The inaugural USA Pro Cycling Challenge through the Rocky Mountains this month will feature the top three finishers from the Tour de France, an unprecedented feat for a US race.
Andy and Frank Schleck will join Tour winner Cadel Evans, an Australian who races for US-based BMC Racing Team, in the week-long Colorado race.
The Schlecks are among the best racers in the world. Andy, 26, is a three-time Tour runner-up, and Frank, 31, won last year’s Tour de Suisse.
The Luxembourg brothers are listed on the Team Leopard Trek roster that was submitted on Monday, making for “a world-class field for a first-year race,” race chief executive and co-chairman Shawn Hunter said.
This is the first time a US cycling race will feature the three reigning podium finishers from the Tour de France.
“For us, this is a great validation for our inaugural event to have the entire podium from the Tour,” Hunter said. “Given the roster commitments we’ve had this week, we believe this will be one of the most competitive fields to ever race on American soil.”
The field also will include the top US riders Tom Danielson and Levi Leipheimer, as well as Italian Ivan Basso, a two-time Giro d’Italia winner, when the 128-rider field is finalized today.
“We will end up seeing seven or eight of the top 10 finishers from the Tour,” Hunter said.
Danielson took ninth at the Tour while racing for team champion Garmin-Cervelo.
“Tom is considered by a lot of people in the sport to be the favorite because he lives here and these are his roads,” Hunter said.
Leipheimer is also a superb climber. He’s the reigning champion of the Lifetime Fitness Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race, the nation’s highest-altitude endurance test that has exploded in popularity since Lance Armstrong won it a few years ago.
One cyclist who isn’t expected to come to Colorado is three-time Tour de France winner Alberto Contador, who hurt a knee in the Tour last month and finished fifth. Race organizers haven’t heard from him.
“He certainly would add to the sizzle, but he may just take the month off and rest given the rough month he went through in France,” Hunter said.
Evans was a world champion mountain biker before focusing on road racing. He and the Schlecks finished in the top five in the hunt for the King of the Mountains jersey on the Tour, defining a skill that will come in handy in the diverse terrain of the Colorado race that ascends more than 3.2km in elevation.
The USA Pro Cycling Challenge is Colorado’s first on the pro--cycling circuit since the Coors International Bicycle Classic ended its run in 1988. It will feature the two highest climbs in competitive international cycling history on the same stage on the third day, something the International Cycling Union had to sign off on.
The race through Colorado’s front range and the picturesque Rocky Mountains begins with an ultra-fast prologue in which riders will descend from the Garden of the Gods at more than 80kph and into Colorado Springs. The race ends in downtown Denver on Aug. 28.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier