- Alberto Contador was coming down with something at the finish of the Tour, and states that he "was no longer the strongest rider on the team." We also learned today that the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) has opened an investigation against Contador related to his alleged involvement with the Operation Puerto affair. This overturns the UCI's earlier decision to acquit Contador of any involvement in the case.
- Floyd Landis will be riding in the Leadville Trail 100 Mountain Bike Race this weekend. Lance was scheduled to appear, but at this point seems to have backed out. Floyd will have to settle for racing against Lance's coach, who had been training to compete against him at the race.
- Another nail in the coffin for the Astana team: Craft, their apparel sponsor has cancelled their contract with the troubled team. This follows an announcement last week that their bicycle sponsor BMC dropped them. Vinokourov continues to claim innocence.
- The up and coming Slipstream Sports/Chipotle team has added Magnus Backstedt to their squad. He joins David Millar, Dave Zabriskie, Christian Vandevelde, Julian Dean and Danny Pate in what is looking to be a very strong team. The Slipstream team is being built around a very strong anti-doping environment. They are hoping for wild-card invitations to the 2008 Paris-Roubaix and Tour de France with the eventual goal of securing a Pro Tour license in 2009.
- German team T-Mobile heads into this weekend's Deustchland Tour unsure of continued sponsorship. There is a press conference scheduled for August 9th at which it is expected T-Mobile will announce whether they will keep supporting the team.
Stage 18 : Luis Perez Rodriguez goes out with a bang, closing out his 13 year career with a stage win in his home country. 4 riders dropped out before the start of Thursday's, the most notable of which was World Chamion Paolo Bettini. 24 riders tried to make an early escape today, but were captured by the peloton at 40km. Soon after, another group of 19 riders broke away. Even that group splintered, and we ended up with a group of 12, consisting of chasers and breakers at the 56km mark. Some of the notable names in the break were Menchov, Sastre, Evans, Sanchez and Mosquera. Chasing closely behind (38 seconds back at 76km) was a 10 man group containing Efimkin and others. At 93km, the second group was caught be the peloton, while the leaders extended their advantage to 2 minutes and 45 seconds. The leaders cooperated well over the final climb and kept their lead. With 13km to go, Rodriguez put the hammer down and quickly pulled out to a 26 second lead. He managed to keep ahead al...