Velochimp: Astrochimp on Cycling

The Italian one day races in August are a chance for top Italians to show off their form to Franco Ballerini in order to get a spot on the coveted Azzurri squad for the World Championships road race. This year Stefano Garzelli has been one of the more dominat riders in these one day races. [...]

When you need to clean up some Aqua e Sapone is all you need. The very basic soap and water combo is actually the name of an Italian drug store chain. After recently signing up red hot Stefano Garzelli the red squad have picked up the new Amateur Grand Fondo dominator Francesco Del Ponte. The [...]

(Pic from Yahoo! News)
Third Grand Tour is a charm for Danilo DiLuca. After much promise for a great performance in the Giro and the Tour de France Danilo DiLuca came up short. Illness and bad form made DiLuca’s attempt to improve on his 2005 magical year impossible. Today “The Killer” took control in the Vuelta’s [...]

Erik Zabel has been on a bad streak of second place finishes for a long time. Today he finally broke out of the slump and showed flashes of classic Erik Zabel. The typicaly sprint finish stage saw THOR Hishovd finish second and keep his overall lead.
Zabel is obviously happy with the result:
“Today I am very [...]

(Brad (Turbo) Crosby Chasing, eventually finished second)
The Chris Thater Memorial Criterium is one of the oldest and most respected races in the Northeast. The race includes an NRC event that brings out some big names as you can see in an earlier report by Matt Howey. The event this year was spread over two days [...]

(pic from Flickr user das jan)
The T-Mobile overhaul continued this week with Mattais Kessler and Andreas Kloden joining old buddies Walter Goodefroot and Alexandre Vinokourov at Astana. It seems like a mini T-Mobile reunion at the Kazak based team.
Kloden’s move to Astana must mean that he does not have many hopes for a high overall [...]

In very wet conditions, competition is fierce on 6-corner Thater course
By Matt Howey

Hilton Clarke (Navigators) Salutes Victory at Chris Thater
Binghamton, NY (August 27, 2006) – In pouring rain and cooler temperatures, many of the United States’ brightest cycling stars stood at attention as the national anthem was played in anticipation for the start of the [...]

(Pic from Velonews)
With a few Grand Tours under his belt and a win in the Tour of Austria this year Tom Danielson is quietly building a good resume as a GC contender. While Discovery Channel were flailing away at the Tour de France wishing that Lance Armstrong never retired, Danielson was winning the Tour of [...]

First there was Ron Mexico, now there is Francesco Del Ponte. Frank Vandenbroucke was spotted racing in the amateur Italian circut under the name of Francesco Del Ponte and Italian version of his name. This was after he was sacked by the Unibet.com team for acting like Frank Vendenbroucke. The odd part is that on [...]

The embattled Astana and Phonak teams are cleared to ride the Vuelta as long as they do not include any staff or rides that are implicated in the Operation Puerto investigation. Previously ther were called by ProTour teams to exclude the controversial teams to avoid further controversy in the Vuelta.
Phonak will be riding its [...]