News Digest 12-13.03.12

Chris Froome in Italian accident
Sanremonews.it is reporting that Chris Froome was involved in a training accident on Sunday morning at Latte di Ventimiglia when he collided with a 72-year-old man. Police are said to be investigating the incident and it is not yet clear whether the Kenyan-born British cyclist, who rides for Team Sky and was pulled from Paris-Nice days before the event took place due to a chest infection, was travelling too fast for the road or if the injured man failed to hear him coming and stepped into the road. The 72-year-old is understood to have suffered head and facial injuries,  and he is due to be transferred by helicopter to another hospital for tests. The cyclist, who escaped serious injury, reported the accident and summoned an ambulance.

Joaquim Rodríguez takes Tirreno-Adriatico Stage 6

Rodriguez deserved his win today
(image credit: Petit Brun CC BY-SA 2.0)

Riders dropped out of the race like first-year students from a physics class today; some with injuries, some with illnesses and many so that they can take a break before Saturday's Milan-San Remo monument. All in all, twenty-two either didn't start or quit during the stage.

Philippe Gilbert and Matthew Goss were two of the first to go with neither man starting this morning. They are, apparently, suffering the same virus with symptoms including high fever - up to 38.2C, say Gilbert's BMC team - along with sore throats and headaches. Cycle stage races, perhaps the most physically demanding of all sports, place unique demands upon riders and it's rare for an event to pass without at least a few riders contracting something and dropping out; but in this case, since both them are riding on Saturday, Cyclopunk refuses to believe a word of it unless they can provide us with letters from their mums. We're more inclined to believe Gilbert - his performance has had little of its usual sparkle during the race, but the Belgian rider says that he is not yet on form and plans to peak in time for the World Championships and Olympics. Milan-San Remo has long been a dream of his, too; but it seems one he's unlikely to realise this year.

Next up was Marcel Sieberg of Lotto-Belisol, who  abandoned after 14km complaining of problems with his right leg. He was joined by team mate Vincento Reynes.

Marcel Sieberg ‏ @MarcelSieberg
I had to stop after 14km today....right leg was again not good and I decide that its better to have a rest and recover for Sa San Remo.

Rabobank is down two riders - Lars Boom has decided to abandon as a precaution due to pain in his Achilles tendon and Juan Manuel Garate is suffering neck ache. Sky, meanwhile, is now represented by just three riders - Ian Stannard, Jeremy Hunt and Mathew Hayman -  and as such could theoretically be asked to step down from the race. Juan Antonio Flecha has broken his hand and team mate Edvald Boasson Hagen, winner of Stage 3, simply seems out of sorts ("There's nothing wrong with him, really," says team manager Rod Ellingworth, "he's just had some problems after a crash"); whereas Chris Sutton cited knee problems when he too abandoned. Mark Cavendish - whom we all know wants nothing less than victory at Milan-San Remo - didn't even bother coming up with an excuse as he shuffled off, Bernhard Eisel going with him. Minutes after the news broke, the Missile was back on Twitter:

Mark Cavendish ‏ @MarkCavendishWell, that's my #TirrenoAdriatico done & dusted. Haven't finished today's stage, but good sensations. Now to rest up for @milano_sanremo

A four-man break that had escaped after 161km were caught and put back in their places with 5km to go, leaving Katusha's Joaquim Rodríguez to take well-deserved glory after a courageous solo attack in the last kilometre, crossing the line a good few metres ahead of Liquigas' Vincenzo Nibali and Aqua&Sapone's Danilo di Luca who took second and third. RadioShack-NissanTrek's Chris Horner was right behind them, taking fourth place and recording a time sufficient for him to retain the General Classification leadership as the race moves on to tomorrow's concluding time trial when the remaining riders will compete to be the fastest on a 9.3km parcours. (Stage and General Classification standings here.)

Sky are the top-ranked team
in the world
(image credit: Jun CC BY-SA 2.0)

World Rankings put Sky in the lead
The UCI's World Rankings - for what they're worth - are customarily given a shake-up at this time of the year when we start to find out which teams spent the off-season with the drill sergeant and which ones holed up in the mess hall with the Christmas pudding, and 2012 is no different - after their superb victory at Paris-Nice, during which they put on a text-book display of team tactics every day, British-based Sky are for the very first time rated the best team in the world. The Basques Movistar are in second place, followed by RadioShack-NissanTrek in third, then the new Australian GreenEDGE take fourth despite what some fans have called a "lacklustre" start to the season.

Movistar's Alejandro Valverde, who made his return to competition this year after he was found guilty of doping, has a comfortable lead among the riders with 167 points compared to second place Bradley Wiggins of Sky. GreenEDGE's Simon Gerrans is third, followed by Vacansoliel's Lieuwe Westra - largely as a result of his whole-hearted attempts to keep Wiggins from victory at Paris-Nice. Among the nations, Valverde's homeland Spain is out in front with 205 points while Australia are hot on their heels in second place with 193. Great Britain is third with 112 - extremely impressive for a nation that supposedly has no great love for the sport and some way ahead of cycling-obsessed Netherlands (4th, 92 points), Belgium (5th, 91 points) and France (8th, 62 points).

Other News
The Halfords Tour Series - which features top-class professional cyclists battling it out on short city-centre courses around Great Britain - has been extended by one date. The newest edition will take place on the 25th of May in Aberystwyth. As the Olympic Torch visits the Welsh town two days later, the local authorities have declared the weekend to be a Cycling Festival. The races are televised and shown on ITV4 and some - yet to be confirmed - coincide with rounds of the women's Johnson HealthTech GP, which last year produced some of the tightest and most exciting racing seen in this country for many years. Dates and places (where announced) now look like this:

Round 1 - Tuesday 15th May Kirkcaldy, Fife
Round 2 - Thursday 17th May 
Round 3 - Tuesday 22nd May 
Round 4 - Thursday 24th May  
Round 5 - Friday 25th May Aberystwyth, Ceredigion
Round 6 - Tuesday 29th May 
Round 7 - Thursday 31st May 
Round 8 - Tuesday 5th June Torquay, Devon
Round 9 - Thursday 7th June Colchester, Essex
Round 10 - Tuesday 12th June Woking, Surrey
Round 11 - Thursday 14th June 

Tweets of the Day

WorldTour Verity ‏ @UCI_WorldTour
Are the riders making-out between stages!? What's up with everyone getting sick!? #procycling #ParisNice #TirrenoAdriatico

Richard Moore ‏ @richardmoore73
The riders who remain in Tirreno-Adriatico are racing towards Offida. All 3 of them.

Seneca J. Rose ‏ @sansenmag 
Hmm, perhaps Cipo is (over)promoting himself because he really has (ghostwritten) tell-all bio coming out soon...

Daily News Digest 11-12.03.2012

That'll do Nicely - Wiggo wins on the Col d’Éze

Wiggo will go to the Tour de France
with renewed confidence - and, with
a bit of luck, finish what Simpson
started all those years ago
(image credit: Petit Brun CC BY-SA 2.0)

Bradley Wiggins has become the first British rider to win Paris-Nice since Tom Simpson almost half a century ago in 1967, storming the final stage time trial after a race that has seen day after day of near-perfect team tactics from his Sky team. Lieuwe Westra was his closest rival and put in an admirable performance but couldn't get the better of the 31-year-old, taking 2" longer to finish the 9.6km uphill parcours and 8" down in the overall General Classification.

The normally rather deadpan Wiggins was nticeably jubilant after the race. "That was hard! That was extremely difficult," he told reporters. "I was climbing well, but I knew it was going to be close. I had to give everything I had to win, it means a lot to win such an historic race. To join Tom Simpson as the only other British rider is special. It’s an honor to have Paris-Nice on my palmares."

The GC top ten is as follows:

1. WIGGINS Bradley, Team Sky, 28'12:16"
2. WESTRA Lieuwe, Vacansoleil-DCM, +8"
3. VALVERDE Alejandro, Movistar, +1'10"
4. SPILAK Simon, Katusha, +1'24"
5. VAN GARDEREN Tejay, BMC, +1'54"
6. JEANNESSON Arnold, FDJ-Bigmat, +2'13"
7. MONFORT Maxime, Radioshack-NissanTrek, +2'21"
8. CHAVANEL Sylvain, Omega Pharma-QuickStep, +2'42"
9. KISERLOVSKI Robert, Astana, +3'30"
10. VICIOSO Angel, Katusha, +3'59"


Vacansoleil racereport (in English) 

Marianne Vos adds another trophy to
her cabinet, which must be groaning
under the combined weight.

Vos wins Novilon Cup
If you enjoy women's cycling - and if you don't, get yourself to a race ASAP and start doing so - you couldn't wish for a better weekend than this one with no fewer than three races going on at Drenthe. Chloe Hosking scored a spectacular victory in the first race, beating all the favourites and the current World Champion, then the incredible Marianne Vos won the first round of this year's Road World Cup when she lit the blue touch paper and achieved what looked like a respectable percentage of lightspeed in the second race. Today saw the Novilon EuregioCup - which meant more of the same top-class action and another victory for the 24-year-old Dutch phenomenon Vos, who seems intent on taking the title of Most Successful Cyclist in History from Eddy Merckx as soon as possible.


Marta Bastianelli of MCipollini-Giambenini-Gauss was second and Lizzie Armitstead of AA Drink-Leontien.nl was third. (More results availble from Wielerland.nl, video from RTV Drenthe and Podium Cafe's detailed report by Sarah Connolly.)


Tirreno-Adriatico: Nibali wins a stage, Hoogerland wins more fans
Over at the Tirreno-Adriatico, Liquisgas' Vincenzo Nibali took a Queen Stage victory with a spectacular loan ride over the snow-capped Pratti di Tivo, finishing the 196km parcours 15" faster than Astana's Roman Kreuziger - and also took a significant bite out of race leader Chris Horner's advantage. The ever-popular Johnny Hoogerland delighted fans by escaping the peloton with Steven Kruijswijk and Wout Poels, winning himself a well-deserved fourth place some 3" down on third place Horner, who recorded the same time as Kreuziger.

Cipo's return for real?
Unlikely as it sounds, it appears that Mario Cipollini really does want to return to competition and the story widely reported last week might not have been a publicity stunt aimed at drumming up a spot of free advertising for his bike range after all.

Comeback for Cipollini?
(image credit: Eric Houdas CC BY 3.0)

"For me going out on the bike and suffering is part of my system - I’m not the classic ex-cyclist who retires from racing and puts on a belly and who likes to have a glass of wine or whatever," the legendary sprinter, who turns 45 this month, told La Gazzetta dello Sport. "I still have a way of life and diet that means that I still have good sensations when I make an effort on the bike." Farnese Vini-Selle Italia team managers were unimpressed when the story first broke and claimed to be as surprised as everyone else. "I seem to understand that the management would not welcome this, so I’m putting myself on the market a bit," says the rider, before insisting that he's not just in need of money: "For four years in a row, I was courted by the producers of L’Isola dei Famosi [an Italian reality TV show along the lines of Big Brother]. I turned them down and I turned down hundreds of thousands of euros because of that. If I needed the money I would have gone and done that."

It's still not understood - least of all by Cipo himself - precisely how he'd get around the UCI's insistence that all returning athletes are subject to six months of standard anti-doping tests before they race. "At the moment there are email exchanges between my lawyer and their legal office to see what we have to do," he says, somewhat ambiguously.

Other News
Hundreds of cyclists, some dressed in their underwear but mostly nude, took to the streets of Peruvian capital Lima to highlight their government's failure to tackle issues relating to cyclists' safety. "I have gone naked because it's the way to raise awareness of our rights for example the bicycle lanes that are never free, there are always taxis parked, police sleeping," said one protestor as the protest brought an 11km stretch of the city' roads to a standstill. (BBC)


21-year-old Roy Jans of An Post-Sean Kelly won the Belgian Kattercoers - rather fittingly, as today is the anniversary of the start of the 1982 Paris-Nice, the first of Sean Kelly's record seven consecutive victories.

The Telegraph have details of races around Britain.

Article of the Day

"Should I stop and help the bundle of screaming girls on the ground? No way. That’s not what we do, never." - Marijn de Vries' Dwingeloo

Tweets

Cycling Weekly ‏ @cyclingweekly
British professional road wins now up to 16 in total for 2012 & it's only early March - cyclingweekly.co.uk/news/latest/53… #cycling

Monique Sullivan ‏ @Mo_Sullivan
Pan Am's report with some photos! moniquesullivan.wordpress.com/2012/03/11/2-g…"

Valverde wins Stage 3 at Paris-Nice

Alejandro Valverde made his return to cycling at the
Tour Down Under this year following a two-year
suspension for doping offences
(image credit: Thomas Ducroquet CC BY-SA 3.0)

Alejandro Valverde just pipped Simon Gerrans of GreenEDGE to the post in today's Stage 3 at Paris-Nice in a short final climb and chaotic bunch sprint that saw the first 62 riders record the same time. Both men crossed the line within a hairs' breadth of one another, resulting in Twitter posts declaring the win divided equally between them. His Movistar team put on a textbook display of tactics, positioning him in precisely the right position some way down the road and ensuring he'd have a good shot at the victory with half a kilometre to go.

Michael Morkov, Roy Curvers and Jimmy Engoulvent attacked early on in the 194km stage, forming a breakaway group that vacuumed up a healthy dose of points and built up a lead of more than 4'30" for a respectable portion of the race, but their time out in front began to look limited once the reached the first of the two Category 3 climbs and the peloton took the opportunity to reel them back in one by one.

The final part of the stage was characterised by attacks from unexpected quarters as first Sergey Lagutin tried his luck, getting some 12" ahead, then Lieuwe Westra had a go as soon as Lagutin had been caught. Meanwhile, stronger men were being dropped all over the place: Thor Hushovd went and Tom Boonen, winner of yesterday's stage, wasn't far behind him - which many rivals will see as an indication that the God of Thunder hasn't got the form he'll need if he's to achieve his stated aim at the Monuments this year.

Team Sky's Bradley Wiggins rode cleverly, avoiding the temptation to join in with further breakaway theatrics and instead kept working away just off the front of the pack while concentrating on maintaining a good time. It worked - the British rider holds onto the yellow jersey with a 6" lead in the overall General Classification. Team mate Geraint Thomas grabbed two points during the stage, giving him second place behind Engoulvent who took three.

Tomorrow, Stage 4 climbs two Cat 2 mountains - the Cotes du Fangas and Quotidiane. With Wiggo's apparently excellent early season form and current time trial prowess, British fans hoping for Tour de France success will be eager to see how he copes.

Stage 3 Top 10

1. VALVERDE Alejandro 31 MOVISTAR TEAM 4h 36' 19"  
2. GERRANS Simon 41 GREENEDGE CYCLING TEAM 4h 36' 19" + 00' 00"
3. MEERSMAN Gianni 197 LOTTO-BELISOL TEAM 4h 36' 19" + 00' 00"
4. SANCHEZ Luis-Leon 91 RABOBANK CYCLING TEAM 4h 36' 19" + 00' 00"
5. FLORENCIO Xavier 173 KATUSHA TEAM 4h 36' 19" + 00' 00"
6. CAPECCHI Eros 182 LIQUIGAS-CANNONDALE 4h 36' 19" + 00' 00"
7. MONFORT Maxime 15 RADIOSHACK-NISSAN 4h 36' 19" + 00' 00"
8. HIVERT Jonathan 204 SAUR-SOJASUN 4h 36' 19" + 00' 00"
9. GAVAZZI Francesco 83 ASTANA PRO TEAM 4h 36' 19" + 00' 00"
10. WESTRA Lieuwe 108 VACANSOLEIL-DCM 4h 36' 19" + 00' 00"


20. WIGGINS Bradley 21 SKY PROCYCLING 4h 36' 19" + 00' 00"
Full results

General Classification Top 10

1. WIGGINS Bradley 21 SKY PROCYCLING 9h 09' 51"  
2. LEIPHEIMER Levi 6 OMEGA PHARMA-QUICK STEP 9h 09' 57" + 00' 06"
3. VAN GARDEREN Tejay 167 BMC RACING TEAM 9h 10' 02" + 00' 11"
4. CHAVANEL Sylvain 3 OMEGA PHARMA-QUICK STEP 9h 10' 05" + 00' 14"
5. MONFORT Maxime 15 RADIOSHACK-NISSAN 9h 10' 09" + 00' 18"
6. VALVERDE Alejandro 31 MOVISTAR TEAM 9h 10' 11" + 00' 20"
7. WESTRA Lieuwe 108 VACANSOLEIL-DCM 9h 10' 13" + 00' 22"
8. ROJAS Jose Joaquin 38 MOVISTAR TEAM 9h 10' 20" + 00' 29"
9. SPILAK Simon 176 KATUSHA TEAM 9h 10' 24" + 00' 33"
10. KISERLOVSKI Robert 86 ASTANA PRO TEAM 9h 10' 27" + 00' 36"
Full results

Wiggins leads Paris-Nice GC

Having surprised the world with a stunning performance and second place at yesterday's rain-soaked opening time trial, British rider Bradley Wiggins has taken the yellow jersey of Paris-Nice after putting in a similarly impressive ride today.

(image credit: Haggisnl CC BY 2.0)

Wiggo broke away from the peloton with a select group of twelve riders halfway through the stage, a brave move for any General Classification contender that shows enormous confidence and a supreme ability to tailor tactics to a specific parcours. A number of other riders bridged the gap, swelling numbers to around 30 before a crash took out several men, but the peloton found itself outclassed and unable to reabsorb the group. By the time they reached the 10km to go marker, Wiggins' gang had an advantage of over 2' and the result began to look inevitable.

The 31-year-old, who was born in Belgium to British parents (his father Gary was also a professional cyclist) but moved to London with his mother following her divorce, was 11th over the line behind Bernard Hinault's top tip Tom Boonen while Sky team mate Geraint Thomas was 10th. However, he recorded the same time as the first 20 riders - giving him a 6" advantage over Levi Leipheimer in the General Classification.

Becoming Britain's first Tour de France winner has been Bradley's main aim for some years now. Last year he showed up at the start line of cycling's greatest event looking as though he was made of nothing but bone and sinew, ready to take on the likes of Contador and Schleck on the tough climbs in the Pyrenees and Alps, but his prospects were shattered when he suffered a broken collar bone during a mass pile-up in Stage 7. The Tour is still some months away, but if he can maintain the form he's currently on and with this year's race featuring plenty of time trial kilometres and fewer mountains it seems that 2012 offers his best chance to realise the dream that he and all British cycling fans share.

Daily News Roundup

Nick Nuyens has abandoned Paris-Nice. The 31-year-old Belgian rider turned up at the start of the second stage this morning, but decided not to go on as he is presumably suffering in the wake of a hard crash yesterday.

Pat McQuaid
(image credit: Oblongo CC BY-SA 2.0)

McQuaid harbours Contador doubts?
UCI boss Pat McQuaid has revealed that he's not convinced Spanish rider intentionally doped at the 2010 Tour de France - and even hints that he's not happy with the Spanish rider's punishment, telling the Spanish AS sports newspaper that "The Court of Arbitration for Sport in its ruling does not say that Contador is guilty or has doped, and states that a contaminated nutritional supplement is to blame." When asked if it would have been worse for Contador to be escape prosecution and continue riding, even with suspicions hanging over him, he says: "I do not know, honestly."

McQuaid also says that he believes the war against doping is being won. "Doping has not been what it was  for some years now. Fortunately, the situation has changed for the better, and there are less positive results." Asked if doping is cycling's worst enemy, he says "One of the worst, no doubt because it is a deeply rooted culture - as it is in other sports." However, he feels that the problem is now sufficiently under control for the UCI to start looking at combating other issues: "...another very serious problem that affects other disciplines to ours is that of illegal gambling. That sporting fraud is on the agenda."

Vos: "I have so much more power available"
You might think Marianne Vos would be content with where she is now, winning just abut everything she enters. You might even think she couldn't get any better. Marianne, who will be 25 this May, loves her sport so much that she believes she can get even better: she explained in Rabo Wielermagazine that one of the best things about riding with the new Rabobank Women's Team is the improved training program which gives her opportunity to improve specific areas. At present, she's working on her time trial performance in preparation for the Olympics. "It is, of course, a test on a stationary bike in an enclosed space and you can't compare it to a real race," says the Dutch rider. "However, it gives me confidence that I have so much more power available."

Other news
Cofidis rider Florent Barle broke his collar bone at the Three Days of West Flanders - a new misfortune for the 26-year-old Frenchmanwho won the 2010 Tour of the Pyrenees but went without victory in 2011.

Canadian Heather Moyse - who has already had successful careers as a rugby player and in bobsleigh - proved her recent decision to begin a third career as a cyclist was a wise one yesterday when she was the fourth fastest rider in the 500m TT at the PanAmerican Championships in Argentina, recording a time of 36.207".

Bernard Hinault is tipping Tom Boonen for success in today's second stage at Paris-Nice. "Boonen has made an impression," says the five-time Tour de France winner. "He was very fast, even on the climbs. He is aiming, of course, for the Spring Classics, but with the form he has he can make use of any opportunity. If an opportunity arises he won't miss it, because he is a winner." Boonen is paying respects to LeopardTrek's Wouter Weylandt with a "108 per sempre" badge on his bike. 108 was Weylandt's race number when he died at the Giro d'Italia last year.

Three-time track cycling World Champion Gary Neiwand appeared before Melbourne Magistrates today, where the 45-year-old Australian faces two counts of deliberately exposing his genitals to women whilst masturbating in his car. Magistrates received a medical report stating that Neiwand is responding well to treatment for psychological problems caused by heavy drinking and now has his drinking under control, but said that they believe the rider needs the threat of imprisonment hanging over him to encourage him to continue treatment. According to the Herald Sun newspaper, "In an extraordinary outburst outside court, Neiwand’s lawyer threatened to knock a TV camerman’s “head off” as the former cycling great was bundled into an awaiting car."

He's OK, folks -
Alex Dowsett
(image credit: Adambro CC BY-SA 3.0)

British Time Trial Champion Alex Dowsett broke his elbow in a crash during the final stage at the Three Days of West Flanders on Sunday. Team management had initially believed the rider had not broken any bones after another rider crashed in front of him, but subsequent medical checks confirmed otherwise. The 23-year-old Team Sky rider preferred to be treated back home, as he revealed when he passed on the news via his Twitter account...

@alexdowsett
Broke my elbow yesterday. Drove myself back from Belgium & checked into A&E. Operation today at Royal London Hospital. pic.twitter.com/5OHChAbO

Weekend News Roundup

British riders have a good weekend
23-year-old British star Lizzie Armitstead, one of several riders to have joined AA Drink-Leontien.nl following the demise of the Garmin-Cervelo Women's Team, scored a major victory with first place at the Omloop het van Hageland today after breaking away from the peloton in the latter part of the race accompanied by Hitec Products-Mistral Home's Elisa Longo-Borghini and Rabobank's Pauline Ferrand-Prevot. In the final sprint, she demonstrated the sheer power that has seen her as respected in the women's peloton as Cavendish is in the men's, beating Ferrabd-Prevot by 2" and Longo-Borghini by 4". Lucy Martin, also riding with AA Drink, took ninth place, Emma Silversides of Sengers was the next best Brit in 47th.

Russell Downing of Endura Racing won the Grand Prix de la Ville de Lillers Souvenir Bruno Comini, Douglas Dewey was third at Lierde and Danny McLay of Lotto-Ridley Espoirs was 10th at Brussels-Zepperen. Meanwhile, at the Vuelta a Murcia Jonathan Tiernan-Locke finished in second place in the General Classification, an excellent result for the 27-year-old among a top ten that included names as illustrious as Samuel Sanchez, Robert Gesink and Johnny Hoogerland. Team mate Eric Rowsell - younger brother of Matrix-Prendas' legendary Joanna, who wowed the world at the the recent UCI Track Cup - was 29th.

Bradley Wiggins surprised many
at Paris-Nice
(image credit: Petit Brun CC BY-SA 2.0)

At the opening ITT stage of Paris-Nice, Bradley Wiggins of Team Sky stunned fans and opponents alike with an unexpected second place finish on a dangerously wet course, just 1" down on Vacansoleil-DCM's Gustav Erik Larsson. Omega Pharma-Quickstep's Tony Martin was most people's favourite but appeared distinctly off-colour and could only manage 28th, a disappointing result for a rider who can put the wind up Fabian Cancellara - winner of yesterday's Strade Bianche, which he dedicated to a recently-deceased uncle - in a time trial.  Looking positively muscular when compared to the cadavre that rolled up to the start line on the Passage du Gois last year, it's been noted that if Wiggo can keep this sort of form over the summer then 2012 - when the Tour is less mountainous and places more emphasis of time trials than it has done in many years - might just prove to be his year.

It wasn't all great from a British point of view, however: Emma Trott, riding with Dolmans-Boels this season, crashed and broke her collar bone. The 22-year-old announced her misfortune via Twitter...

@EmmaTrott1989
Shit happens, 2nd race and I end in hospital with broken collarbone! Fantastic!

Best wishes for a very speedy recovery, Emma.

Other News

Welcome back, Emma Johansson!
(image credit: Eriohm CC BY 3.0)

Having already enjoyed a successful career in rugby (she played with the national women's team) and bobsleigh (she won an Olympic gold medal), Canada's Heather Moyse decided it was time to go looking for another sport - and chose track cycling. This weekend, she represented her nation at the PanAmerican Championships in Argentina, where she competed in the 500m TT and Sprint. (Vancouver Sun)

Emma Johansson made her return to racing at the Omloop het van Hageland, having recovered from twin broken collar bones sustained in a training ride accident back in January. She finished in 27th place - no surprise to the Swedish rider, who seems happy just to be back, but expect a rapid return to race-winning form.

Nick Nuyens looked like he was the latest to break bones at Paris-Nice, crashing hard in the opening time trial. An x-ray revealed that he hadn't broken anything, and despite pain - "I feel weak!" he complains - the 31-year-old Belgian hopes to start tomorrow's stage.

Fabian Cancellara wins the Strade-Bianche, Saturday the 3rd of March