A couple of quick mentions of some very important news happenings from today. Let's start locally first.

Car-Free Saturday's!!!
Mayor Bloomberg, together with a bunch of other figures including Lance Armstrong (currently last on the poll to the right), announced the creation of "Summer Streets", a car-free city route for health and recreation. Three Saturday's this August, the city will shut down one of the major north/south thoroughfares from the base of the Brooklyn Bridge to East 72nd Street. The route will be closed from 7am to 1pm so wake up early! This program is roughly modeled after similar ones in Bogotá, Colombia and Paris, France. Please read the Streetsblog article here as well as the official press release here. Can you say alternative to congestion pricing? I'd like to thank Elizabeth for reminding me to write about this today. Thanks!

Team Columbia!!!
Back to the world of the pro peloton, Team High Road announced that they had secured a main sponsor for the next 3 years and it's an American company! Columbia Sportswear have taken the gigantic leap into the sport, the same leap that USPS and Discovery did a few years ago as well as the same leap 7-11 and Motorola did even more years ago. For Bob Stapleton to be able to sign a big name American company is such a huge deal in light of the recent bad news in the sport related to doping. This certainly shows that faith has returned and we can begin to see much brighter pastures to come. The team will start sporting their new kits at the start of the Tour de France on July 5th! See the Velonews article here.

Team High Road dominated today's mass sprint to take the top 2 spots in the standings. Brit Mark Cavendish, in a very charitable way, gifted the win to his German teammate André Greipel by not overtaking his final lead out man. As a result, both Daniele Bennati (Liquigas) and Erik Zabel (Milram) missed out by following the wheel of the guy that actually slowed down in the last 50 meters. Genius!

It was piano, as they say in Italian, for the GC contenders as they took today off while looking forward to the final push in the Alps starting on Friday. Danilo Di Luca (Team LPR Brakes) did go back to his team car a few times though. Apparently, he wants to spend even more energy before the Alps. He's just too strong! Look for him to slip even further down the standings by Sunday.

Top 10 Results for Stage 17
1 André Greipel (Ger) Team High Road..................................3.27.05
2 Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team High Road
3 Daniele Bennati (Ita) Liquigas
4 Erik Zabel (Ger) Team Milram
5 Assan Bazayev (Kaz) Astana
6 Alexandre Usov (Blr) AG2R La Mondiale
7 Enrico Gasparotto (Ita) Barloworld
8 Bram De Groot (Ned) Rabobank
9 Alexander Serov (Rus) Tinkoff Credit Systems
10 Nikolay Trusov (Rus) Tinkoff Credit Systems

See the complete results here.

Mark Cavendish (High Road) won a relatively uneventful stage 13 in a sprint over yesterday's winner Daniele Bennati (Liquigas).

Two main news points today include Mr. Cocky, Danilo Di Luca (LPR Brakes) attempting a breakaway at km 26. Can we please start the real action? All of this showing off for the camera is annoying. Apparently, Di Luca hasn't learned to conserve energy ahead of this weekend's storm of mountain stages. He may be paying for all of this acting soon.

The second news point is a break in the peloton 5 km from the finish meant contenders Riccardo Riccò (Saunier Duval - Scott), Levi Leipheimer (Astana) and Denis Menchov (Rabobank) losing a few seconds, peanuts compared to this weekend's possible time gaps. Stay tuned!

Top 10 Results for Stage 13
1 Mark Cavendish (GBr) Team High Road..............................4.11.07
2 Daniele Bennati (Ita) Liquigas
3 Koldo Fernandez De Larrea (Spa) Euskaltel - Euskadi
4 Erik Zabel (Ger) Team Milram
5 Julian Dean (NZl) Slipstream Chipotle Presented By H30
6 Mirco Lorenzetto (Ita) Lampre
7 Alexandre Usov (Blr) AG2R La Mondiale
8 Nikolay Trusov (Rus) Tinkoff Credit Systems
9 Robbie McEwen (Aus) Silence - Lotto
10 Graeme Brown (Aus) Rabobank

See the complete results here.