Cycling Team

Reporting from Sacramento -- Mark Cavendish, the brash 24-year-old sprinter for the California-based HTC-Columbia cycling team, sat up in his bike, first as he predicted, after the first stage of the Amgen Tour of California on Sunday. Cavendish finished the 104.2-mile trip from Nevada City to Sacramento in 4 hours 4 minutes 6 seconds, just ahead of Juan Jose Haedo of Saxo Bank. The route encompassed rolling hills and tricky turns, and the closing circuit, three times around downtown Sacramento, produced two crashes within the final mile and a half.

Not only does Lance Armstrong intend to race again at the Tour de France in 2010, but he will do so on a new American-based team funded largely by RadioShack. From Annecy in France, where Armstrong moved from fourth place to third Thursday in the Tour de France, the 37-year-old, seven-time Tour winner announced the formation of a team that will be ready to compete next season.

Astana cycling team leader Johan Bruyneel is looking forward to reuniting with seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong. Bruyneel said Wednesday he already had begun discussions with close friend Armstrong, who's coming out of his three-year retirement to try to win an eighth Tour title in 2009. "He won't have a problem finding a team. But it's clear that the relationship we have means that I can't allow him to go to another team," Bruyneel told reporters at the Spanish Vuelta.

Re "The Tour -- no doping, no drama," Opinion, July 25 You'd think that Joel Stein, who claims to have "been following cycling since 1994," would have learned something. The withdrawl of Ricardo Ricco's team following his banishment for doping was the equivalent of a baseball team quitting in the middle of the season, not "Major League Baseball just calling it quits in July." Stein can't be watching this year's Tour de France if he considers it to be "unwatchable." It's not all about superhuman efforts on every mountain, but team strategy, drafting and counterattacks.

Jonathan Vaughters is a fairly sophisticated fellow -- the kind of guy who can drop phrases such as "interpretive parallel" into casual conversation. Perhaps that's to be expected from a Colorado kid who spent his 20s racing bicycles in Europe and now holds the haughty title of director sportif for a cycling team. But when asked to describe his team's anti-doping philosophy, Vaughters sees no need to complicate things. "I don't know," Vaughters said. "To not dope?" Given cycling's recent string of scandals, that qualifies as a revolutionary approach.

Editor's note: AP Sports Writer Tim Reynolds spent Stage 1 of the Tour de Georgia inside the Health Net/Maxxis team car, a rare up-close look at the peleton and the workers managing both the cyclists and the race. SAVANNAH, Ga. -- Mike Tamayo walks over to the car, extends his hand in greeting, then allows a wry smile to cross his face. "We'll be on two wheels only once or twice," he says. He was kidding. For a moment, given the reputation of how team-car drivers maneuver during races, his visitor wasn't sure.

Bob Stapleton is investing more than $10 million of his own money to sponsor a cycling team that was kicked out of the Tour de France last summer. He has named it Team High Road. "We want to be transparently drug-free," Stapleton said. "I still believe in this sport even when it's not easy." Team High Road is one of four teams racing in this year's Amgen Tour of California that have committed nearly $500,000 each for doping programs that go beyond those of the International Cycling Union (UCI).

Discovery Channel, the only U.S.-based professional level cycling team, will announce today that it has been unable to find a new sponsor and will disband at the end of the 2007 racing season, according to sources The team partially owned by seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong has been searching for a new sponsor since last spring when the cable television company announced it would not re-sign.

A month after its cycling team was rocked by a doping scandal, CSC announced Wednesday it would continue as sponsor. There had been speculation the El Segundo-based computer services company might end its six-year relationship with Team CSC after the cycling team's manager, Danish cycling star Bjarne Riis, acknowledged using illegal doping substances during his 1996 Tour de France victory. Instead, the company said it would focus on taking an active role in cleaning up the drug-plagued sport.

Professional cycling has been a part of Manhattan Beach for 45 years, but never have the sport and its participants been under such intense scrutiny for doping. One week has passed since Floyd Landis, winner of the Tour de France, was stripped of his title as cycling's greatest champion after two of his urine samples showed an unusually high ratio of testosterone. Also, two of the top riders, Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso, were banned from competing just days before the Tour for a similar offense.