The picture associated with this story may not be entirely unexpected, but it really is a surprise. Lance Armstrong (Astana) won his first professional race since his 2009-season comeback began. It was not a ProTour race, though, but a smaller, US domestic race called the Nevada City Classic, in California.
The race is touted as one of the country's hardest 4-corner criterium races because of the very sharp climb in the middle of the circuit, a circuit that the men circled more than 30 times.
His main competition came from top domestic rider Ben Jacques-Maynes (Bissel) who came in second, while Armstrong's Astana teammate, Levi Leipheimer, finished third.
Other Tour contenders have been quite busy as well to get ready for the Tour de France, which starts on July 4th.
This past week concluded the Tour of Switzerland. It was used by many as round number two (with the one-week Dauphine-Libere being round one) of the final Tour preparations.
The nine-stage race took in two time trials and four mountain stages. Although it was a demanding course, none of the mountains were particularly severe.
Some had noted that time-trial powerhouse Fabian Cancellara (Saxobank) could easily triumph if he maintained contact on the relatively small mountains and was in top form after an early season plagued with injury and sickness.
That is exactly what he did. Back in his winning form, he demolished the competition on the opening prologue time-trial, an 8-kilometer course. He was so fast that he beat the nearest challenger, defending champion Roman Kreuziger (Liquigas) by 19 seconds on the very short course.
Cancellara defended his lead very well through the mountains. He conceded the yellow jersey to Tadej Valjavec (AG2R) for a few days but kept him within very close watch, and on the final stage, the 40-kilometer time trial, the Olympic TT champ showed everyone that he's the world's best time-triallist by storming to his second stage win, and won the overall race by nearly two minutes.
Meanwhile, Team Columbia-Highroad showed spectacular form in Switzerland. Members of its team won an amazing six stages with five different riders, showing incredible team depth. Mark Cavendish won two sprint stages, while teammates Michael Albassini, Kim Kirchen, Tony Martin, and Bernard Eisel all won stages of their own. The team as a whole will be the dominant force for stage wins in the upcoming Tour.
The stage races are now over as riders await the big one. This weekend, however, many countries are holding their elite national championship races. Some already have. Columbia-Highroad's Italian Marco Pinotti, in fact, won his fourth Italian time-trial championship this past weekend, a new record for the event.
Those who win either their national road or time-trial championships are granted the right to wear a custom team kit draped in the colours of their country in any design or fashion they see fit for the next 12 months until the next edition. Road champions wear their special jerseys for all road stages, while national TT champions wear their jerseys for all the time trials.
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