Cyclists

CHEVALINE, France - Three members of a family and a passing cyclist were killed, and a 4-year-old girl discovered hours later cowering in terror under the bodies of her dead mother and grandmother in their car along a picturesque Alpine roadway, French police said Thursday. The unknown assailant, who shot three of the victims in the head, also violently beat the girl's 7-year-old sister and left her for dead. Police, who had sealed off the crime scene, said they had no idea for eight hours that the 4-year-old was in the car. "There was nothing to lead us to believe there was another human being in the car. She was invisible and completely silent," local public prosecutor Eric Maillaud said at a packed news conference in the nearby town of Annecy.

With Lance Armstrong likely to be stripped of his seven Tour de France titles, the keepers of the record books face this question: Who should get them? The U.S. Anti-Doping Agency announced Friday that it was taking away the victories, though the endgame remained unclear because Armstrong's attorneys contend that only the sport's governing body, the International Cycling Union, has that authority. In any case, throwing out the record books would be far easier than to trying to rewrite them.

SURREY, England — Some of the women who sat upon a throne at Hampton Court Palace, a residence favored by King Henry VIII, met unhappy ends. Some of the cyclists who perched on the cushioned thrones set up Wednesday outside the stately building had happier fates: They got Olympic medals. Kristin Armstrong of Boise, Idaho, earned a place among cycling royalty by winning her second consecutive women's time trial gold medal, a remarkable feat considering she retired after the Beijing Games, had a son in 2010 and broke her collarbone in May as her comeback was gaining steam.

LONDON - OK, the long nightmare is over for Great Britain. Not winning a medal around here for a day or two could have easily turned into a very big deal. If three days had passed with no medals, it would have been time to assemble a Royal Commission to figure out what went wrong. Thankfully, it was Lizzie Armitstead to the rescue. The rain-drenched women's cycling road race came down to a furious sprint between Marianne Vos of the Netherlands and Armitstead on the Mall, and when it was over Great Britain had its first medal, a silver, of the London Olympics, ending a day and a half of doubt.

LONDON - Timmy Duggan, who is part of the five-man U.S. men's road cycling team that will compete Saturday in the London Olympics' first cycling event, had an epic description of what it takes to be a top-level men's road racer. "Cycling takes all these things in sport," Duggan said. "You have to have the endurance of a marathon racer or Siberian husky. For about five minutes of the race you have to have the strength of a cage fighter and you have to have the reactions of a fighter pilot.

Gold Chris Cleave Simon & Schuster: 336 pp., $27 There are undoubtedly fans of Chris Cleave who will pick up his new novel, "Gold," and enjoy it as much as they did his blockbuster bestseller, "Little Bee. " There is the possibility, however, that some will find it as much of a slow-moving soap opera as I did. Which is too bad, really, for a book about two Olympic cyclists. The two women, Zoe and Kathy, are friends and rivals (heavy on the rivals). Their lives are knit together onward from the age of 19, when they first face off competitively and are taken on by the same coach, Tom. The two women have markedly different personalities.

A federal judge Monday quickly dismissed a lawsuit filed by Lance Armstrong seeking to stop the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency from stripping the champion cyclist of his seven Tour de France titles. Armstrong's legal team said it intends to refile the lawsuit Tuesday. U.S. District Court Judge Sam Sparks in Austin, Texas, rejected the original filing for "failure to comply with the federal rules of civil procedure. " USADA has charged Armstrong as a central figure in a years-long doping conspiracy that fueled his run and covered up acts during his streak of Tour de France titles from 1999-2005.

Re "S.F.'s bike debate goes up a gear," June 16 What happened in San Francisco, where a bike commuter struck and killed a pedestrian, is a tragedy for both sides. I'm all for bicyclists sharing the streets with cars - obviously it's better for the environment - but bicyclists should be tested and licensed the way motorists are, and their bikes should carry license plates too. Maybe that would help curb the thoughtless element that blows through stop signs and red lights and blithely crosses streets mid-block.

SAN FRANCISCO — The bicyclist was zipping south on Castro Street at the end of his twice-weekly ride to the Marin Headlands, blowing through red lights and stop signs. But the Market Street crosswalk was filled with pedestrians, and Chris Bucchere, 36, allegedly was riding too fast to stop. So he aimed for the least populated spot and plowed on through. "In a nutshell, blammo," a blogger purporting to be Bucchere wrote that March day. The man he hit, Sutchi Hui, 71, died four days later.