CyclingFans: Thursday's Tour of Britain Stage 5 departs Stoke-on-Trent at 10:30am BST (5:30am U.S. Eastern) and is expected at the finish at Stoke-on-Trent at around 2:15pm BST (9:15am U.S. Eastern). Tour of Britain live streaming video should get underway at around 12:45pm BST (7:45am U.S. Eastern).

Preview: Gung-ho attacks on Gun Hill in Tour of Britain Stage 5?

road.cc: IG-Sigma Sport's Daniel Lloyd takes a look at the Stoke-on-Trent stage.

SBS: World Road Champion Mark Cavendish shrugged off a miserable day in the saddle to win the 159km fourth stage of the Tour of Britain.

VeloNews: John Degenkolb came away from the Vuelta a España with five wins and confidence for more. With top honors in Viana, Logroño, Alcañiz, Sanxenxo and Madrid – one year after his grand tour debut in the same event — the German proved his worth five times over.

VeloNation: Cavendish prefers world champion’s jersey to race leader’s tunic, tips Rowe.

CyclingNews: Pedersen retains overall lead.

Races & Results.
UCI Road World Championship -  Sept 16-23 (Races & Results),
Tour of Britain -  Sept 9-16 (Stages & Results),
Vuelta a España -  Aug 18 - Sept 9 (Stages & Results),
Tour of China -  Sept 7-13 (Stages & Results),
Mountain Bike Championships - Aug 31 - Sept 9 (Races),
CyclingNews: More...

VeloNews: With a few notable exceptions, like Speedplay and Beebop, the basic design premises behind road pedals have remained largely unchanged over three decades: a hook on the front, spring on the back, and a wedge-shaped cleat to fill the gap. Newcomer Ultralite Sports aims to turn that design on its head.

BikeRadar verdict: 5 out of 5 stars. "Unbeatable weight /cost /toughness performance for hard-arsed riders."

road.cc: "IG Sigma's Dan Lloyd takes us through tomorrow's stage & talks mid-race refuelling tactics."

Peloton: "I knew the finish was downhill but I had the perfect lead-out. It was pretty textbook."

CyclingNews: Pedersen in race lead after stage 3.

CyclingTips: Greg LeMond is always quoted, “It never gets easier, you just go faster.” I get the sentiment, but I don’t completely agree. When you’re out of shape everything is laborious.

VeloNation: Frenchman escapes a select group in the final kilometre to win race in Namur’s citadel.

SingleTrack: Lance Armstrong has put his lifetime ban on the shelf and will line up in this Saturday’s Alpine Odyssey, a mountain bike race he won in Crested Butte last year.

CyclingNews: London Olympic Games gold medalist Kristin Armstrong said Tuesday that both her winning time trial bike and her road bike disappeared somewhere in transit between Eurobike in Germany and her home in Boise, Idaho.

IrishPeloton: See if you can beat the Mastermind contestant who got a score of nine.

VeloNews: Fourth overall at the Vuelta a España might be taken as a disappointment by some, but for Chris Froome, the British rider that burst onto the scene with second last year, that’s far from the case. The Kenya-born Sky rider says he takes nothing but positive lessons out of the Vuelta, despite being unable to challenge the Spaniards on home roads for overall victory.

CyclingNews: In spite of its ten summit finishes, Maxime Monfort (RadioShack-Nissan) believes that the route of the 2012 Vuelta a España was tough but not excessively so. Climbs like Mirador de Ézaro, Cuitu Negru and Bola del Mundo saw riders slow to a snail’s pace on slopes touching 30%, but Monfort felt that, on balance, the Vuelta route was “reasonable.”

road.cc: Not cheap, and not adjustable, but we loved the way these bars feel and handle.

PEZ: They don’t call it EuroBike for nothing, and while the many thousands of square feet of display space served up more bikes than anyone could see in just 2 days, we found offerings by Cipollini, Felt, Kona, Giant & Wilier that made the editorial grade.

Boulder Report: Last week, Bantam published The Secret Race, Tyler Hamilton’s autobiography of his time as a professional cyclist. I sat down for a phone interview with Hamilton’s co-author, Daniel Coyle, to discuss the book, the challenges in writing it, and what Coyle—a mainstream journalist who’s a sharp observer and chronicler of pro cycling—hopes it might change.

RedKitePrayer: There’s been talk that an amnesty for past doping offenders is the path to a new era in clean cycling. But it’s not that easy to disperse years of pollution from a sport that is, more than ever, haunted by ghosts of doping past. An amnesty may be one step toward the goal of putting the dirty decades behind us, but it’s going to be far more difficult to purge professional cycling of its systemic sins.

VeloNews: A certain Ferrari is leaving plenty of pollution in its wake. Italian Michele Ferrari, despite being banned by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency in Lance Armstrong’s doping case, is still operating and causing headaches.

PodiumInsight: “Bike racing meant something to me and that’s why I never attempted to cheat to do it because the minute I did that I would have ruined this dream that I was pursuing.”

Cyclismas: There are so many great people that follow the sport already, but it seems to me the key to growing the sport from this direction is getting these fans mobilized and together.  We tend to have cyber fans. They are awesome, and proud to be following the sport… scary I know.  The biggest fan I know is Sarah Connolly (@_Pigeons_ on Twitter).

InnerRing: The cheerily-named French website cyclisme-dopage.com has been hosting research by engineer Frédéric Portoleau who estimates the power needed to ride with the leaders over the main mountain passes.

CyclingNews: Tom Boonen (Omega Pharma-QuickStep) lines up in the Grand Prix de Wallonie on Wednesday, his final competitive outing ahead of the world championships road race in Valkenburg on September 23.

BikeRadar verdict: 4 out of 5 stars. "A superlative ride with confident handling that will take your riding to a new level."

Stella Yu: "Each saddle is created for a specific type of cycling and cyclist, with unique shapes and designs to fit every saddle need. Saddles for the recreational cyclist tend be broader, providing greater cushioned comfort in a traditional sense. Performance and competition saddles emphasize high-tech comfort; meaning materials and saddle construction are optimized for weight, aerodynamics and comfortable support over the long haul."

CyclingFans: Wednesday's Grand Prix de Wallonie departs Chaudfontaine at 11:55am CET (5:55am U.S. Eastern) and is expected at the finish at Namur at around 5:00pm CET (11:00am U.S. Eastern).  GP de Wallonie live streaming video should get underway at around 2:30pm CET (8:30am U.S. Eastern).

Chris Horner in "The Conversation."

CyclingNews: Filippo Pozzato will once again face the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) at 1045am Tuesday after admitting to receiving training programs from the controversial and banned Dr Michele Ferrari from 2005 to 2009. Pozzato has already stood before CONI in late June with the Committee set to request a formal ban.

CyclingWeekly: After an amazing women's Olympic road race, hailed by many as aggressive and entertaining, everyone thought the interest and sponsorship around women's racing could only improve. But it's almost done the opposite and gone back to the same post Olympic lull that happened after Athens and then Beijing.