Bicycle Racing

Cars began filtering into the parking lot before dawn and the chairlift roared to life not long after. Practice runs were completed and John Tomac stood perched beneath the banner atop Snow Summit ski resort's highest mountain, ready to make one of the day's first runs. Tomac, considered the one to watch, charged through the starting gate and quickly reached speeds of up to 40 m.p.h. as he began his descent down the 1.3 miles of steep, rugged terrain.

With apologies to Disneyland, Disney World and any other Disney enterprise, the Olympic Velodrome was the happiest place on Earth on Friday. And not because Kobe Bryant was in the crowd. The British men's track cycling pursuit team successfully defended its 2008 Olympic gold medal, soundly beating the silver medalists from Australia and the bronze-medal bikers from New Zealand. Britain's Victoria Pendleton won the women's keirin gold medal. She held off a late surge from China's Guo Shuang by no more than the width of her bike tire.

Greg LeMond remains the overall leader of the Tour Du Pont. Michel Zanoli of the Netherlands was ejected from the race Friday after he slugged Davis Phinney of Boulder, Colo., in the nose with the back of his fist about 400 yards from the finish. Zanoli, a 6-foot-6, 200-pound sprinting specialist, was fined $662 and stripped of all money and merchandise earned in the first eight stages.

Reporting from Santa Rosa, Calif. -- Near the finish line of the second stage of the Amgen Tour of California on Monday, there was three-time defending champion Levi Leipheimer shivering under an umbrella near his RadioShack team bus, rain dripping off the bill of his baseball cap. David Zabriskie, last year's race runner-up, was looking similarly miserable at his Garmin-Transitions trailer. He described himself as "having the shivers." Conditions were messy again at the Santa Rosa finish of race — same as in 2009, except that the event was in February and winter weather had been expected.

The 10th Race Across America begins at 9 a.m. today at the Irvine Holiday Inn when a field of 37 cyclists of varying ability and motivation start on a 2,930-mile trek to Savannah, Ga. The cyclists will ride as many as 300 miles a day, stopping to sleep for as little as two hours a night in hopes of reaching the finish line at Rousakis Plaza in Savannah in less than 11 days. This will be the second consecutive year that RAAM has used this southern route.

Alan McCormack of the Killian's Red Irish Team sprinted into the lead with 200 yards to go Sunday to win the San Francisco Fisherman's Wharf Criterium of the Coors International bicycle race. McCormack, 29, had an official time of 1 hour 30 minutes 22 seconds in the 45-lap, 39.6 mile event. Teun Van Vliet, 24, of the Holland Professional Team was second followed by American Roy Knickman, 21, of the Levi's Team.

It's a heck of a long way to go to make a point, but sending a message is among the reasons four Southern Californians will set out today from Irvine to bicycle 2,925 miles across the country. "The message should be," said 69-year-old Mary Brown of Spring Valley, "that people who are 60-plus can still perform at whatever level they make up their minds to do. Age doesn't have to make a difference."

The powerful 7-Eleven cycling team, which set out to make the United States a world-class force in bicycle racing, may inadvertently be undermining the Coors International, America's premier race. It is a simple case of overkill. The Southland Corp.'s convenience store chain corralled so many of this country's top riders that competition in this year's Coors 19-stage race has become a joke. There have been 15 stages since the 1,376-mile event started Aug. 5 in Hawaii.

Carol Curwood didn't like the odds. Mayor Gary L. Hausdorfer told her last week she could "roll the dice" and wait until March 6 for possible City Council approval of her March 11 charity bicycle race. Curwood declined, so the sixth annual Jack Latham Ride Against Cancer is off. "Five days before the event would have been too late to cancel if I didn't get an approval. I decided it was best to get out right away."

As a teen-ager growing up in the small town of Cambria, Calif., Shari Bowen was an outstanding distance runner. But by the time she was a high school senior, she had accrued so many injuries from running that she was forced to abandon the sport she had long enjoyed. Not wanting to give up athletics entirely, though, she began looking for an equally demanding sport she could participate in without being hindered by leg injuries.

After Frank McCourt wrapped up a spirited conversation with San Fernando Valley business leaders on Tuesday, he peeked inside the wrapping of his thank-you gift. He had a twinkle in his eye as he held the bottle of wine aloft. "With the off-season I've had, the fact that this has a cork is a good thing," he said. The acrimonious divorce between the Dodgers' owner and his estranged wife Jamie has dominated the off-season headlines. However, two weeks before the Dodgers open the defense of their National League West championship and two days after Frank McCourt's relaunch of the Los Angeles Marathon, he noted the question that has dogged him all winter did not follow him to the 26.2-mile race course.

Let's see. Lance Armstrong is still working through the discomfort of a broken collarbone. He is reportedly conducting negotiations to buy his financially struggling Astana team. He is expecting a fourth child in June. He is 37 and is making a cycling comeback, the success of which will be determined by many by how he does in two races -- the Giro d'Italia and the Tour de France.

Levi Leipheimer of Astana won his third consecutive Amgen Tour of California championship Sunday in a time of 31 hours 28 minutes 21 seconds after an emotional final stage where the crowd at the top of Palomar Mountain formed a rowdy tunnel of noisy exuberance and filled the streets of almost each of the 98.6 miles ridden between Rancho Bernardo and Escondido. Frank Schleck of Team Saxo Bank won Stage 8 in a time of 3 hours 48 minutes 39 seconds.

Lance Armstrong never came to the Tour Down Under to win it. He came to test his racing mettle and discover what rhythms in his body have changed after being away from road race competition for almost three years. Before Friday's fourth stage, one that rolled through South Australia's well-regarded wine country in the Barossa Valley, Armstrong said he harbored no hidden agenda, had no plan to bust out some hidden moves and jump to the front of the peloton.

Not everybody knows Lance Armstrong. Milton Checker, an 80-year-old sheep farmer whose 30 acres of land include Checker Hill, the highest climb of the first day of the Tour Down Under, said that until last week he had never heard of the cyclist who has set worldwide records and helped raise $250 million for cancer research.

Inside the San Diego Air and Space Technology Center wind tunnel, while a steady rain fell outside, Lance Armstrong was dripping wet and pedaling hard. "The seat is five inches too high," Armstrong said and bike technicians came running with screwdrivers and furrowed brows. Armstrong squinted to look at numbers that measure his pedal cadence, his oxygen intake, his calorie burning. He was here to re-perfect his bicycle form. His competitive urge? That is just fine.

Linda Brenneman of Laguna Beach took 17 months off from bicycle racing to start rearing her first child, Paul. She enjoyed staying home so much, she wasn't sure she wanted to return to serious competition. And when she did, she found out no one wanted her. As a result, she entered the season's first major American race, the five-day Redlands Classic, as an independent rider. Her status didn't matter.

As the last rider struggled up the steep grade to the finish line, the disappointment of the large crowd and, indeed, France itself, seemed to roll up the mountain with him. "He has lost the yellow jersey! Ronan Pensec has lost the yellow jersey!" a cacophony of broadcasters announced from loudspeakers and hundreds of hand-held radios that lined the route. Pensec, his weathered face pale as snow, dropped to the ground and slumped against the base of the winner's platform.

BEIJING -- The United States Olympic Committee and U.S. Cycling spent half a million dollars last year to construct a BMX supercross track in Chula Vista patterned after the Olympic venue in Lao-shan. And judging from the results on the first day of Olympic BMX racing today, it was money well spent because all four U.S. riders advanced to Thursday's semifinals. Santa Clarita rider Mike Day, who moved to Chula Vista eight months ago to train on the USOC track, put on the most dominating effort, posting the top time-trial mark of the day, then blowing away the field in each of his three quarterfinals to advance to the next round as the man to beat.

BEIJING -- BMX bicycle racing has taken Kyle Bennett all over the world, so it was nothing special when he climbed aboard a flight for China last week. But it was something special when he got here. "Once that plane landed and I got off and there's some camera crews," Bennett said, his voice trailing off. "It kind of hit me then. This is it." This, after all, is the Olympics, something Bennett and his three U.S. teammates have been pointing for since the sport was added to the Games schedule in the summer of 2003.