- 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.
Several weeks ago, while out on a group ride, I had 3 flats within the space of less than 2 hours and 25 miles. I only had one tube on me, but was fortunate enough to be riding with some very generous people that not only shared tubes with me, but also helped me put them in. One of these individuals took a look at my wheels and theorized that my flats were likely being caused by tube to rim contact, as opposed to road debris or pinch flats. When I got home, I took off the wheels, removed the tires and tubes and took a good hard look at the rim strips. Sure enough, the Velox strips were a bit narrow, and in places, just barely covered the spoke holes. I knew that I had to find a solution. I was tired of buying new tubes every couple of weeks. After some research on the internet, I came across these Specialized brand rim strips . I made some phone calls to local bike shops to see if anyone carried them, with no luck. I ended up ordering them directly from Specialized. When they arri...