of preparing for events throughout my career, which includes racing mountain bikes, road bikes, cyclocross, and Xterra triathlon.

I made a few forays into long-distance events such as the Leadville 100 mountain bike race and the Ironman triathlon, but my preference is racing for one to four hours."

Think the war on doping is a force for good?

No doubt Lance Armstrong is still digesting the news that he has to repay $10m (£6.4m) to previous sponsors following a ruling by an arbitration panel a few weeks ago.

This is on top of the lifetime ban from all sporting competitions that he was given several years back. Many probably think he got the punishment he deserved, but was it done fairly?

Leading sports organizations such as the International Olympic Committee and FIFA have been under pressure to resolve internal ethical issues in recent years.

On the other hand the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) remains highly regarded for its determination to stop athletes cheating, standing for fairness and protecting a level playing field.

Like a pulp crime novel, anti-doping action is seen as the good guys against the bad guys.

“What are you wearing?” – Chloe Hosking on dressing for cold rides.

"My youngest teammate Anna Christian looked genuinely concerned as she pulled me aside after dinner last Friday, the night before our first European race, Omloop Het Nieuwsblad.

“Chloe, I need to ask you a question,” she said.

Oh no. What’s she done?, I thought to myself. I know I’m one of the most experienced on the team but I’m not ready to help hide a body.

That falls outside the “what I’m expected to do for my teammates” charter.

“What are you wearing tomorrow?” she asked."

Pro cyclist interview: Ed Clancy on Bradley Wiggins, world championship silver and building to Rio.

On the face of it, Great Britain’s below-par World Championships showing was a disappointment all round, returning with no gold medals for the first time since 2001.

Among the disappointment, however, were a few rays of hope and causes for optimism – not least for the men’s team pursuit squad, who improved significantly on their Cali horror show of 12 months earlier.

Ed Clancy, Andy Tennant, Steven Burke and Owain Doull – the latter two only just recovered from injuries  – won silver behind New Zealand in Paris.

The ultimate route across France?

More than 5000 people each year tackle John O’Groats to Lands End, but now there is a new challenge St-Malo to Nice – the ultimate route across France.

Lands End to John O’Groats is ridden by a huge number of cyclists each year, some riding it for charity, others as a purely personal challenge.

Imagine arriving at the glittering blue of the Cote d’Azur, warm sun beating down on your back and the vibrant town of Nice to welcome you.

There is an alternative to a wet and windy End to End; instead of riding across Britain, ride across France.

ASO Focusing on Real-Time Data in the Future.

"Commencing in July this year at the Tour de France, Dimension Data will partner with A.S.O. to revolutionize the viewing experience of billions of cycling fans across the globe.

Both organizations said their common goal in the coming years is to deliver and share the best race information speedily and in real-time with race commentators and the global viewing public."

The Heavyweight Guide to Bike-Buying.

"Cyclists come in all shapes and sizes, and lucky for us, so do bikes. However, when you’re a larger rider—whether you’re super-tall or consider yourself in the Clydesdale/Athena category (commonly defined as weighing more than 220 pounds for men or 160 pounds for women)—finding long-lasting, proper-fitting bike gear, from wheels to jerseys, can be tough.

When we recently reported on clothing for bigger riders, we heard from our readers that it wasn’t just finding the perfect pair of shorts that was the problem: It’s finding components and frames that can stand up to the weight of larger athletes."