Tour still wide open after two days in the Alps
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TIGNES, France  - The days when seven-times winner Lance Armstrong was sewing up the Tour de France in the prologue or the first mountain stage are over.
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Linus Gerdemann of Germany won Saturdayâs seventh stage of the Tour de France to take the overall leaderâs yellow jersey as the race entered the Alps.
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Regular visitors to the French Alps have probably heard of St Gervais, a small town tucked away to one side of Mont Blanc.
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Finland&#39;s Tanja Poutiainen was heading for her second win in two days after leading the opening leg of the first World Cup slalom of the season on Saturday.
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Stage 5: Chablis to Autun, 113.4 miles. Stage winner: Filippo Pozzato (Italy), Liquigas, in 4 hours 39 minutes 1 second.
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Now for the hard part. Having made it through fast and dangerous racing during the opening flat stages of the Tour de France, riders veer Wednesday into the Pyrenees for their first encounter with the high mountains.
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Alpe d'Huez, France, boasts 146 miles of ski slopes served by 87 lifts. No need to worry about crowds on the ski mountain.
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VAL D'ISERE, France  - As far as Hermann Maier is  concerned, the Alpine skiing season has yet to start.
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Fabian Cancellara says he knows his days in the Tour de France's yellow jersey are numbered as the race heads toward the Alps.
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Last Friday, 34-year-old Swiss tourist Konrad Hegner decided to visit Mount St. Helens, hoping to witness an eruption before heading to Mount Rainier and continuing on his travels. He has been here every day since &#151; even when clouds obscured the crater &#151; and is not sure when he'll leave.
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Coulthard spent two days with the Austrian-owned squad at Jerez last week, comfortably outpacing the two other leading candidates for the drive, Austrian Christian Klien and Italian Vitantonio Liuzzi.
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Two years after Lance Armstrong's retirement, his absence is still making almost as big an imprint as his presence did during his seven-year title run.
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Sport: Tour de France: Colombian Juan Mauricio Soler wins stage nine on a brutal day in the Alps.
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Julien Absalon, whose focus had been on Athens since failing to make France's Olympic team four years ago, pulls away in the second half of the mountain bike race and eases to victory in 2 hours, 15 minutes, 2 seconds.
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Across-country trip from Paris down to the sunny Pyrenees and the unruly Camargue region was a reminder that France does deserve its name on the map.
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With a single individual time trial on the penultimate day in St Etienne and fewer finishes at high altitude, July&#39;s Tour could be a little less demanding than in recent years and give the likes of Jan Ullrich and Joseba Beloki more recovery time.
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Sport: Tour de France: Belgian sprinter closes in on green jersey with second win of this year's race.