AIGLE, Switzerland (AP) Lance Armstrong’s new team has been given permission to race in many of cycling’s top events for the next four years.

The International Cycling Union said Friday it has granted Team RadioShack a license to compete in ProTour races for the 2010-13 seasons. The team still needs an invitation to race in next year’s Tour de France and Giro d’Italia.

The season-long ProTour series includes one-day classics such as the Amstel Gold Race in the Netherlands and Belgium’s Tour of Flanders, plus stage races including the Dauphine Libere in France and Switzerland’s Tour de Romandie. It will feature 16 races in 2010.

Membership of the ProTour will likely give teams an advantage from 2011 in gaining entry to the grand tours and storied one-day races such as Milan-San Remo and Liege-Bastogne-Liege.

The UCI is in talks with race organizers to ensure starts will be given based on world ranking points collected in ProTour races.

Armstrong rode for the Kazakh-backed Astana team when he finished third in this year’s Tour at age 37, his first since retiring following his unprecedented seventh straight win in 2005.

The Texan announced during the Tour in July that he was leaving Astana to create his own team, which will be backed by American retailer RadioShack for two years.

The team will be managed by his long-term mentor Johan Bruyneel, who has been at the center of an acrimonious split with Astana.

UCI president Pat McQuaid said last month that the governing body’s license commission wanted more details of Bruyneel’s role before accepting RadioShack to the ProTour.

Teams must provide proof of secure finances, management structure and anti-doping program to gain a license.

ProTour teams currently each pay $179,000 per season toward operating costs of the UCI’s biological passport project, a blood profiling system that is its main weapon in the fight against doping.

Last chance to register online for Sunday’s MS Tappan Zee Bridge bike ride today at 5:00pm! There will be limited day of event registration. Click here for more information.

This ride starts at Kraft Foods in Tarrytown and heads out across the Tappan Zee Bridge. Riders have a choice of turning back at the Nyack Alliance Theological Seminary and riding about 15 miles and the TZ bridge twice. Or you can head north on Route 9W towards the Bear Mountain Bridge and complete a 60 mile loop back to Karft Foods.

One of the events new sponsors this year, New Leaf Brands of Orangeburg. Their founder and President, Eric Skae will ride the event with 36 other team members. They have done a great job of fundraising with over $ 8,000 raised so far.

“As a locally based business that is providing healthy beverages to local establishments as well as more widely recognized convenience stores such as 7-Eleven in the tri-state area, we saw the MS Bike Ride as a great opportunity to give back to our community and raise awareness of the fight against MS, Skae said. We intend to use this as an example of how we can work with the MS society on a national level and participate and sponsor additional events in the future.”

Looking forward to seeing everyone out there Sunday.

SAMUEL PETREQUIN,AP Sports Writer, PARIS, Defending champion Alberto Contador and Lance Armstrong will play out the next chapter of their Tour de France rivalry against the majestic backdrop of the Pyrenees.

Tour organizers unveiled the 2010 course on Wednesday, with Armstrong and Contador attending the ceremony in Paris. The race will start with a 5-mile prologue on July 3 in Rotterdam, Netherlands and a final stage on the Champs-Elysees wraps ups a 2,234-mile ride.

The pair worked together as Astana teammates during this year’s race, and the Spaniard won the Tour for a second time while Armstrong finished third.

The route of most prestigious three-week cycling race will recreate the first crossing of the Pyrenees 100 years ago with four stages in the daunting mountains that form the border between France and Spain.

Contador and Armstrong shook hands at the Palais des Congres during the ceremony but didn’t exchange a word.

“They’re already writing the script,” Armstrong said of the rivalry with Contador. “It’s good for cycling. I think he and I could do without it, but I think its good for the event and good for our sport. For sure the build up to the tour, from April to May to June and to the start, it’ll be really intense.”

The 38-year-old Armstrong left the Kazakh-funded Astana team to launch his own squad after last year’s race. The RadioShack team has yet to be granted a ProTour license.

Astana manager Johan Bruyneel, the man behind Armstrong’s seven Tour de France victories, confirmed he will join RadioShack this season. He said he was confident the UCI will deliver its license soon.

“I was never one to say I like this Tour, I dislike this tour,” Armstrong said. “It’s the Tour. The best man always wins and you always do the Alps and the Pyrenees and you always have some demanding time trials.”

In 1910, Tour riders climbed the four legendary Pyrenean passes — Peyresourde, Aspin, Tourmalet and Aubisque — a feat their modern heirs will repeat next July. The Tourmalet, one of the toughest climbs in cycling, will be scaled twice.

“With the celebration of the first crossing of the Pyrenees, it’s logical that the Pyrenees will be harder than the Alps on this Tour,” race director Christian Prudhomme said.

The course will include a total of 23 mountain passes in the Alps, Pyrenees, Jura and Massif Central, three more than this year.

In between, riders will go through Belgium and tackle six mountain stages including three hilltop finishes and four medium mountain stages. The only individual time trial will be the penultimate stage in the Bordeaux vineyards after organizers decided to scratch the team time trial from the program.

“We wanted to make sure that anything could happen anywhere,” said Prudhomme, who was disappointed by this year’s scenario, when all the favorites neutralized themselves for the biggest part of the race.

Tourmalet is a nearly 7,000-foot peak that has been climbed more times (73) than any other in Tour history. But only once has it hosted a stage finish — in 1974, when French rider Jean-Pierre Danguillaume beat a field that included Eddy Merckx to the top. That year was also the last time Tourmalet was climbed twice in one Tour.

Contador says he’s looking forward to the demanding route.

“The route is better than last year’s because there are more mountains,” Contador said. “And finishing with the Tourmalet is great for me.”

The last time the Tour sent the riders over all four of the Pyrenees’ most punishing ascents in that order was the 17th stage in 1969.

That epic race involved Merckx taking off on an 87-mile solo breakaway, finishing first at Mourenx after crossing the peaks of Peyresourde, Aspin, Tourmalet and Aubisque on his way to the first of his five yellow jerseys.

In 1910 when the race first ventured into the Pyrenees, the 10th stage was a 203-mile journey over the four peaks. French rider Octave Lapize won that stage and went on to win the race.

Lapize’s judgment of the course’s designers has become part of Tour legend: “You are assassins, yes, assassins.”

Nicknamed “The Circle of Death,” the combination of the four big mountain passes was also crossed in the 1926 Tour. Like in 1910 and 1969, the winner of that stage, Lucien Buysse, went on to win the Tour.

The first stages of next year’s race will pay tribute to two of the most prestigious classics — Liege-Bastogne-Liege and Paris-Roubaix — with riders going through seven cobblestone sectors over a total 8.2 miles in the third stage between Wanze, Belgium, and Arenberg Porte du Hainaut, France, on July 6.

It will be the first time since 2004 that riders will have to handle cobblestones, a difficult task that dashed Spanish rider Iban Mayo’s hopes of unsettling Armstrong that year.

“I think you have to plan your season according to what you see here, too,” Armstrong said. “I think even a race like the Tour of Flanders is interesting now because you don’t want your only cobblestone experience to be the day you show up here. You need to practice that so we’ll build the season around this, too.”

“We don’t put cobblestones for riders to fall, but to make a selection,” Prudhomme said. “There will be 11 kilometers of cobblestones in the last 30 kilometers. There will be some damage.”

“I think it will be much more open than last year because the TTT (team time trial) really eliminated some people last year and you won’t have that again,” Armstrong said Wednesday after next year’s route was announced. “Whereas this year you had three or four guys who could win the Tour, this year you’ll go into the tough sections with 10 guys.”

Bruyneel said this stage won’t be a threat in Armstrong’s quest to win an eighth Tour.

“He feels good on this kind of stage,” the Belgian said. “For him it’s not a problem at all.”

Following a new feud between the International cycling union and the French anti-doping agency, Prudhomme restated that the fight against doping was his priority.

“This is an absolute necessity,” Prudhomme said. “And authorities in charge of this fight need to work together in good terms.”

This month, the French anti-doping agency released a report concluding that teams including Astana had received advance notice of doping tests during the Tour, and that some blood and urine samples were not handled correctly by UCI inspectors. The UCI responded by saying it scrupulously respected the obligations imposed by the World Anti-Doping Code.

On Tuesday, French prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation to examine syringes found during this year’s race in a container given by organizers to all the teams to collect medical waste. Several newspapers reported that Astana was targeted by French authorities but Armstrong and Contador are not worried.

“I don’t have any answers because I don’t know anything about the case,” Armstrong told Eurosport. “I’m confident that our team has been racing clean. We just have to deal with it and get on with it.”

Contador didn’t appear to be worried either.

“In France, the fight against doping is total,” the Spaniard said. “Astana was the most scrutinized team during the Tour. I’ve heard that they were looking into our waste, but I’m absolutely relaxed.”

Asked to comment that case, Prudhomme said he knew nothing about it.

“We learned it from the press,” he said.

While there were no positive tests at this year’s Tour, authorities did seize drugs that the French anti-doping agency said raised questions. The drugs included treatments for diabetes, high blood pressure and convulsions suffered by manic-depressives.

The St. Paul Parish in Congers is hosting their first Bike-A-Thon at Rockland Lake State Park Saturday Oct. 17th. Rockland Bicycling Club member and friend Lloyd Castillo is chairing the event. He is looking for participants, sponsors and volunteers.

The proceeds will go towards the parish’s religious education programs. Knowing Lloyd, I’m sure this will be a FUN event!

Please visit www.stpaulcongers.net for more information or to register. You could also call the church, 845-268-4464.

Orangetown Police now believe that Karen Marx of Leonia NJ had a front derailleur problem causing her to fall Sunday Oct. 11. She and her boyfriend were riding north on route 9w near Oak Street. They now believe she was not hit by a car. Police tell us she was wearing a helmet.

She was taken to Nyack Hospital and then transferred to the trauma unit at New York Presbyterian Hospital-Weill Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan.

Please check tomorrow’s Journal News or LoHud.com for more information from reporter Steven Lieberman.

PARIS (AP) French prosecutors have reportedly launched a preliminary investigation against the Astana cycling team to examine syringes belonging to the squad during this year’s Tour de France.

L’Equipe newspaper reported Tuesday on its Web site that prosecutors opened the case after “the discovery of several suspicious syringes in a container given by organizers to all the teams in order to collect the medical waste.”

Tour de France winner Alberto Contador and third-place Lance Armstrong rode with Astana on this year’s Tour. The Spaniard is still under contract with the Kazakh-funded team while the Texan left to launch his own squad, RadioShack.

According to L’Equipe, the syringes will be analyzed by a forensic lab called Toxlab, which is responsible for determining their content.

Gilbert Pepin, a doctor at the lab, was not available for comment and did not immediately respond to an e-mail from The Associated Press.

While there were no positive tests at this year’s Tour, authorities did seize drugs that the French anti-doping agency’s scientific adviser said raised questions.

The drugs — which include treatments for diabetes, high blood pressure and convulsions suffered by manic-depressives — are not banned but are “incongruous” in top-level athletes, said Professor Michel Rieu last week.

Rieu declined to say which teams the substances had been taken from, saying that it was part of a judicial investigation.

Agence France is reporting that troubled and talented pro road racer Frank Vandenbroucke is dead at age 34. He has suffered from depression and had tried to kill himself two years ago.

He started as a pro in 1994 and won 51 races including the 1999 classic Liege-Bastogne-Liege. He has bounced from team to team over the past five years and struggled finding his form.

AP Photo of Vandenbroucke winning a stage n the Tour de Spain in 1999.

MEGAN K. SCOTT,Associated Press Writer / Bicycle technology doesn’t stand still.
Bike makers keep tinkering to give us a smoother, more convenient, more stylish ride: bikes long enough to carry another passenger and groceries. Bikes with batteries so you don’t have to break a sweat. Aerodynamic bikes with little wind resistance.

“In the bike world, there have always been a bunch of trends going on at once,” said Loren Mooney, editor-in-chief of Bicycling magazine. “It’s because a bike is such a multipurpose tool. It’s a toy. It’s a piece of exercise equipment. It’s a mode of transportation. And so really it’s very common to have many trends at once.”

Some bike trends on the horizon:

STYLISH UTILITY BIKE: The biggest trend is casual city riding, said Mooney, “where the person doesn’t look like a spandex-clad cyclist, but rather like a normal person. And his or her bike looks like a cool, often retro object of design and casual fun — maybe it even has a basket.”

Take the Globe Live, a lightweight utility bike that has “a lot of sophisticated technology” in a retro package, she said. Hence the $1,550 price tag. It has multiple speeds, a belt drive instead of a chain drive (which means no grease on your legs), and disc brakes. The retro features are the thin tubes, old European-style handlebars and the basket on the front.

“It’s definitely for someone who lives in an area where they take a lot of short trips; they want to haul some stuff, but someone who has excess cash,” said Mooney. “This is a style statement.”

FITNESS BIKES: An evolution from the hybrid bike — a cross between a road bike and a mountain bike, which was “too cumbersome for true fitness riding,” said Mooney. (Fitness bikes are sometimes referred to as flat-bar road bikes.)

Mooney said hybrids were too slow and too upright for riding on roads and recreational paths, and were not rugged enough for riding on dirt trails.

“It’s much faster than a mountain bike, so you still get a little bit of a speed thrill, but it’s not like driving a Ferrari,” she said.

A fitness bike is for someone who is getting into cycling to lose weight or get in shape but doesn’t want to be Lance Armstrong, she said. Maybe someone who wants to take her spinning class outside.

Popular models include the Jamis Allegro Series and the Specialized Sirrus.

PEDAL-ASSIST ELECTRIC BIKES: A bike with a boost. Pedal-assist bikes combine battery power with pedaling so you can ride farther and faster without getting as tired.

It’s an ideal bike for someone who rides for transportation, as opposed to fitness, and when the distance is far, the terrain difficult or the rider short on endurance.

Giant’s Twist Freedom DX, which costs about $2,000, has a maximum speed of 18 mph. It can travel up to 75 miles per charge and takes four hours to charge. You plug it into a regular wall outlet.

The harder you pedal the more the motor kicks in, as if sensing you are in a rush, said Andrew Juskaitis of manufacturer Giant Bicycle, Inc., in Newbury Park, Calif.

ECO DESIGN BIKES: Bike manufacturers are coming out with eco-friendly bikes. For example, Trek’s Belleville and Atwood models have grips on the handlebars, a saddle and a steel frame that all can be recycled. The bikes also come with front and rear lights that are generated by pedaling, not batteries, said Trek spokesman Sam Foos.

“It’s a more upright style with a wider saddle, so it’s more comfortable, to encourage people to use their bike more often,” he said.

FOLDING BIKES: These have been around for years but the technology is getting better. Traditional folding bikes, which have small wheels, were better for folding than riding, said David Montague, owner of Montague Bicycles in Cambridge, Mass. The company introduced SwissBike TX earlier this year, a full-size bike that folds in half.

“It really rides very nicely and you can throw it on a bus, or in the trunk of a cab,” said Montague. “When you get to your office, it fits underneath your desk. … The whole folding system takes about 10 seconds.”

XTRACYCLE: a kit that makes a bike 15 inches longer so you can carry a passenger, groceries, books. Some people use it to carry camping gear, said Nate Byerley, president of Xtracycle, in Oakland, Calif. He said he knows a home inspector who uses his Xtracycle to carry equipment including a 10-foot ladder.

“Competitive cycling has been traditionally dominated by men,” he said. “And what we’re finding is when you start offering a product that’s about day-to-day living and carrying groceries, you’re offering a product that speaks to moms and dads.”

Xtracycle also has complete bike models.

AERODYMANIC ROAD BIKES (High-End): Bikes are already very light, but they can be made faster with aerodynamics, said Mooney. On these road bikes, the down tube and seat tube are shaped to reduce drag. Examples include Ridley Noah, which the company claims is the fastest bike on the planet, Cervelo S3 and Felt A2.

The speed comes at a price. A complete Ridley Noah starts at around $5,000. (The frame is $3,450.)

“This is for someone who has a lot of money to spend, someone who is very serious about cycling who maybe wants to race, and is looking for every advantage,” said Mooney.

This report from Journal News staff writer Leslie Korngold is now on LoHud.com.

SCARSDALE – A 51-year-old bicyclist is in the hospital after being struck from behind, and police are seeking help in finding the driver who sped away.

“This is a serious matter,” Lt. Bryant Clark said Thursday, adding that it was despicable to leave the man lying on the ground.

The Mount Vernon resident was bicycling from Armonk back to Mount Vernon Monday when he was struck from behind at 7:14 p.m. on southbound White Plains Post Road – Route 22 – just south of Edgewood Avenue, Clark said.

There is commuter traffic at that time and someone must have seen something, Clark said.

The victim was riding a blue and white Trek bicycle when he was struck and thrown from the bike.

He sustained serious, but not life-threatening injuries. He is at Westchester Medical Center, Clark said.

Anyone who saw the accident or who has information about it is asked to call 914-722-1200 and ask for the investigations.

Please follow this link to read the stories comments and weigh-in on cyclists rights.

This from the police on Tuesday. They  have not heard from anyone who witnesses the incident.
The bicyclist was wearing a helmet, had on a blue and white cycling outfit and had a LED light on the bike. He did not have on any more specific

Coach Chris Carmichael has revealed that his number student, Lance Armstrong will compete in the 2011 Ironman World Championships in Kona, Hawaii. He made the announcement in a video on EveryManTri.com. He’s super psyched and I think he wants to do more than win his age group,” said Carmichael, and says that Armstrong will go there to win.
Lance started his competitive life as a teenager in triathlons.