Portal:Cycling/News

• In Milan, Italy, the eighth of the eleven meetings to be contested in the men's 2006-2007 Cyclo-cross World Cup concludes as Belgian Bart Wellens, runner-up to countrymate Sven Nys at the Aigle, Koksijde, and Igorre events—the latter two respectively fourteen and five days thither—and to Frenchman Francis Mourey at the Treviso event, completes the Milan course in one hour, six minutes, and twelve seconds, 1:02 faster than does Nys, to earn his first tour stop title of the season and to surpass countrymate Erwin Vervecken—ahead of Wellens the silver medallist at the 2006 Belgian championship and, eleven months thither, the winner of the rainbow jersey over Wellens and Mourey—for second place in the Cup standings in which Wellens draws within 756 points of Nys; Vervecken finishes in equal fifteenth place, 3:22 behind third-place countrymate Sven Vanthourenhout—also the Koksijde bronze medallist, to fall to 73 points adrift Wellens as four other riders—Dutchman Gerben de Knegt, the Pijnacker bronze medallist, who finishes in seventh place; Mourey, who finishes seven seconds behind Vanthourenhout to claim fourth place; Vanthourenhout; and Belgian Klaas Vantornout, the Igorre second runner-up and Milan fifth-place finisher—surpass the 1000 points mark.
• The 2006–07 Cyclo-cross World Cup arrives at the midpoint of its six women's meetings as German Hanka Kupfernagel—eight days thither at the Treviso event narrowly a runner-up to Dutchwoman Marianne Vos and ten months earlier world championships silver medallist behind rainbow jersey-winner Vos after a sprint betwixt the two—completes the Pijnacker, Netherlands course in 43 minutes and 39 seconds to win her event of the Cup schedule, this by 41 seconds over Dutchwoman Daphny van den Brand, the world championships bronze medallist, and by 1:11 over German Birgit Hollmann, who, having finished alongside Vos and Kupfernagel at the Treviso tour stop, earns her second 2006 podium finish. Kupfernagel extends to 155 points her Cup standings lead over Vos, who completes the event in 47:14 to fall within 120 points of third-ranked Briton Helen Wyman, the Kalmthout bronze medallist who places fourth in the Pijnacker competition; three other racers—Frenchwoman Laurence Leboucher, the 2002 and 2004 world champion who finishes in seventh place; Dutchwoman Reza Hormes-Ravenstijn, who earns a sixth-place finish twenty-four seconds ahead of Leboucher; and Hollmann—leave the event having tallied at least 480 Cup points and thus being within 140 points of Wyman.
• The 2006 Dew Action Sports Tour concludes with the PlayStation Pro, held at the TD Waterhouse Centre in Orlando, Florida. American Chad Kagy, five-and-one-half weeks thither the gold medallist in the bicycle motocross (BMX) freestyle vert event and silver medallist in the BMX freestyle vert best trick competition and twice a Gravity Games medallist, finishes the PlayStation Pro vert event, as those of the Right Guard Open, Vans Invitational, and Toyota Challenge, in second place to tally 75 points in the Tour's points structure and to secure the overall silver medal, 48 points clear of countrymate Kevin Robinson, who earns overall bronze as the two reverse their 2005 finishes; American Jamie Bestwick—to Kagy the X Games XII vert runner-up—having needed only to enter the season-ending event to secure the points title and defend his 2005 championship, wins the Pro to raise his cumulative score to 475 points and to complete the schedule having failed to win just one meeting—the Panasonic Open, in which he places second behind Briton Simon Tabron, the X Games silver medallist, who finishes fifty points adrift of Robinson for a podium finish. Venezuelan Daniel Dhers, having finished 0.34 points out of silver medal position at the X Games XII freestyle park event and having placed third at the Panasonic, Vans, and Toyota events, wins the Pro to displace Americans Ryan Nyquist and Scotty Cranmer–respectively the 2005 bronze medallist and runner-up–who complete the Pro respectively in eleventh and tenth, atop the points standings and to garner the gold medal. Cramner, having won each X Games run to earn the X Games park gold medal, and having won the Panasonic and Toyota contests, finishes 59 points behind Dhers, having compiled 330 Tour points, and 11 points clear of Nyquist, the Vans champion and a Right Guard and Toyota runner-up; American Morgan Wade, behind Cramner the X Games silver medallist, manages no finish better than eighth and ultimately finishes in overall thirteenth. In the dirt event, American Anthony Napolitan overcomes a ninth-place finish at the Toyota Challenge by winning the Pro event and to total, across the series, of which he wins the season-opening Panasonic event, 376 points, 25 more than countrymate Luke Parslow, the only dirt rider to achieve a podium finish at every tour stop and the Pro bronze medallist, and 90 more than Australian Corey Bohan, the 2005 silver medallist and at the 2006 X Games the winner of his third consecutive X Games dirt event gold medal by 0.33 points over American Ryan Nyquist and 1.33 points over Napolitan. The only riders other than Dhers to win a Tour dirt event—Nyquist, seven times an X Games dirt medallist and the 2005 fifth-place finisher; and Australians Ryan Guettler, the 2005 titlist, and Cameron White, the winner of bronze in 2005—capture, respectively, the fourth, fifth, and sixth placings.
• The 2006 Union Cycliste Internationale ProTour ends and the continental circuits thereof begin.
  • Spaniard Alejandro Valverde, a member of the Caisse d'Epargne-Illes Balears cycling team, having six months thither claimed the La Flèche Wallonne and Liège-Bastogne-Liège classic road races and the points classification of the Vuelta al País Vasco, having one month thither captured the seventh stage of the Vuelta a España and thereafter the runner-up to golden jersey-winning Kazahstani Alexander Vinokourov in the event's general classification, and having three weeks thither earned the bronze medal at the men's road race world championship behind Italian Paolo Bettini and German Erik Zabel, completes the ProTour season having amassed 285 points in the event's points structure to finish atop the ProTour individual standings, 72 points ahead of countrymate Samuel Sánchez Gonzalez, with the Euskaltel-Euskadi two weeks thither the winner of the Züri-Metzgete event, who secures his silver medal finishing second, just six seconds behind Bettini, at the season-ending Giro di Lombardia; Luxembourger Fränk Schleck (Team CSC), the Amstel Gold Race titlist, finishes the Giro in seventh place to earn 15 points and secure the overall bronze medal, ten placings above his 2005 thirteenth-place showing. Australian Cadel Evans (Davitamon-Lotto), the winner of the individual time trial fifth stage and general classification, in the latter by 44 seconds over third-place finisher Valverde, of the Tour de Romandie, places fourth, three points adrift of Schleck and by eight points or fewer ahead of Kazakhstani Andrey Kashechkin (Team Astana)—the second runner-up at the Deutschland Tour, Clásica de San Sebastián, and Vuelta; Italian Alessandro Ballan—with Lampre-Fondital a third-place finisher seven months thither at the Tirreno-Adriatico and one month thither at the Tour de Pologne; and Belgian Tom Boonen (Quick Step-Innergetic)—the 2005 overall silver medallist behind Italian Danilo Di Luca and seven months previously the Ronde van Vlaanderen titlist and Paris-Roubaix runner-up. Italian Ivan Basso, the winner of the maglia rosa at the Giro d'Italia, finishes, with Team CSC, ninth overall, six points behind Bettini, who, as in 2005, takes eighth place overall in the ProTour season-ending standings, whilst American Floyd Landis, having won the Paris-Nice meeting and having claimed the maillot jaune at the Tour de France, is not ranked despite having tallied 175 points across the 2006 season; having been removed from the Phonak Hearing Systems team upon his having been accused of doping at the Tour, Landis loses his eligibility for ProTour points. Behind Schleck, Basso, Spaniard Carlos Sastre, and Swiss Fabian Cancellara–the Paris-Roubaix victor–defending champion Danish Team CSC earn first place in the ProTour team standings, 38 points clear of Spanish team Caisse d'Epargne-Illes Balears, which are paced by Valverde and Tour de France runner-up Spaniard Oscar Pereiro Sio and which squad outpoint by four Dutch side Rabobank, which places no rider in the top ten but three—Dutchman Michael Boogerd, Spaniard Óscar Freire Gomez, and Russian Denis Menchov —in the top thirty to match the team's 2005 third-place finish. Spain, having finished third in the 2005 nation rankings, claim, behind Valverde, Sánchez Gonzalez, and Sastre, the nation title, 808-651 over Italy, which place but three riders—Ballan, Bettini, and Basso—in the top eighteen having five riders in the top twelve in 2005; Germany, on the strength of the overall tenth-place finish by Stefan Schumacher (Gerolsteiner), the Eneco Tour and Tour de Pologne champion, and eighteenth-place finish by Jörg Jaksche (Astana Team), at the Tour de Suisse a podium finisher for the first time in his career, complete the top three, 135 points ahead of Australia and 151 ahead of the United States, in 2005 the national silver medallists behind the top-ten finishes of the retired Lance Armstrong, Levi Leipheimer, Bobby Julich, and George Hincapie, of whom only Hincapie, with Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team, records a 2006 top-fifteen finish.
  • The third editions of the Africa Tour, beginning with the Grand Prix Chantal Biya in Cameroon and comprising nine African nations; the America Tour, beginning with the Clasico Ciclistico Banfoandes in Venezuela and comprising thirteen North, Central, and South American nations; the Asia Tour, beginning with the Japan Cup and comprising five East, two Southeast, and three West Asian nations; the Europe Tour, beginning with the Étoile de Bessèges and comprising twelve European nations; and the Oceania Tour, beginning with the six-stage Jayco Herald Sun Tour and comprising Australia and New Zealand, commence.
• The men's and women's time trial and road race world championships, contested under the auspices of the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI), are held in Salzburg, Austria.
  • In the men's time trial championship, in which 52 riders representing 33 nations participate, Swiss Fabian Cancellara, the 2005 bronze medallist, defeats David Zabriskie, the defending United States champion, by one minute and thirty seconds, and Kazakhstani Alexander Vinokourov by one minute and fifty seconds, to earn the rainbow jersey. Australian Michael Rogers, in 2003, 2004, and 2005 the time trial world champion, finishes in eighth place, whilst Briton David Millar, returning from a two-year suspension for his having tested positive for EPO, finishes fifteenth.
  • In the men's road race championship, of which 202 riders representing 44 nations partake, Italian Paolo Bettini, the world silver medallist, overcomes German Erik Zabel—the 2006 Deutschland Tour sprint champion and the 2004 world silver medallist—and Spaniard Alejandro Valverde, the 2003 and 2005 world silver medallist, to win the world title. Defending champion Belgian Tom Boonen claims eight place and Australians Robbie McEwen and Stuart O'Grady, each a noted sprinter and at the 2005 Tour de France respectively the third and second finishers in the race for the maillot vert, finish in fifth and sixth, respectively.
  • American Kristin Armstrong, the 2003 Pan American Games time trial gold medallist and the 2005 world silver medallist, wins the women's time trial championship, earning the rainbow jersey ahead by twenty-six seconds of Swiss Karin Thürig, the two-time defending champion and the 2002 bronze medallist, and by twenty-nine of countrymate Christine Thorburn. German Judith Arndt, a 2002 and 2003 world silver medallist, finishes in seventh place amongst the thirty-nine riders, whilst Russian Zulfiya Zabirova, the 2002 world champion finishes six seconds ahead to achieve sixth.
  • Dutchwoman Marianne Vos, aged just nineteen years and the 2006 junior European champion, places first amongst a breakaway group of fourteen riders to earn the world road race championship with an average speed of 39.783 kilometers per hour. German Trixi Worrack, the 2004 Tour de l'Aude Cycliste Féminin winner, earns the silver medal, just ahead of Welshwoman Nicole Cooke, the reigning Grande Boucle titlist and 2003 and 2006 UCI World Cup of Road Racing first-place finisher, whilst Australian Oenone Wood, the 2004 and 2005 World Cup champion and the 2005 world bronze medallist, finishes sixth.
• The 2006 Mountain Bike World Cup, organized by the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) and comprising six cross-country, downhill, and cyclo-cross and four cross-country marathon mountain bike events contested over five-and-one-third months across three continents, concludes.
  • Frenchman Julien Absalon, two weeks thither the winner at the UCI Mountain Bike World Championships in Rotorua, New Zealand, of his third consecutive world cross-country title, having captured the Madrid, Spa-Francorchamps, and Fort William events, overcomes, by 125 points in the Cup's season-long format, Swiss Christoph Sauser—the champion of the Mont Sainte-Anne and Schladming contests; for the second consecutive season, the runner-up to Absalon in the world championships; and the 2005 Cup winner—to garner the Cup title; Spaniard José Antonio Hermida Ramos, the 2005 silver medallist, outpoints Belgian Bart Brentjens, the victor of the Curaçao tour stop, 960-800, to earn the bronze medal. Canadian Marie-Hélène Prémont, the silver medalist behind Norwegian Gunn-Rita Dahle Flesjå in the cross-country cycling discipline at the Games of the XXVIII Olympiad and two weeks thither the world championships bronze medalist behind Dahle Flesjå and Russian Irina Kalentieva, wins the fifth and sixth Cup events but is unable to surpass Dahle Flesjå, who completes the first, second, and third events in first place and finishes the final two events adrift only of Prémont and ultimately, as in 2005, earns the Cup title, this over Prémont and 2005 silver medallist German Sabine Spitz; Kalentieva finally finishes four points behind Spitz and German Nina Gõhl, the winner of the Fort William event.
  • After a season in which only one rider is a multiple event-winner, seven bikers finish within 300 points of first place and Englishman Steve Peat, the 2002 and 2004 Cup champion and thrice a world championship silver medallist, claims the Cup title in view of his winning the Willingen event and tallying top-three finishes at those of Vigo and Balneário Camboriú, finishing 38 points ahead of Australian Samuel Hill, the winner of the Fort William and the season-ending Schladming events, and, after having garnered the bronze medal at the 2004 world championships and the silver medal at the event's 2005 iteration, two weeks thither the world championships gold medallist; South African Greg Minnaar, a winner of three 2005 events and twice a 2006 runner-up, secures the bronze medal with a third-place finish at Schladming, outpointing by 91 Australian Nathan Rennie—the world championships bronze medallist—by 132 Briton Gee Atherton, and by 195 Finn Matti Lehikoinen, the Balneario winner. On the women's tour, Briton Tracy Moseley and Frenchwoman Sabrina Jonnier, each a 2005 multiple winner and ultimately the silver and gold medallists thereof respectively, claim five of the six events contested as each secures a podium finish at every tour stop, and Jonnier, twice a world championship runner-up and two weeks thither the winner over Moseley and Briton Racel Atherton of the world championship, finally outpoints Moseley, 1263-1205, to win her second straight Cup title; Atherton, the Balneario champion, finishes third overall, and she and Frenchwoman Emmeline Ragot, the 2005 world championships bronze medallist, are the sole riders to finish within 530 points of Moseley.
  • Each of the four-cross Cup titles is claimed by the rider to have captured the world championship two weeks thither and to have won four of the six tour events contested as Czech Michal Prokop—the winner of three races en route to a 2005 Cup runner-up finish, the 2003 world champion, and a fourth-place finisher at the Willingen and Schladming contests, the only events at which he does not win the gold medal—and American Jill Kintner—the winner of six races during, and the champion of, the 2005 Cup; the 2005 world champion and 2004 world silver medallist; and a fifth-place finisher at the Mont-Sainte-Anne—respectively earn the men's and women's Cup championships. Prokop outscores by 560 points Australian Jared Graves, who claims second place overall with his victory at Willingen and second-place showing at Balneario and by 60 points adrift of whom finish Czech Kamil Tatarkovic and Dutchman Roger Rinderknecht as the former, by virtue of his victory at the Schladming event, wins the bronze medal tiebreak over the latter, two weeks thither the world championship runner-up ahead of German Guido Tschugg; Kintner, who secures the Cup title prior to the open of the Schladming competition, finishes 430 points clear of Australian Katrina Miller, the Mont-Sainte-Anne winner and two-time world championships silver medallist, and 460 clear of American Tara Llanes—five times during the Cup season a top-three finisher and twice a world championships bronze medallist—behind whom Dutchwoman Anneke Beerten and Briton Fionn Griffiths—the Schladming champion in front of Llanes—complete the top five.
  • In the marathon discipline, in which Cup competition comprises just four races, as against the eight of 2005, the first year during which marathon races were held on the full Cup level, each of Colombian Leonardo Paez and Finn Pia Sundstedt wins two races—the former the season-opening Naoussa and Villabassa and the latter the Mont-Sainte-Anne and season-ending Val Thorens—and both win Cup titles, Paez by 190 points over Frenchman Thomas Dietsch–who earns just one podium but compiles four top-five finishes–and by 210 points over Italian Roland Staudier–who finishes 6.72 seconds behind New Zealander Kashi Leuchs to capture second place in the Val Thorens event; and Sundstedt by 150 over Swiss Esther Süss—the winner of the Villabassa contest and third-place finisher, behind Sundstedt and Swede Anna Enocsson, at the Mont-Sainte-Anne event—and by 230 over Italian Elena Giacomuzzi, who, with her Val Thorens silver medal, secures overall third sixty points ahead of Swiss Daniela Louis, who does not participate in the latter tour stop.

For more cycling news, see current sports events, the 2006 cycle racing category, and the Wikinews sports portal.