Posts for 'Race' Category

Floyd Landis, former teammate of seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, has filed a federal "whistle-blower" lawsuit, The Wall Street Journal reported on Friday. Citing anonymous sources, the newspaper reported that Landis filed a suit under the US federal False Claims Act, which allows Americans to sue on behalf of the government alleging the government has been defrauded.

According to the Journal, the lawsuit is currently sealed so its exact contents are not known. But in the article posted on its website the newspaper noted that Landis and Armstrong were teammates on the squad sponsored by the US Postal Service, a government entity. Landis has alleged that some of the team's riders, including himself and Armstrong, used performance enhancing drugs - a charge Armstrong has strenuously denied.

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French Great Fignon, 50, Dies Of Cancer: Laurent Fignon died of cancer on Tuesday at the age of 50 with two Tour de France wins to his name -- but the eight seconds that cost him a third triumph will live just as long in the memory. On July 23 1989, after 21 stages and 3,285-km of grueling cycling, Greg LeMond pipped the Frenchman by the Tour's narrowest margin in one of the great finishes of all time.

Fignon had started the time trial with a 50-second lead only to see his American rival go 58 seconds faster in the 24.5-km final stage.

"Even on the podium I was feeling uncomfortable and sorry because Fignon had also won the Tour," LeMond told France 24 television from his Minnesota home on Tuesday.

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Contador Absence Leaves Tour Of Spain Wide Open: The third and final Grand Tour of the season is set to begin in Spain, with several leading riders eyeing their chances amid the absence of the world's top road racer Alberto Contador.

Three-time Tour de France winner Contador is skipping his home Tour, which he won in 2008, after a hard-fought victory in France in July.

He joins two of his Spanish countrymen -- last year's winner Alejandro Valverde, who is serving a suspension for doping, and Samuel Sanchez, who was injured in a crash in the final mountain stage of the Tour de France -- on the absentee list.

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Armstrong To Be Graduation Speaker At High Point: High Point University says seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong will serve as its commencement speaker in the spring. Armstrong will speak on May 7 during the campus graduation ceremony. The school has attracted some high-profile commencement speakers, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani in 2005, comedian Bill Cosby in 2007 and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 2008.

Armstrong also has been dealing with renewed questions about drug use, which Armstrong denies, since ex-teammate Floyd Landis made allegations against him and other riders this spring. Federal investigators have been looking at lawsuits containing old accusations against Armstrong and have reached out to question his sponsors.

Seven World Champs In Aussie Team For Delhi Games: Australia on Thursday named seven reigning world champions in their 27-strong cycling team for the New Delhi Commonwealth Games in October. The Australian team will be headlined by 2004 Olympic and reigning Commonwealth Games champion Anna Meares and defending Commonwealth men's road race champion Mathew Hayman.

The Australians are aiming to repeat their dominant performance on both road and track at the Melbourne Games in 2006 and this year's UCI World Track Cycling Championships.

Australia topped the table with 10 of the 57 medals, including six gold, at the world track championships in Copenhagen in March.

Track world champions Meares (500m time trial and team sprint), Ashlee Ankudinoff (teams pursuit), Kaarle McCulloch (team sprint), Josephine Tomic (teams pursuit), Jack Bobridge (teams pursuit), Michael Hepburn (teams pursuit), and three-time champion at this year's world titles Cameron Meyer (teams pursuit, points race and madison) were all named in the team.

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Bradley Wiggins looks set to ride in the tour, in a late change of schedule for the British rider. Immediately after the Tour de France, Wiggins said that the Tour of Britain would be his only remaining race this year. Then Team Sky released their line-ups for.

August and Wiggins was down to compete in the Tour du Limousin in France. But the Team Sky leader has now been removed from that line-up and placed in the team for the Eneco Tour, which runs from August 17th – 24th The other Sky riders for Eneco are Kurt-Asle Arvesen, Michael Barry, Edvald Boasson Hagen, Mat Hayman, Greg Henderson, Chris Sutton and Geraint Thomas. Boasson Hagen is the defending champion, having won the race for HTC-Columbia in 2009.

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Athletic gear maker Nike and the bicycle maker that sponsors Lance Armstrong's racing team are cooperating with federal authorities investigating.

The seven-time Tour de France champion and others in cycling, spokesmen for both companies said Friday.

Investigators requested documents from Trek Bicycle Corp. early in July and company officials complied fully, said Bill Mashek, a spokesman for the Waterloo, Wis.-based company.

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Just when he thought he was out, Lance Armstrong gets pulled back in. The 38-year-old cyclist says he feels all of his years these days and notices how long it takes him to recover from.

A big crash, much unlike when he was, say, in his 20s. That said, he's still on the fence about whether or not he'll ultimately jump back on a bike in any competitive sense.

But you better believe he's thinking about it.On Wednesday, the seven-time Tour de France champion announced plans to hold an international pro-cycling competition in Colorado, scheduled for August 22-28, 2011.

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Lance Armstrong took to the streets of downtown Denver on Wednesday with Gov. Bill Ritter and hundreds of citizen cyclists to celebrate the realization of his dream of bringing a major international pro-cycling stage race to Colorado next year.

It was a welcome respite for Armstrong, who is under scrutiny from federal investigators looking into cheating in professional cycling following claims by former teammate Floyd Landis that he used performance-enhancing drugs.

The exact route of the Aug. 22-28, 2011, race, called the Quiznos Pro Challenge, has not been mapped out yet, but it will include a mix of mountain, sprint and downtown stages like the old Coors Classic, which ended in 1988, Armstrong told The Associated Press in advance of the announcement on the steps of the state capitol.

Fresh off his second retirement from the Tour de France, which he won a record seven times, Armstrong said he hopes to ride in the Quiznos Pro Challenge himself, but he wasn't making any promises.

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Lance Armstrong's attorney has lashed out at a report that a former teammate of the seven-time Tour de France champion told investigators.

Armstrong knew of widespread performance-enhancing drug use on the US Postal Service team.Attorney Bryan D. Daly said there are hundreds of former Armstrong teammates who would deny he broke the rules to win.

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