EuroSport: The Frenchman caught and passed previous leader Daniel Schorn (NetApp) with 27km to go and never looked back to take the victory ahead of a small pursuing group of 10 riders by approximately a minute and a half.

De Brabantse Pijl - April 11 (Live coverage),
Vuelta a Castilla y Leon - April 13-15 (Stages),
Paris - Roubaix - April 8 (Results),
Giro d'Italia - May 5-27 (Stages),
Amgen Tour of California - May 13-20 (Stages),
Tour de France - June 30 - July 22 (Stages),
2012 Olympic Games - July 28 - August 12 (Races),
Vuelta a España - August 18 - September 9 (Stages),
More...

VeloNation: Talented Slovakian’s signing likely to safeguard future of team.

VeloNation: Australian wants to focus completely on road racing.

TwistedSpoke: In all the media noise about the fact that superstar and BMC rich man Philippe Gilbert has no form and no results, maybe one consequence has been overlooked.

Pedal: Opus bicycles are pleased to announce the addition of Véronique Labonté to the Opus road racing program for the 2012 season. With three Quebec championships under her belt, Véronique is setting her sights on Europe, with the goal of being selected to attend the World Championships in Limbourg, Netherlands in September 2012.

BikeRadar: If you’re regularly pumping up tires a track/floor pump is definitely a worthwhile investment. Here's our pick of the best ones we've tested this year.

Peloton: Occasionally a name is so fitting it seems almost comical. Exhibit one - Simon Smart. As aerodynamicists go he may be the gold standard in cycling. Mr. Smart cut his teeth in F1. He has since tuned his attention to road cycling. Take a look at World Tour TT results. Chances are he had a hand in developing half of the bikes in the top ten. Simon Smart is, well, smart.

PEZ: If there was a red dossard – like they have in the Tour - for the man who has spent most kilometres in the breakaway in the spring classics, there’s no question that it would go to Saxo Bank’s former world track champion, Michael Morkov.

SingleTrack: The Shadow Plus is an entirely new mech tensioning system governed by a clutch which allows you to increase the tension on the chain.

Brabantse Pijl runner-up feeling good for Amstel Gold Race.

CyclingWeekly: Former World Road Race Champion; multiple Tour de France, Tour of Italy and Tour of Spain stage winner and living legend Mario Cipollini will be cutting the ribbon to open the Road Cycling Show in Sandown Park, Esher, on Saturday April 21 at 9.30am.

PodiumCafe: At the start line on Sunday bike models were chosen that accommodate larger tires, or offer some dampening properties, or slacker angles.

CycleSport: Through the first week of the Tour de France, he was a nagging, prodding, irritation to the bunch – attacking, probing, a bit of grit in the oyster. In the Massif Central, he somehow battled his way into the yellow jersey, which we assumed he would be borrowing until the first Pyrenean stage found him out. Instead, he matched the pace of the favorites through the mountains, and as Paris approached, people dared to entertain an impossible thought: could Voeckler win the Tour de France?

VeloNews: From Riccò to Zirbel, Armstrong to Contador, the court of public opinion is varied and unpredictable. Where fans welcome one rider convicted of performance enhancing drug use back as a spokesperson for clean sport, they crucify another.

VeloNation: Spaniard currently works with Omega Pharma Quick Step team.

VeloNews: Andy Schleck has hardly had the smoothest start to the 2012 season, but he’s not losing any sleep over it now.

VeloNews: Professional cycling is unique, and beautiful, in its populism. With public roads as its canvas, the battlegrounds of cycling’s heroes are the same front lines used on the local lunch ride. The torturous climbs of the Alps, Pyrenées and Dolomites, or the numbing cobbles of the classics can be ridden by anyone, anytime.

VeloNews: The Tour of Utah today announced the race’s first team selections. Among the squads headed for the Wasatch Mountains in early August are ProTeams Liquigas-Cannondale and Garmin-Barracuda, as well as second division Argos-Shimano, which last week earned a nod for the Tour de France.

CyclingNews: Optum Pro Cycling p/b Kelly Benefit Strategies' trip to South America last week for the UCI 2.2 Vuelta Ciclista del Uruguay paid off with four stage wins and three days in yellow for sprinter Ken Hanson, while time trial specialist Tom Zirbel finished second overall.

VeloNews: Ruth Winder of the Vanderkitten-Focus women's cycling team heads off to Europe for a block of racing with US National Team. Winder is a transplant from the UK. She began racing in 2007 as a junior at the age of 14.

Zipp 303 Firecrest CCL road wheelset review.

BikeRadar verdict: 5 out of 5 stars. "Light, robust and stable in the wind, the 303 Firecrest is the best all-round road wheelset we've tested."

PEZ: While many of us in North America are familiar with the famous climbs and locations of the Giro and other Italian races, the beauty of Lake Garda is not so well known as a cycling destination. But it should be. And Garda Bike Hotels offer two perfect bases for a cycling holiday.

BikeRadar: Paris-Roubaix is fought over by the riders on the road but there's also a tremendous support network in place to keep the massive machine that is World Tour-level bicycle racing rolling along.

VeloNation: Belgian champion still searching for best form in 2012 as Ardennes Classics approach.

RedKitePrayer: For the entirety of my life I’ve been at the shallow end of some bell curve. Hell, just being a cyclist confirms that. The irony here is that as a roadie who lives for his local group rides, I am, for once, the middle of the bell curve. For reasons I can’t explain, I can look at a marketing plan or advertising campaign meant to reach roadies and I can tell you instantly if it will resonate or not. I can’t do that with anything else. I’m not in the middle of the curve for anything else.

CyclingNews: Tom Boonen (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) confirmed his superiority in the Spring Classics with a record-equaling fourth Paris-Roubaix victory that extended his lead in the individual UCI WorldTour rankings.

VeloNation: All nationalities will be liable for surprise testing once they are on UK soil.

Today's Quote

"Tom is the best spring rider of the last twenty years, but now he needs to try and win Milan-San Remo and the Giro di Lombardia like I did." - Roger de Vlaeminck CyclingNews

CyclingNews: Tom Boonen will decide today whether he will ride the Amstel Gold Race on Sunday. The Omega Pharma-QuickStep rider, who dominated the Flemish classics, said that he had not yet recovered from his efforts in winning Paris-Roubaix.

InnerRing: During his career Eddy Merckx won rouighly one third of all the races he started. For an unbroken period of seven years he finished no lower than first in every grand tour he completed.

Cyclismas: Eddy Merckx has recently been inducted into the Giro d’Italia’s newly established Hall of Fame. The corsa rosa is a race he won five times between 1968 and 1974. Had it not been for the inconvenient presence of a prohibited substance in a urine sample during the 1969 Giro, it would have been six.

BikeRadar: Garmin has announced another delay to their keenly anticipated Vector pedal-based power meter. After saying earlier this year that the release date would be in summer 2012, it's now been pushed back indefinitely.

CyclingNews: When hundreds of mountain bikers have a crack at the 6th annual Trans Germany on June 6, one man is hoping to head the peloton from Sonthofen to Garmisch-Partenkirchen. The race's most dominant rider during the past two years, Christoph Sauser (Specialized), would like to become the first-ever three-time winner of the race. He previously claimed titles in 2010 and 2011.

BikeRumor: Targeted at the self-financed mountain bike racer (in other words: most of us) and all around rider are Giro’s new Privateer mountain shoes.

Mary McConneloug & Mike Broderick: It was a bit of a shock to step into the early spring in Europe after enjoying the warm embrace of South Africa for the past weeks. The leafless trees and grey skies of Bavarian Germany had us feeling like it might have been a better plan to stay south a bit longer to train or take the option to participate in one or more of the world class stage races that highlight the global endurance cycling scene - next year perhaps...