After two years of speculation, a new eight-day Colorado stage race is set to roll out in August or September 2011.

According sources that spoke with VeloNews on the condition of anonymity, the event will debut next year as an eight-day UCI stage race, following a schedule similar to that of the now-defunct Tour of Missouri.

Congratulations to Adriano Malori, Italian rider on Lampre, for finishing the 2010 Tour de France – an accomplishment that 27 of the starters this year failed to achieve. He rode a total of 2,263 miles in 3 weeks at an average speed of 23.4 mph – and half the time he was riding faster than that! His pace over the course, finishing as Lanterne Rouge, was a mere 1.1 mph slower than the Tour winner. (tdflr)

The Big Picture has some great photographs from this year’s tour in two parts.

Everyone can attack when it is easy. You win races by attacking when it hurts, you attack when it is hard, when your legs are burning, when everyone else is breathing hard and you are suffering. That is when you attack.

Contador’s only valid rival in the race had stopped pedaling his bike and was futzing with his shifter when Contador attacked. I consider that attacking when it is easy.

I want to see that skinny bastard Schleck attack tomorrow like a demon. He will drop Contador, in anger. And it will hurt. He is gonna get those 8 seconds back and then some.

Andy is going to win this race.

(via)

What is it like to fall from space? According to Kittinger, who’s now working on the Stratos team, it’s surprisingly peaceful. With little air resistance, there’s almost no sensation of falling at high altitudes.

“There’s no sound, no movement,” Kittinger wrote in his autobiography. It’s like being suspended in the sky.

(via Matador)

The Red Sox have clinched the 2009 American League Wild Card! Boston returns to the playoffs for the sixth time in seven years and will face the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the best-of-five AL Division Series starting next week. The Red Sox, World Series champions in 2004 and 2007, advanced to the ALCS in 2008. This year’s team has won 91 regular-season games with five games remaining.

The king is dead. Long live the king.

“Strong live the king” may be more like it, as Livestrong Foundation founder, cancer survivor and seven time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong turned in a record time of 6 hours, 28 minutes and 50.9 seconds today to unseat six-time defending Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race champion Dave Wiens of Gunnison.

It was the first time Wiens failed to win the race he has owned since first entering in 2003

via The Denver Post

Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz were among the 104 major league players listed as having tested positive for performance-enhancing substances in 2003, lawyers with knowledge of the results told The New York Times.

The two were key members of the Boston Red Sox World Series championship teams in 2004 and 2007.

Steve Phillips and Colin Cowherd react to the New York Times’ report that Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz tested positive for performance-enhancing drugs in 2003.

The lawyers did not name the substances for which Ramirez and Ortiz tested positive, The Times reported.

Tribe 22, Yanks 4 in their second straight blow-out at their new $1.5 billion stadium.

“I think if anybody in any business had known where the economy was going to go, they would have done things differently,” Hal Steinbrenner, the Yankees’ general managing partner, told reporters before the team’s first exhibition game at the stadium. “There’s no doubt that small amounts of our tickets might be overpriced.”

After years of over-design and over-clutter, this redesign is a welcome change.

A. Yeah [little laugh]. Yeah. There are directors of French teams who have encouraged people to take to the streets [long, meaningful pause] … elbow to elbow. It’s very emotional out there, you know, very tense. I get emotional about certain things but you know not this one. If I could sit across this table where we’re sitting and talk to this French director, or your cycling friends, you know what I would say? Just fucking relax. Just relax. We’re talking about bike racing here. We’re not talking about your mother. We’re not talking about God. We’re not talking about war. We’re not talking about you losing every dime that you ever had in your life. We’re talking about bike-racing. So get some perspective. I understand you’ve got your feelings but we’ve got to move forward here. And we will. But I have to face that reality. And it’s a shame because I have such fond memories of the Tour. You know you look around this room and you see all these cups. There’s only space for six of them up here – but the seventh one is over there. I have a lot of fond memories and I just don’t want to deal with drama.

(via The Guardian)

The Boston Red Sox brushed aside the 100-win Angels in four games, dismissing their best-in-baseball regular season as last month’s news.

When it turns to October, no one dominates like Boston.

Jason Bay slid home with the game-winning run with two outs in the ninth inning Monday night as the defending World Series champions beat the Los Angeles Angels 3-2 in Game 4 of their first-round playoff series and advanced to play for the pennant for the fourth time in six seasons.

Some physicists have worked out what Usain Bolt’s time in the 100 meters in Beijing would have been if he hadn’t started celebrating before the finish line: 9.55 seconds. The original paper is here. I tried doing this the day after the race but even the HD footage wasn’t good enough to see the tick marks on the track and I didn’t want to mess around with all the angles. (via justin blanton)

(via Kottke)

Boston travels to Anaheim to play the Angels in the ALDS starting Wednesday. The last three times the Sox won the World Series, they beat the Angels in the first round. History is on our side.

Gerard McDonnell, 37, an Irish engineer climbing with a Dutch team, wrote on his blog when the start date was set: “Let luck and good fortune prevail!!! Fingers crossed.”

But luck did not hold. On the way up the last 2,000 feet, a Serbian climber fell to his death, and a Pakistani porter died trying to recover his body. And on the way back, a chunk of glacier splintered and came crashing down, sweeping at least four climbers on ropes to their deaths and leaving a handful of others trapped in the death zone above 26,000 feet — desperately cold, starved for oxygen and without ropes.

Over the next few hours and days, some of those still left on K2 battled their way to safety, some fell to their deaths and others were simply lost forever in the cold wastes of the mountain.

The designation falls somewhere between insult and accolade. Mr. Vansevenant, who after Stage 18 sits in 150th place, some 3 hours and 45 minutes behind Mr. Sastre, is indeed the worst-placed rider in the Tour de France. But, in turn, he has outlasted those who abandoned the Tour through illness, injury or simple exhaustion; those who were eliminated for failing to finish within each day’s time limit and are forced to withdraw; and those who were banned or withdrew for doping-related causes. From year to year, about 20% of the riders drop out. In other words, you can’t simply coast to last place; you have to work for it.

The term ‘Laterne Rouge’ is a French phrase, which translates to “red lantern.” The Journal reports the terminology is borrowed from railway jargon for the archaic practice of hanging a red light on the caboose of trains, which assured station operators that no cars had come uncoupled.

Three years ago yesterday, we walked through Wimbledon village, down the hill and queued — which is a tradition and serious business at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club — and watched the best tennis players in the world play in the first round of the world’s best tennis tournament.

BBC Sports has photos from opening day, and we’ve still got ours online from our opening day trip 3 years ago. This year’s tournament promises to be spectacular. Roger Federer is vying for his sixth straight, while Rafa Nadal — seeded #2 — is playing the best tennis of his life, and fresh off his victory on the clay in Paris.

But Pierce …

I mean …

We watched that guy grow up. We watched him become a man. We believed in him, we gave up on him, and we believed in him again. I don’t mean to sound like the old man in “Pretty Woman,” but part of me wanted to walk onto the court Tuesday night and just tell Pierce, “It’s hard for me to say this without sounding condescending, but I’m proud of you.” The guy gave us everything he had, altered his NBA tombstone, earned a place in the rafters and brought us a 17th title — just like he promised, by the way — and his sterling play in Games 4 and 5 ranks among the all-time greatest Celtic performances. We spend so much time complaining about sports and being disappointed that our favorite players never end up being who we wanted them to be, but in Pierce’s case, he became everything we wanted him to be. When he held up the Finals MVP trophy after the game and screamed to the crowd in delight, I don’t think I’ve ever been happier for a Boston athlete. How many guys stick with a crummy franchise for 10 solid years, then get a chance to lead that same team to a championship? Does that EVER happen in sports anymore?

From The Sports Guy.

Give the Lakers credit. They could have rolled over like dogs. They could have folded their designer tents, lost Game 5 at home, and spared themselves a cross-country trip. Instead, they stood tall in their own building, and their reward is the ultimate beat-down they’ll suffer in the New Garden tonight.

It’s a sure thing.

Like the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.

Read the whole column (or don’t) at boston.com.

Kobe. This one stunned me a little bit. Who doesn’t know Kobe Bryant right? I only know what I have heard, starting awhile back with the entire Shaq debacle. I don’t really have an opinion one way or the other on or about him other than to know that people feel he might be one of the 4-5 greatest players to ever lace it up. What I do know is what I got to see up close and hear, was unexpected. From the first tip until about 4 minutes left in the game I saw and heard this guy bitch at his teammates. Every TO he came to the bench pissed, and a few of them he went to other guys and yelled about something they weren’t doing, or something they did wrong. No dialog about “hey let’s go, let’s get after it�? or whatever. He spent the better part of 3.5 quarters pissed off and ranting at the non-execution or lack of, of his team. Then when they made what almost was a historic run in the 4th, during a TO, he got down on the floor and basically said ‘Let’s f’ing go, right now, right here�? or something to that affect. I am not making this observation in a good or bad way, I have no idea how the guys in the NBA play or do things like this, but I thought it was a fascinating bit of insight for me to watch someone in another sport who is in the position of a team leader and how he interacted with his team and teammates. Watching the other 11 guys, every time out it was high fives and “Hey nice work, let’s get after it�? or something to that affect. He walked off the floor, obligatory skin contact on the high five, and sat on the bench stone faced or pissed off, the whole game. Just weird to see another sport and how it all works. I would assume that’s his style and how he plays and what works for him because when I saw the leader board for scoring in the post season his name sat up top at 31+ a game, can’t argue with that. But as a fan I was watching the whole thing, Kobe, his teammates and then the after effects of conversations. He’d yell at someone, make a point, or send a message, turn and walk away, and more than once the person on the other end would roll eyes or give a ‘whatever dude’ look.

From Schill’s blog at 38pitches.com.

I’m still reeling from Boston’s 4-game sweep in the World Series. Two championships in four years. And I sorta miss all those short Frank TV commercials. Especially the Al Pacino. Only five months until spring training, then we can start singing Take Me Out to the Ball Game all over again.

It reminds me of an article ESPN’s Bill Simmons wrote a year ago on Boston’s Ultimate Question: Larry Legend vs. Big Papi. An instant classic.

As it turns out, Mark Millon’s camp business is thriving — 2,000 kids this summer alone — and along with his work with Warrior/Brine Lacrosse, Millon is retiring from Major League Lacrosse.

Millon is the all-time MLL leader in goals with 235 and points with 349. He is the fourth all-time MLL leader in assists with 110. He is a two-time offensive player of the year (2002 and 2003) as well as the MLL co-MVP in 2005. He won the MLL championship as a member of the Baltimore Bayhawks in 2002.

Millon was also a three-time All-America at UMass, with 155 career goals and 58 career assists in college, and a two-time gold-medal winner with the U.S. Team (1994, 1998).

Best of luck, Mark.

Lacrosse is the fastest-growing sport in America over the past 5 years. This news of Millon’s retirement comes only a week after Johns Hopkins University pulled out a victory against top-ranked Duke University in the NCAA Men’s Final in Baltimore.