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Racing News - Thursday, September 13th

Vuelta de Espana - Stage 12:
Alessandro Pettachi gets another stage win, narrowly edging out Danielle Bennati at the final sprint.

Once again, no change at the top of the G.C. Denis Menchov holds on to the golden jersey, and leads Vladimmir Efimkin by a little more than 2 minutes. Despite Pettachi's two wins, he still sits in 135th place, almost an hour and a half off of the lead.

Tour of Missouri - Stage 2:
There was a wreck early in the stage when Dan Schmatz of the BMC team seemingly hit an armadillo and went down hard.

At the 50km, a breakaway group of 12 riders pulled away from the peloton, with at least one rider from every team represented. They only maintained a 30 second lead at first, but it grew to 7 minutes, and then 11 minutes.

George Hincapie took both of the intermediate sprints, but was closely challenged by Domonique Rollin each time.

With 85 km to go, the gap had opened up to 17 minutes. DFL-Cyclingnews-Litespeed made the initial moves to reel in the break, but the Discovery Channel team kept them in check.

On the final circuit the breakaway mainly stuck together, but their were attacks from Will Frischkorn, Friedman and CaƱada. Friedman had the lead 200m from the finish, but Hincapie attacked with 50m to go and took the stage.

Hincapie goes to the top of the G.C. with Frank Pipp and Domonique Rollin close on his heels. The amazing part is that he has over a 14 minute lead on the bulk of the remaining riders.

Tour of Poland - Stage 5:
Murilo Fischer of Liquigas wins today's stage. Danilo Napolitano has the overall lead, but Fischer is only a second behind.

Tour de l'Avenir - Stage 8:
Nicholas Hartmann of the French National Team wins today after a 129 km breakaway with Jose Herrada of Spain (who takes second place). The French National team is atop the team classification and Bauke Mollena of the Dutch National Team leads the G.C.

Other News:
  • Tom Boonen is still hurting after his crash in Stage 4 of the Vuelta
  • Lance Armstrong's "Tour of Courage" comes to Vancouver next week.
  • Stephen Cummings, another of Discovery Channel's little lost lambs, will be moving to the Barloworld team next year.
  • Slipstream/Chipotle is holding a contest in which you can design their jersey for next year.
  • Andreas Kloeden has dropped out of the German National Team for the Worlds', citing injury.
  • A spokesman for the Bonn, German prosecutor's office says that Jan Ullrich transferred money to Dr. Fuentes, the physician at the head of the Operation Puerto scandal, in early 2004.

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