VeloNation: Can Belgian complete ultra-rare double?

CyclingNews: Team Argos-Shimano will not ride the Tour of Beijing next month, due to the current political tension between the China and Japan concerning sovereignty of the East China Sea islands. China had already asked Japanese citizens to leave the country, and the Dutch-based team has a Japanese sponsor and riders from both China and Japan on its roster.

Races & Results.
UCI Road World Championship -  Sept 16-23 (Races & Results),
Giro di Lombardia -  Sept 29 (Preview),
Milano-Torino -  Sept 26 (Results),
Giro del Piemonte -  Sept 27 (Start List),
CyclingNews: More...

PEZ: The 1952 Giro di Lombardia race program is an amazing 32 page snapshot back into the race scene more than a half century ago, jam packed with race info, presented by the famous Italian sports daily – La Gazzetta dello Sport.

BikeRadar verdict: 4 out of 5 stars. "A stylish and speedy city bike for the discerning rider, with a kickback gear to get used to."

Peloton: If you’ve been paying a lot of attention to Italian bikes the last ten years you’ll be aware that it’s been while since anyone accused Bianchi of making the best Italian bike, let alone the best bike in the world.

VeloNation: Long time on the sidelines may be nearing an end.

CyclingNews: New world champion to skip Piemonte.

CyclingNews: The official presentation of the route of the 2013 Giro d'Italia will be held on Sunday but details of the three-week race have emerged in the Italian press.

VeloNation: No Philippe Gilbert but many of Sunday’s animators as the race returns after five-year absence.

VeloNews: Michael Sayers, the only American sports director at the top level of the sport, has announced his departure from BMC Racing at the end of 2012.

PodiumInsight: Reigning USA cyclocross champion Jeremy Powers (Rapha-Focus) started off his cross season with back-to-back decisive victories at CrossVegas and the first day of USGP Planet Bike Cup. Not only did he power away from a stacked field but he did it at C1 races.

Alex Grant: "Fall is probably my favorite time of year. Maybe it is because I grew up in Vermont where the foliage was amazing, the weather was nice, and the bugs had gone away for the year. There's something about riding in the woods in with the leaves changing and falling on the trail that is oddly soothing. Then there's the smell of fall."

CyclingNews: The UCI announced the allocation of a date for a potential new event for the Oceania Tour in 2013 last week, the title 'Tour WA' was mysteriously slated for April. Cyclingnews can reveal that the new race, proposed by CIC Events, was at proposal stage only, never confirmed and will not go ahead, at least not in 2013.

CyclingNews: Alberto Contador (Team Saxo Bank-Tinkoff Bank) won the Milan-Turin race thanks to a powerful acceleration on the climb to the finish line.

IrishPeloton: Juan José Cobo won the 2011 Vuelta a Espana after a dominant stage winning display on the mountain top finish of the Angliru where he finished 48 seconds ahead of Chris Froome who he would beat into Madrid by a mere 13 seconds.  Cobo took to the startline of this year’s Vuelta but could only muster a lowly 67th position overall, the worst defence in the history of the race. So what went wrong?

InnerRing: Today sees the return of Milano-Torino, the one day Italian race. Milano-Torino was first run in 1876, making it the oldest race on the Italian calendar and one of the oldest races in the world.

VeloWire: Now the World Championships in The Netherlands are done, the UCI WorldTour will be back this weekend, with Il Lombardia or the Tour of Lombardy 2012 this Saturday, the day before the presentation of the Giro d'Italia 2013 race route.

BikeRadar: As coach and sports scientist Garth Fox explains, if you’re a time triallist, your number one enemy is aerodynamic drag. It is always present and will always be working against your attempts to go quicker.

IrishPeloton: Before twitter, before the internet, before televisions were to be found in every home, it was the remit of cycling journalists to mythologize the sport on which they were reporting. The feats of these men with no fear who cycled bikes with no gears were exaggerated, embellished and taken as far into the realm of the fantastical as the reader was willing to be taken.

RedKitePrayer: The big news from Cervelo wasn’t exactly earth-shattering, but it was good news nonetheless. The company’s S5 model, their very quick aero road frame is now available in the company’s relatively recent VWD variant.

InnerRing: Recently the appearance UCI President Pat McQuaid at a race has coincided with boos from the crowd. Perhaps it could be said the Dutch fans last Sunday were slightly annoyed at a Belgian victory and taunted Gilbert. But this can’t explain the noise when McQuaid appeared at the Olympics.

Pro cycling and doping. Tipping point tipped?

TwistedSpoke: Does it feel like the dam has finally broken? We have UCI president McQuaid embarrassed and exposed, former UCI head Hein Verbruggen outed as bombastic, vindictive and uninformed, Lance Armstrong, the most powerful pro cyclist of the dark doping years, stripped of his seven Tour de France titles in a no-contest.

CyclingWeekly: US Anti-Doping Agency CEO Travis Tygart dealt with death threats and criticism from all quarters to take down cycling great and cheat Lance Armstrong last month. On Monday, France's L'Equipe newspaper published an interview with Tygart that lifted the veil on the doping case.

Gregg Bagni: Admittedly, all you have to do is hang out with the dark side of my family tree and you’ll realize they truly put the “funk” in dysfunctional.

CyclingIQ: Damp conditions and a low average speed meant the sizzle was somewhat absent in Tour de Brunei’s 93.1 kilometre opening stage. Somewhat ironically, having left from the factory compound of race sponsor Butra Heidelberg Cement, it may have seemed as if riders were racing through wet cement.

VeloNews: More like a firefly than a dragonfly, Calfee’s Dragonfly with EPS stem has its power source integrated into its body. The bike is the flagship of Calfee's electronics line, into which the company has put considerable time and attention.

BicycleRetailer: Rokbed v3 is a modular smartphone case with a variety of available accessories, including a new bike mount that attaches the case to the top of a bike’s steerer tube.

VeloNation: Lotto-Belisol and Omega Pharma-Quick Step both sending big names to the last stage race of the year.

PodiumInsight: Four UCI cyclocross races were held this past weekend,  the Planet Bike Cup races in Sun Prairie, WI, to kick off the Trek USGP series and the Charm City Cyclocross in Baltimore, MD.

RedKitePrayer: "I was often in the minority when David and VN colleague Charles Pelkey were in the car, talking about our suspicions on which riders were or weren’t doping. I liked to give riders the benefit of the doubt, but I always listened to their arguments, and their views inevitably influenced what I’d write—especially after the disastrous “Festina Affair” Tour of 1998."

CyclingNews: Following questions from the French Minister for Sport, Valérie Fourneyron, on why it has not yet upheld the USADA decision to strip Lance Armstrong of his seven Tour de France titles, the UCI responded to L'Equipe, saying it cannot do so until it has reviewed the dossier.

Bicycle Retailer: Specialized is recalling about 12,000 Globe bike models because the fork can break. The company has received four reports of the forks breaking, resulting in facial, head and shoulder injuries.

CyclingNews: Women's cycling teams all over the world, from amateur to the top level professional teams, have struggled for survival by trying to emulate the same system that men's teams use with ample success, but a group in the UK is capitalizing on social media to create a fan-funded women's team to try and reverse that trend.