Well, Stages 3 and 5 demonstrated that Mark Cavendish does not need a dedicated lead-out man to win. That’s not to say his Sky team did nothing – on both occasions in the final kilometers, Bernie Eisel and Juan Antonio Flecha got him where he needed to be – but Cav’ demonstrated his incredible dexterity by jumping from wheel to wheel until he launched his trademark low-profile sprint.

And when he goes, it really is a sight to behold.

It appeared that he was reveling in not having someone like his old lead-out man, Mark Renshaw, to steer him to the line – like he was playing a game of ‘Frogger’ on the Doha desert highway.

“You never really get the season going until you get that first win under your belt,” Cavendish said after his Stage 3 win outside Al Gharafa Stadium.

The key for his rivals was to stop him from taking that first win; now that he’s started, Cavendish will be virtually impossible to stop – unless, of course, he gets taken out (or takes himself out, depending on how you saw it), as happened on Friday’s final stage. Subjectively, it wasn’t really anyone’s fault, as much as it was the risks that riders were taking when 13 teams were yet to notch a notch a victory after five days’ racing.

It must be an awful conundrum for the likes of André Greipel (Lotto-Belisol, who was not in Qatar due to illness), Tyler Farrar (Garmin-Barracuda), Mark Renshaw (Rabobank), Thor Hushovd (BMC), Denis Galimzyanov (Katusha) and others right now.
It is clear as day that Cavendish is the fastest by a solid margin. He also has the agility and poise of Robbie McEwen in his heyday, which allows him to prevail with or without a lead-out train.

Greipel, simply because of his God-given strength (he says it’s from his mother – “you just need to look at her,” he said), will likely be the only man to come close to Cavendish this season. Perhaps his adversaries should get a hold of his race schedule and pick races the Manxman won’t be at, because to be beaten again and again and again, can wear on one’s confidence.

THE ECHELONS

No surprises here, but when the winds blow, the Belgians reaffirmed their prowess in this discipline. The fourth stage was the highlight of the race, as the peloton shattered, then splintered, and left as its by-product shelled victims strewn across the barren landscape.

Narrow roads, constant changes of direction, and ‘cat’s eyes’ added to the drama with punctures aplenty; Farrar and BMC revelation Adam Blythe were just a few of the victims. Boonen and his faithful Quick-Steppers knew where they needed to be and duly applied more pressure, leaving just a quartet to contest the finale; ‘Tommeke’ held a vice-like grip on GC.

The stage also provided a clear bellwether for the Spring Classics, particularly those of the cobbled variety: Boonen’s team-mate, Gert Steegmans, was exceptionally strong all week; Fabian Cancellara (RadioShack-Nissan-Trek) and Flecha (Sky) were equally solid; honorable mentions also go to Blythe, Tom Veelers (Project 1t4i), Eisel (Sky), Farrar and Johan Van Summeren (Garmin-Barracuda).

The form that four-time Qatar champion Boonen boasted in the Middle East, however, leaves me wondering a little: Is he too good too soon? Though the fourth stage aside, the 31-year-old didn’t really extend himself and the longest leg was just 160 kilometers, so, more than likely, the boy from Balen is back on track for a good run at Flanders and Roubaix. He last won those races in 2006 and 2009, respectively.

For the rest, the end of Qatar marked 36 days from the season’s first major appointment, Milan-San Remo, with Tirreno-Adriatico, another warm-up race for the sprinters in between, leaving enough time for fine-tuning before La Classicissima.

Their heads are not covered with scarves and veils, and their bodies are decisively not hidden behind baggy cloaks.

Instead, the women’s muscled frames are lacquered with taut Pearl Izumi cycling kits. Their heads topped by sleek Catlike helmets. And this isn’t the Mecca you are thinking of in Saudi Arabia.

This Mecca is a scrubby agricultural town on the northern end of Southern California’s Salton Sea. A short drive from a rented house in Palm Desert, the Exergy-Twenty12 pro cycling team have gathered at this windblown am pm gas station for an 80-mile ride during their week-long February training camp.

Leaning on their Felt F1 road bikes, clicking shoe buckles tight and generally fidgeting to get back in the saddle, the riders listen in as Kristin Armstrong, the team’s managing partner and a 2008 Olympic time trial gold medalist, explains their route from here to Joshua Tree National Park and back to Palm Desert.

“It smells like Belgium,” team mechanic Dave Drumm remarks from the back seat of a wheel-stuffed follow car as the team rides out of town past fields of lettuce and mounds of cow manure.

20 minutes into the ride, British director sportif Simon Cope pulls the team car up to the riders and tells them Canadian Rhae Shaw is going to have a flat. This is part of the day’s drill, running through the process of mock flats and race-pace wheel changes.

A few minutes later Shaw raises her hand and pulls onto the dirt margin. Drumm leaps out of the back seat, pops a new carbon fiber Zipp wheel into her chain stay and gives Shaw a running shove down the road. The ex-triathlete who, at 35 took a leave from her job at Microsoft, became a pro cyclist, and in 2011 won stages at the Tour de Bretagne Féminin and Tour Féminin en Limousin and placed 7th at Worlds in the time trial, smoothly catches her team and pulls back into the rotation.

“Who should we have next?” Cope asks. “Heather maybe?” team founder and general manager Nicola Cranmer suggests from the shotgun seat. “She hasn’t been a bike racer that long.”

Cranmer refers to Heather Logan Sprenger, a 30-year-old Canadian who completed her doctorate in exercise physiology in 2011 and turned pro in 2009. Drumm points out that he has not yet removed the lawyer tabs from the front forks of Sprenger’s brand new team-issue Felt, so the front wheel is not a good idea. The car pulls up to the double pace lined riders and Drumm calls out, “Heather, you are going to have a rear flat!” Cope then instructs her teammates Tayler Wiles and Alison Starnes to drop back when Sprenger “punctures” and pace her back to the field.

A few minutes later, Sprenger peels off to the right. She does not raise her hand, and she comes to a slow, tentative stop. Watching from behind, Cope observes, “They need to pull in and stop.” The reluctant braking makes it difficult for the support car to know where to halt, and for the mechanic to effectively launch out of the vehicle without getting run over.

Drumm has to shift Sprenger’s rear derailleur into the small cog before pulling the wheel off and popping in a new one. Back on her bike, Sprenger pulls up to the car and says “this one feels flat.” The car stops again and sure enough, the replacement tire is losing air. Drum repeats the procedure with another wheel and pushes Sprenger up the road to her soft-pedaling teammates Wiles and Starnes.

Approaching the point where this deserted desert road crosses the I-10 freeway, the team car and another team van pull off the road.

Cranmer, Cope and Drumm spread out for a half-kilometer on the right side of the road, each holding an armful of water bottles. The riders have been riding for less than an hour and don’t really need fresh bottles, but practicing negotiating the chaos of a feed zone handoff is also on the day’s agenda. 2002 US road and 2009 US time trial champion Jessica Van Garderen (previously Jessica Phillips until marrying BMC pro Tejay in 2011) plucks a bottle from a hand and yells out a brightly appreciative “Thanks!”

10 minutes after passing the feed zone, Armstrong drops back to Cope’s window and tells him she has to pee. But, she adds, “I don’t want to tell the girls.’ Armstrong, a tough, no-nonsense rider, explains that “Usually when someone says they need to stop and pee, I tell them to start racing their bikes and they will forget about it.” Today, the uber-experienced Armstrong tells Cope, she doesn’t want to “set a precedent as a pee breaker.” She disappears into the desert scrub for a minute, reappears and we motorpace her back to the field.

Beyond the freeway, the road enters the otherworldly landscapes of Box Canyon. Copper, turquoise, white and brown fins of earth jut toward the sky like the backs of prehistoric dragons. Seen from the canyon walls above, the riders look like tiny figures in a natural history museum display. The earthen ledges amplify the whir of chain over sprockets.

At 10:30, Cope asks, “Shall we have a double puncture for Coryn?” The car sidles up to the riders and Drumm informs them. They hoot with delight.

Five minutes later, Coryn Rivera, at 19 one of the younger riders on the squad, but with 40 national titles to her name also one of the most experienced, holds up her right arm, drops back and stops smartly on the right of the road.

She gets off her bike, shifts into the smallest rear cog and is already pulling her rear wheel off when Drumm appears with a wheel in each hand. She has done this before—many times—and knows exactly what to do to make both her and her mechanic’s life easier. “Who would have thought!?” she exclaims in mock surprise of her double puncture.

Inside the Joshua Tree National Park boundary, the road climbs steadily up a sandy wash through the Cottonwood Mountains. A sign on the side of the desperately dry desert reads “Vegetation Gathering Prohibited.” Splashes of early-blooming yellow wildflowers dot the landscape, but the riders aren’t paying heed, since the pace has settled into a steady 20 mph. Though the tempo splits the group on the climb, Armstrong drops back to the car and tells Cope that the lead group is “just cruising.” It’s time for some effort.

Cope waves Rhae Shaw over to the car. The final three miles of the road leading to the park gate where the riders will turn around steepens. He instructs her to apply pressure as the team ascends to the 3,000-foot-high Cottonwood Visitor Center. “Attack?” Shaw asks. No, he clarifies. Just steadily torque up the pace. Shaw returns effortlessly to the lead riders, goes to the front and notches up the velocity a couple of MPH.

5’2” Rivera gets dropped. “In actual fact, I think Coryn is tired,” Cope notes. He drives next to her waves his hand forward. “Come on, Coryn,” he urges. Rivera, who just returned from the Tour of Qatar, looks fatigued from racing and hours of air travel from the Middle East, but she bears down in an effort to rejoin the group. “It’s good for her,” Cranmer observes.

Alison Starnes and Tayler Wiles have also been dropped. They are going 19 MPH up hill. “Come on you guys,” Cranmer encourages from the passenger seat. “Big effort to get there. You are doing well.” It’s 11 AM, and the manager pushes the trio to work together to bridge the gap. Meanwhile, in the advance group, Armstrong is tapping out a seemingly effortless pace at the front; the steeper it gets, the faster the 39-year old mother of a two-year-old son goes.

At the top of the climb, the riders grab Clif Bloks and bars from the back of the team car and pull on jackets and vests against the 56-degree chill. Armstrong’s husband, Joe Savola, who has been discretely riding behind the team caravan with a couple of friends all morning, turns on GoPro cameras mounted to the front and back of his wife’s bike. One by one the riders bomb back down the hill, passing a photographer who waits on a scenic curve to shoot action photos for team sponsor, Felt Bicycles.

On the ride back to Palm Desert, Cope discreetly instructs the riders to rope-a-dope Armstrong. He calls Jackie Crowell to the car. “Attack before the end of this road,” he tells her. During a week that will have the riders put in nearly 30 hours of road time, he empathizes, but is firm: “I know you are hurting, but attack.”

Crowell launches as the road slices through a grove of grapefruit trees. She swings well wide of the group and accelerates decisively, allowing neither space nor time for anyone to slip into her draft. Cope nods appreciatively: “That’s how you do it.”

Later that afternoon, back at the team’s rented house in Palm Desert, Alison Starnes opens the refrigerator, pulls out an eggplant, and begins dicing it into a wok for her lunch. Women’s pro cycling teams are remarkably lean financial operations, and each rider is responsible for supplying her own food at camp.

The floor is lined with grocery bags. At the granite kitchen counter, Tayler Wiles eats egg and tomato tacos from a plate dressed with arugula and three carrots.

Meanwhile, Pearl Izumi product manager Ron Rod sets up camp in an adjoining dining room that also serves as Swiss rider Pascale Schnider’s bedroom. With a tailor’s measuring tape around his neck, Rod takes detailed rider dimensions—waist, inseam, thigh circumference, neck, bicep extended and flexed—and plugs them into a tiny laptop. He then uses these both to ensure that the riders get the appropriately sized clothing, and for Pearl Izumi “to use the as a base” for the development of future products.

When Andrea Dvorak walks into the room in her skin suit, she comments that it does not feel comfortable. Smiling, Rod says the speed suit is only designed to fit when in a time trial position, not when walking. “When you get down into this position,” he bends forward with his arms extended like he is on a TT bike, “all this wrinkling here will go away.” He plucks at wrinkles gathered on Dvorak’s shoulders. Sure enough, when she bends into a TT position they vanish.

The next day, Wednesday, is a rest day. While some riders take a short spin in the morning, most lounge by the backyard pool and sprawl across a living room couch. One by one they go outside to pose for team headshot photos.

At 11 am, the riders pile onto living room chairs and couches to hear Rod talk about the Pearl Izumi products they will wear in 2012 and to solicit their input for product improvements. Two requests are wind vests with back pockets and bib shorts that allow the riders to go to the bathroom without having to pull off the suspenders—a real issue for women, especially in time-critical race situations.

Next the team’s doctors take the floor. Team Physician Kristin Wingfield explains how in 2012 she will be working with clinical neuropsychologist Eric Freitag to take baseline neurological assessments of each rider.

Freitag explains brain physiology to the team, then points out that if one of them were to crash and hit their head, it can result in “a metabolic injury.” That is, a harmful change to the way the brain processes energy.

To help manage any potential head injuries in 2012, Freitag explains that after lunch each rider will take a 30 minute neurological exam—the same exam NFL players now take at the beginning of their football season. Then, should any of the riders have the misfortune to crash during the season, he will be able to use those data points to assess when the rider has returned to their normative state and is well enough to safely start training and racing again.

“My goal in the treatment of this” he tells the riders, “is not to take you off the bike every time you get a bump on the head, but it’s actually to shorten the duration of the recovery. And we can do that if we manage it right out of the gate.”

And then the riders break for lunch, fuel for another day in the busy training week of the Exergy-Twenty12 pro cycling team.

The five-stage Tour of Hangzhou in southern China will tentatively run from Wednesday October 17 through Sunday October 21. The event will open three days following the conclusion of the nearby Tour of Beijing. That event, in its second year, was initially scheduled to close the WorldTour calendar in 2012. The UCI License Commission will need to approve the addition of the event before it officially joins the top level of the sport. It was not immediately clear whether the UCI’s Global Cycling Promotions offshoot, which promotes the Beijing tour, would operate the Hangzhou race.

UCI president Pat McQuaid opened the two-day PCC meetings in Geneva, Switzerland, and called the Chinese expansion a “natural step for cycling.”

“This will generate great visibility for teams and riders and can be expected to give a big boost to cycling,” said McQuaid. “The injection of funding directly benefits the sport with financial returns from the new races re-invested into cycling and also profiting teams and other stakeholders down the line. It is no secret that success breeds success and the current boom in cycling is good news for cyclists and cycling lovers across the board. We are very pleased with today’s decision, which comes as part of UCI’s ongoing sustainable development of the sport.”

Saxo Bank review

In regards to Contador and Saxo Bank, the UCI will today request that the License Commission review whether the deposed 2010 Tour de France champion will be able to retain his 2011 UCI points for the team classification rankings. Contador scored 68 percent of the total points for Bjarne Riis’ squad last season and without his points, Saxo Bank will fall below the threshold to retain its license. The UCI would likely remove the squad from the ProTeam ranks for 2012 if that were to occur.

Other items emerging from the PCC meeting:

The 2013 Tour of Poland will expand one day and take place July 27-August 3.

Teams failing to submit all essential documentation for a ProTeam license by the October 20 deadline will be “excluded from the UCI ProTeam registration process.”

Prosecutors in Grenoble had stated Thursday that only two purchases were made in May and June 2011 respectively, both for less than 500 euros apiece.

However, while in custody, police found a document in Ciprelli’s bag that contained a password through which they were able to access an online account used to make EPO orders and track his recent transactions.

The orders would then be passed to a Turkish pharmacy through companies based in Mauritius, the source close to the enquiry indicated. “Since 2007, it’s a permanent doping,” the source added.

On Thursday, Ciprelli had acknowledged that he bought EPO “for his personal usage”, according to his lawyer Pierre Albert.

In custody since Wednesday morning, Ciprelli was freed Friday morning under judicial supervision. He is barred from his role as a professional coach and must ask the country’s authorities for permission before leaving France.

“It’s not a pleasant experience,” Armstrong told The Associated Press by phone on Thursday in his first interview since prosecutors in Los Angeles closed their investigation last Friday. After speaking with the AP, Armstrong participated in a teleconference with media covering this weekend’s triathlon in Panama City, Panama, where he is scheduled to compete this weekend.

“It was difficult at times,” the seven-time Tour de France winner said. “But I was confident that we would always end up in this place. It’s over. I’m moving on.”

The World Anti-Doping Agency this week urged U.S. federal authorities to quickly hand over evidence collected in the investigation that was aimed at whether the world’s most famous cyclist and his teammates joining in a doping program during his run of Tour victories from 1999-2005.

“I don’t want to get bogged down with that. I’m not concerned with that. I’m not going to worry about that,” he said.

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The Rabobank star suffered a broken leg during a crash in a mid-September training ride. There were some initial worries that the injury could seriously set his career back, but Gesink has bounced back better than expected.

Rabobank sport director Erik Breukink told VeloNews.com that Gesink is expecting to be back at full strength in time for the Tour de France, with an early season goal of performing well in the Ardennes classics.

“His training has been good. There haven’t been any problems,” Breukink said “He’s missing the racing. We won’t really know how he’s doing until he’s back in the race.”

Gesink will make his season debut at the Ruta del Sol later this month in Spain and then make a big push through the Volta a Catalunya and the Vuelta al País Vasco, where he was third overall last year, before rolling into the Ardennes classics.

“Robert’s motivated to return,” Breukink said. “He’s going to take it easy in the first part of the season, but build to be ready for the classics.”

Gesink’s 2011 season was a mix of highs and lows. Early in the year, he notched some encouraging results, with the overall victory and a time trial win at the Tour of Oman. He was second behind eventual Tour winner Cadel Evans at Tirreno-Adriatico and third at the Basque Country tour behind the RadioShack tandem of Andreas Kloden and Chris Horner.

His Tour hopes came crashing down with a crash in the first week that left him with back pain that knocked him off his hopes of bettering his sixth place overall the year before.

Gesink then returned again to top form with second at the GP Quebec in early September just days before his training crash that left him with a serious fracture in his leg.

Breukink said the team is cautiously optimistic that Gesink can be back at full strength in time for the Tour.

“We hope he can be back,” he said. “He’s still young, 26 this year, so he can overcome this and continue to develop as a grand tour rider. We are optimistic.”

Boonen, who also won the race in 2006, 2008 and 2009, timed an overall 15:42:14 to give him a 28 second advantage over US racer Tyler Farrar of Garmin. Spaniard Juan Antonio Flecha of Team Sky came in third at 33 seconds.

A beaming Boonen said: “This augurs well for the rest of the season — I arrived in Qatar in fine fettle. I’m really on the right track to have a good classics campaign.”

The former world champion now heads for the Tour of Oman, starting Tuesday.

Demare meanwhile held off Russian Denis Galimzyanov and Australian Mark Renshaw as he crossed the line in 2:20:44 following the 120.5 km stage from Sealine Beach Resort to Doha Corniche which brought the final
curtain down.

Demare, under-23 level champion last season, won his first pro race stage as the 20-year-old came through in a tight final mass sprint which saw Mark Cavendish fall.

“My teammates, notably Yoann (Offredo) and Mickael (Delage), placed me in ideal conditions in the final couple of kilometers — my legs were flying,” said a delighted Demare. “Tom Boonen and Tyler Farrar came to congratulate me — it’s an extraordinary feeling. These are riders I admired from watching them on television.”

While many details remain vague in the wake of the Specialized vs. Volagi lawsuit, a few things have become clear.

There’s no question the lawsuit put Volagi and the Liscio, its long-distance comfort road bike, more firmly on the map ― while also putting it in a substantial financial hole. To some, Volagi unfairly competed with Specialized. To others, “The Big Red S” came off looking like a bully, and it weathered damaging statements about its R&D department and litigation strategy by a former executive vice president in charge of products. The lawsuit may have thus been costlier for Specialized than for Volagi, even though two million dollars is a lot less money to the giant Morgan Hill firm than half a million is to Volagi.

But why did the lawsuit happen?

The claims

Acknowledging that, “nobody wins in these things,” Specialized founder and president Mike Sinyard explained that the company he founded in 1974 is like his family, and he felt compelled to file suit when he felt it had been injured.

“I was going to just let it go, but I couldn’t. We have this awesome company culture of teamwork and trust here, and when I saw how what they (Volagi co-founders and former Specialized employees Robert Choi and Barley Forsman) did affected the people working here, I had to do it (file suit).”

If for no other reason than the relative sizes of the two companies, struggles like this are often going to be looked at as David vs. Goliath, and Goliath isn’t generally perceived as the good guy.
To hammer home the Goliath image, the defense produced Sean Sullivan, a product manager at Specialized from 1994-1998 and director of equipment and marketing and executive vice president for product and global marketing from 2004-2007. (Not to be confused with Mavic USA’s marketing director Sean Sullivan.) Sullivan testified that, “Sinyard and Specialized have a pattern and practice of suing competitors” to “tie them up in court.”

In response, Sinyard told VeloNews.com, “People can say anything. But I say, ‘show me all of these lawsuits.’ They’re not there.”

On the subject of the company’s history in court, former Specialized Chief Brand Officer Ben Capron, who worked for Specialized for 18 years and now works for National Interscholastic Cycling Association (NICA), said, “What Mike cares about first and foremost is riders, what riding can do for people and advancing that, the people at Specialized, and Specialized dealers. All of those constituencies are relying on Specialized to perform. He’s a very competitive business person, and that competitive nature and wanting to do right by those constituencies results in aggressive behavior sometimes.”

Rather than being about squelching competition, Sinyard said the case was a matter of principle.

“I wasn’t worried about that (Volagi) bike, and it was never about getting a lot of money from them,” he said. “It was about making a friggin’ point.”

Choi and Forsman see it differently – and Sinyard looks at what they claim as transparency in their dealing with the company as anything but.

Both quit in April 2010 but stayed on longer ― Forsman for a couple of weeks and Choi until the end of August. They told Sinyard and their immediate supervisors that they were starting a company in the bike industry and refused to reveal what the company was or would do. An email from Choi to Sinyard on the eve of the 2010 Interbike show, where the Volagi bike was unveiled, acknowledged that, “the bikes at Volagi do compete with Specialized.”

Two months before resigning, Forsman requested and received engineering drawings of the Roubaix, which is the Specialized bike that fills the niche closest to that of the Volagi. That same month (February 2010), the company put Choi on its test program of the unreleased 2011 Roubaix and gave him the bike to evaluate.

Also in February 2010, using his Specialized email address, Choi requested price and lead-time quotes on tooling charges on carbon frames and components from VIP, a Specialized carbon molding vendor, for a fictitious “Robert Volagi.”

Choi knew that Specialized had done a trademark search on the name “Venga” but was not using it; Volagi later used that for the original name of its bike, though Volagi changed the name to “Liscio” after Specialized objected to Venga. In May 2010, Choi emailed some Specialized sales documents (territory call reports) to other Volagi employees.

While both sides agree on these facts, they strongly disagree on the motivation behind them and whether or not they furthered Volagi. For instance, regarding the email to VIP introducing “Robert Volagi,” Choi said, “I didn’t want to present myself as a Specialized employee; I didn’t think that was right, and I didn’t want to get Specialized pricing. I didn’t go after any Specialized manufacturer making Specialized frames. VIP at the time was only doing carbon components for Specialized; they were just getting into carbon frames. I just asked for costs for molding.”

Sinyard found Choi’s explanation to be far-fetched and “insulting.”

All items taken from Specialized were returned, and while Choi and Forsman claim to have voluntarily pointed out their existence and then turned them over to the company, Sinyard claims that it took letters from company lawyers to get them back and that he only knew about them following a search of Choi’s company computer.

The Farnese-Vini rider fell early in Thursday’s fifth stage and was later expected to return to Italy for likely surgery.

The crash comes at a bad time for Pozzato, who is trying to regain his footing after three sub-par seasons with Katusha. Now 31, Pozzato moved to Farnese Vini with hopes of reviving his fortunes.

The second-division team had earned bids to start some important races this season, including Gent-Wevelgem, the Tour of Flanders, Tirreno-Adriatico and Milan-San Remo, races that Pozzato was expected to be a protagonist.

Team officials said it was still too early to know how long Pozzato would be sidelined, but missing a critical training window at this stage of the season will not be ideal coming into the demands of the one-day classics.

“Patrice Ciprelli admits buying EPO for his own personal use because he has been the subject of repeated cycling accidents these last few years,” his lawyer Pierre Albert told AFP. “He hid them from Jeannie. He didn’t want her to see them.”

French police on Wednesday arrested Ciprelli over the alleged purchase of the banned performance-enhancing drug EPO (erythropoietin).

They also confirmed that police had spent several hours seaching the couple’s chalet at the village of Saint-Martin-Le-Vinoux near Grenoble.

The 53-year-old Longo was not detained along with her husband, although a friend of Ciprelli, Michel Lucatelli, who is the head of the French skicross team, was.

The police operation was part of an investigation into Ciprelli’s activities launched last September.

This followed a report in L’Equipe newspaper alleging that Ciprelli had bought Chinese-made samples of the banned blood-booster EPO in April 2007, using a US website and with the help of retired US cyclist Joe Papp, who was banned for doping himself.

The French Cycling Federation subsequently banned Ciprelli, but he took the case to court and the ban was overturned in October.

Longo, who is widely expected to retire after the London Olympics in 2012, is a 59-time national champion who has won the women’s Tour de France three times and who enjoys huge popularity in her own country.

She has won a total of 30 medals from the Olympics and world championships combined.

There has never been any proof that the athlete ever saw or used the banned drugs in question.

The 1997 Tour champion was suspended by T-Mobile on the eve of the 2006 race after a Spanish police investigation revealed connections between the rider and Dr. Eufemiano Fuentes. An apartment belonging to Fuentes was raided in May of that year, yielding a haul of steroids, hormones and blood bags that would eventually implicate many of cycling’s biggest names. Blood seized in the raid was later positively identified as matching a DNA sample derived from Ullrich’s saliva.

In issuing its ruling, the CAS panel expressed “surprise that Jan Ullrich did not question the veracity of the evidence or any other substantive aspect of [his] case,” limiting his defense to procedural issues (each subsequently rejected by the panel).

Citing documentary evidence presented by the UCI, including payments to Fuentes and the undisputed presence of Ullrich’s DNA on blood bags found in the doctor’s presence, the panel concluded that Ullrich had “engaged, at least, in blood doping in violation of Article 15.2 of the UCI Anti-Doping Rules.”

The ruling is likely to come as a relief to Ullrich, who has spoken publicly about his desire to reach closure. Speaking to Velo magazine in November, Ullrich downplayed the practical consequence of any adverse ruling, explaining a ban would have no “influence on (my) future life,” adding, “I want to have a final decision, because then it’s over.”

Ullrich’s manager Falk Nier has intimated that a statement from the rider is forthcoming and has made clear that the Ullrich will feel free to speak openly upon the case’s resolution. Nier has refused to confirm or deny whether Ullrich will confess to doping.

Thursday’s announcement presumably caps a weeklong flurry of decisions relating to former Tour de France champions. Last Friday, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Andre Birotte Jr., announced that federal prosecutors have closed their two-year fraud investigation of Lance Armstrong’s U.S. Postal Service team without charges. On Monday the CAS issued its long-awaited verdict in the case of Alberto Contador, imposing a retroactive two year ban after a 2010 Tour de France doping control found traces of Clenbuterol, a banned bronchodilator.

Update: In a statement posted Thursday on his website, Ullrich accepted the decision of the CAS and confirmed meeting with Fuentes, calling his involvement with the Operación Puerto doctor “a big mistake.” The rider suggests that he previously declined to speak (pending resolution of his case) upon the advice of his lawyers, and that this multi-year silence “so polluted” him that it led to his much-publicized emotional breakdown.

The Olympic gold medalist again disavowed any interest in returning to professional cycling and appeared to close the door on any further discussion of his case or past transgressions, noting, “I hereby draw a line.”

A rough English translation of Ullrich’s statement, written in German, can be viewed here.

January 23, 2012, the Sport Dispute Resolution Center of Canada announced the decision after Martel’s hearing.

“We remain concerned that any rider would resort to doping and know that we need to focus testing at all levels,” said CCA Chief Executive Officer and Secretary General Greg Mathieu.

The committee president Alejandro Blanco defended Spanish sport against its detractors, including a French satirical television show that lampooned Spain’s sporting heros in a sketch about doping.

“The successes of Spanish sport are solely due to hard work, dedication and planning,” Blanco told a news conference.

“We are the biggest defenders of cleanliness in sport and we can hold our head high,” he said, citing Spain’s 2006 anti-doping law.

“We have a large number of tests per year: more than 11,000 in 2011. All this means Spain is in the front line of those countries fighting against doping,” he added.

The Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport on Monday handed a two-year ban to two-time Tour de France winner Contador after he tested positive for the banned substance clenbuterol.

Contador says it was due to a contaminated steak eaten during the 2010 Tour de France. He said on Tuesday that his lawyers were looking into a possible appeal. “We will continue to fight until the end,” he said in a news conference.

The ban prompted widespread indignation in Spain, with many in the public and media branding it unjust.

Contador’s fans said they will don masks of their hero on Sunday and hold a symbolic bike ride in his home town of Pinto to support him.

The sanction is backdated to August 2010, meaning Contador can return to competition on August 6, 2012.

As well as ruling him out of this year’s Tour de France and the Olympic Games in London, he will be stripped of several wins, including his 2010 yellow jersey, one of his three victories in the French race.

Blanco hit out on Wednesday at the Guignols de l’Info, a French television sketch show.

Spain’s tennis federation said Wednesday it would sue French TV broadcaster Canal+ over the comedy sketches which implied that Contador, tennis player Rafael Nadal and other Spanish athletes use performance-enhancing drugs.

The sketch featured a puppet likeness of world number two Nadal filling the gas tank of his car from his own bladder. “These are very harsh images which do not correspond at all to reality,” Blanco said.

Complete coverage of Alberto Contador’s clenbuterol case

The town hall in Pinto, south of Madrid, said it was collaborating with Surbike, a cyclists’ association, in the demonstration under the slogan ‘We are all Alberto.’

“The event is open to participants of all ages and will take place on Sunday, February 12,” it said in a statement. Surbike published on its website a downloadable mask of Contador’s face, with holes to cut out for the eyes and mouth.

The march is scheduled to start at 12:00 pm local time (1100GMT) on Sunday in a park and wind up at the Plaza de la Constitucion, where Contador celebrated his three victories in the Tour de France.

The Swiss-based Court of Arbitration for Sport on Monday handed him a two-year ban after he tested positive for the banned substance clenbuterol. He says it was due to a contaminated steak eaten during the 2010 Tour de France.

Contador said on Tuesday that his lawyers were looking into a possible appeal, which must be lodged within 30 days.

“We will continue to fight until the end,” he told a packed news conference in Pinto.

The ban is backdated to August 2010, meaning Contador can return to competition on August 6, 2012. As well as ruling him out of this year’s Tour de France and the Olympic Games in London, he will be stripped of several wins, including his 2010 yellow jersey.

Complete coverage of Alberto Contador’s clenbuterol case

Contador has been stripped of last year’s Giro win, with Michele Scarponi crowned in his place, due to the Spaniard’s back-dated two-year doping ban for testing positive for clenbuterol, which was handed down on Tuesday following an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS).

In a statement, RCS, the company that runs the Giro d’Italia, said it regretted the time taken to reach a decision. Contador failed a test during the 2010 Tour de France.

“The time taken to arrive at a final decision, a long period after the affair, has affected events such as the Giro,” said RCS’s statement. “We hope that in the future the judicial process will ensure that the Giro does not face an equivalent situation, which shows a lack of respect for the fans, riders and participants in this race.”

Contador was also stripped of the 2010 Tour de France title he won ahead of Luxembourg’s Andy Schleck, who has been awarded the victory in his place.

Complete coverage of Alberto Contador’s clenbuterol case

Boonen won a sprint finish to see off Dutchman Tom Veelers and Swiss Fabian Cancellara.

Thursday’s fifth and penultimate stage is a 160km ride from Camel Race Track to Al Khor.

They also confirmed that police had spent several hours seaching the couple’s chalet at the village of Saint-Martin-Le-Vinoux near Grenoble.

The 53-year-old Longo was not detained along with her husband, although a friend of Ciprelli, Michel Lucatelli, who is the head of the French skicross team, was.

The police operation was part of an investigation into Ciprelli’s activities launched last September.

This followed a report in L’Equipe newspaper alleging that Ciprelli had bought Chinese-made samples of the banned blood-booster EPO in April 2007, using a US website and with the help of retired US cyclist Joe Papp, who was
banned for doping himself.

The French Cycling Federation subsequently banned Ciprelli, but he took the case to court and the ban was overturned in October.

Longo, who is widely expected to retire after the London Olympics in 2012, is a 59-time national champion who has won the women’s Tour de France three times and who enjoys huge popularity in her own country. She has won a total of 30 medals from the Olympics and world championships combined.

There has never been any proof that the athlete ever saw or used the banned drugs in question.

Wednesday’s 160km Trofeo Serra de Tramuntana was the hardest of the four days of racing and featured five rated climbs, including the Cat. 2 Coll de Soller and the first-category Puig Major.

The Mediterranean island, which typically enjoys mild winter temperatures, was belted with a freak winter storm this week, leaving its capitol, Palma de Mallorca, dusted in snow for the first time in more than 50 years.

The higher mountains of the Serra de Tramuntana received nearly a foot of snow in some areas, making it impossible to take the race over the narrow mountain roads.

Officials were hoping that sunny skies over the past few days would help clear roads, but rain and snow moved back over the island to create more weather problems. Efforts to find an alternative route did not play out in time to hold the race.

The race was earlier forced to trim its race days from five to four due to budgetary restraints for this year’s edition. So with the weather stoppage, only three of the planned four days were held.

Andrew Fenn (Omega Pharma-Quick-Step) won the first two days while Lars Petter Nordhaug (Sky) won Tuesday’s third day in a hilly route to Deia.

The race saw several big names making their respective season debuts, including Tour de France champion Cadel Evans (BMC) and the Schleck brothers (RadioShack-Nissan-Trek).

Alberto Contador (Saxo Bank) raced Sunday’s opener just hours before hearing he would receive a two-year ban for his clenbuterol case dating back to 2010.

Contador will be allowed to return to competition on August 6.

The course will pass some of California’s iconic landmarks, such as Big Bear Lake and Mt. Baldy, as well as Sunset Boulevard and Beverly Hills.

Stage details:

Stage 1: Santa Rosa to Santa Rosa (Sunday, May 13)
3rd St. to Santa Rosa Ave.

The race begins in Levi Leipheimer’s home of Santa Rosa, California. Stage one features seven sprints and will pass through the Sonoma County vinyards and along the coast. There will be a technical descent into Occidental and a dramatic finish straight to the line, without the final circuits through Santa Rosa that have been featured here previously.

Stage 2: San Francisco to Aptos in Santa Cruz County (Monday, May 14)
Marina Green at Marina Boulevard in San Francisco to Cabrillo College on Cabrillo College Drive in Aptos

Stage two will have a dramatic race start heading to the break wall of San Francisco Bay against a backdrop of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Angel Island and the Marin Headlands. The race will follow stunning coastline. The Aptos finish will be a KOM opportunity and may be an opportunity for a dramatic sprint.

Stage 3: San Jose to Livermore (Tuesday, May 15)
Berryessa Community Center on Berryessa Road in San Jose to Livermore (M Street and 1st Street)

San Jose, where the stage begins, is the only city that has hosted the Amgen Tour of California all seven years of the race. Stage three will feature the highly anticipated Mt. Diablo climb for the first time in the history of the race. The stage will likely finish in a sprint in historic downtown Livermore.

Stage 4: Sonora to Clovis (Wednesday, May 16)
Sonora (Yaney and Washington) to Clovis (Bullard and Pollasky Aves.)

The stage begins at the gateway to nearby Yosemite National Park in the town of Sonora. This stage will offer numerous KOMs, technical descents and very few flat sections. The stage ends in Clovis, paying tribute to the town’s 100th anniversary.

Stage 5: Individual Time Trial (Thursday, May 1)
Bakerfield (Bakersfield College – Panorama Drive)

The Bakersfield circuit, back by popular demand, will return as an individual time trial in 2012. With very few flat sections, the ITT will prove a challenge for riders and a great spectacle for spectators. The stage will likely be hot and windy with consistent 100-foot rollers and a 300-foot bluff with an eight percent climb near the stage finish. From there, they will turn hard left to an uphill finish.

Stage 6: Palmdale to Big Bear Lake (Friday, May 18)
Marie Kerr Park, 2723 Rancho Vista Boulevard, Palmdale to Snow Summit Ski Area on Summit Boulevard in Big Bear Lake

Big Bear Lake returns to the 2012 route after being skipped in 2011. The stage’s first KOM will be at Mountain High ski area after a 12-mile climb to a 7,000-foot sumit, then move toward Big Bear area. The stage finishes over 7,000 feet in elevation at Snow Summit ski area.

Stage 7: Ontario to Mt. Baldy (Saturday, May 19)
Ontario Convention Center to Mt. Baldy Ski Resort

Often known as the “Queen’s Stage” because it resembles a stage from a European Grand Tour, stage 7 has never been so late in the race after such consistently strenuous stages. It features three KOMs, technical and fast descents and a sprint. Toward the end of the stage, the climbing gets so steep it has proven impassable for some race vehicles. According to the organizers, “This will be the stage where legends are made and winners are decided.”

Stage 8: Beverly Hills to L.A. LIVE – Los Angeles (Sunday, May 20)
Start Location: Beverly Hills – (Rodeo Drive and Brighton Way)
Finish Location: Los Angeles – L.A. LIVE (Figueroa Street and Chick Hearn Court)

The final stage begins in the famous Beverly Hills where “Designer dresses will give way to high-tech lycra,” according to race organizers. The stage will include Santa Monica Boulevard, Doheny Drive, Sunset Boulevard and West Hollywood.

“There has been significant evidence taken on anti-doping areas, on what may have occurred in the way of doping. It would be very, very helpful if that information was handed over,” Fahey said of the U.S. probe that was led by federal agent Jeff Novitzky, who also investigated baseball players Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens.

“The United States anti-doping organization is keen to get hold of that evidence and we would like to see that happen because there could well be some very relevant information there,” Fahey said.

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