This Week in Road Cycling: June 23 to June 29

Is it July yet?

Local Racing:

Week in Review:
-Tortilla Flats RR, Tuesday June 17: It was hot.
-Swiss Crit 6/20-6/21:
-Team Results: Niko Skievaski 11th (CAT 4/5), Philip Alan 22nd (CAT 4/5)

This Week:
-Tortilla Flats RR (see flyer below)
-Summit Center Stage Race: http://www.summitcenterclassic.com/

Races in July:
-Tortilla Flats RR (Series): Every (Except the second Tuesday of every month) Tuesday starting May 20 though August 12. http://www.azcycling.com/08cal/FLYERS/tft_08.pdf
-Picacho Time Trial Series: 7/6. 7/27: Picacho, AZ http://www.saguarovelo.org/infopicacho.htm

Pro Racing:

Most of the important information this week had very little to do with the actual racing.
-The two big American teams competing in Europe have each announced their new title sponsors. Slipstream is now Garmin, and High Road is now Columbia. Add that to the news about team CSC becoming team Saxo Bank next year, and it has been a good month for pro-cycling.
-I said it was a good month right? Maybe not. Velonews has an interesting article about the power struggle going on between the UCI and ASO.
-Oh yeah, Campagnolo had their official release of their redesigned gruppos this week. I think it looks hideously awesome, but not as cool as the new Dura-Ace.

But, I'm supposed to be writing about racing aren't I?

Tour de Suisse:
Stage 3: Robbie McEwen wins, and then insults the entire country (I love that they interviewed Cancellara about the whole thing too).
Stage 4: McEwen wins again and trys to make friends with Switzerland.
Stage 5: Markus Fothen hasn't done much since coming in second to Cunego for the maillot blanc in the 2006 Tour, but he won on Wednesday. Also, Frank Schleck fell off a cliff, climbed back up and started walking around like nothing had happened (video).
Stage 6: There were a lot of fireworks on stage 6, with Kim Kirchen taking the stage and the lead.
Stage 7: World TT Champion, Fabian Cancellara, won in his usual way -- A strong attack in the last few kilometers that no one is able to catch.
Stage 8: Roman Kreuziger(22 yrs. old) won the Mt. TT to take over the lead from Kirchen.
Stage 9: Cancellara wins again, in pretty much exactly the same way. Apparently Cancellara treated the previous days TT as nice easy day in the rainbow jersey. Also, he apparently lives in the town that stage nine finished in. Plus, I bet he was still a little pissed of at McEwen for insulting his country earlier in the week.

Route Du Sud:
Garmin-Chipotle won their first stage race this week, with 21 year old Dan Martin defending his lead from an old French guy (Christophe Moreau).

Ster Elektrotoer:
I'm only mentioning this race, because it is the first race that Tom Boonen has taken part in since his positive test for Cocaine. He won stage 4.

Only 13 more days until the Tour!

-Anthony