Blimey, all kicking off in the Giro, Nibali attacking Chaves & Valverde for the overall, Kruijswijk struggling for the podium. Chaves' mum looking worried, as are the big Kazakh-looking blokes, don't know who they are. Billionaire sponsors, probably. Rigoberto Duran Duran giving his countryman a hand, probably against team orders.

Chaves in horrible trouble, looks like Nibali's race!

And how great is it to see Vinokourov celebrating there?

And it looks like Valverde is going to sneak second, so what a perfect race it has been.

I was going to post last night that Nibs could still win this... But I thought it was a bit too far-fetched...

Bloody hell.

Well, that was a ... erm ... remarkable recovery from his earlier form. I can never get any pleasure from an Astana win.

He would have struggled without having a team-mate up the road in the break for the last two days. They've animated the race, and the home crowd is happy.

Nibali took two and half minutes out of Chaves in three stages.

His coach said his was missing 20W of his top end power a few days ago. The team consulted a medical lab who work closely with Astana. In tests, they found no evidence of virus or infection.

Then, in the last two tough stages, he regained his strength to ride away from all GC riders still standing.

A triumph up there with Floyd Landis, in fact.

I'd wait for anti-doping to do their full checks before casting aspersions like that.

After Stage 16 I still felt Nibali would win in large part due to the strength of Astana. I'm not a fan of him or his team but to suggest impropriety because of his change in fortunes is misplaced IMO.

Firstly, its not as if Nibali has been that poor up to the last two stages - he was 4th on GC. Secondly, he's benefited more from the misfortunes of his rivals than from any dramatic change in form. Kruijswijk crashed, Chaves has bronchitis and Valverde struggled at high altitude.

If LottoNL-Jumbo had sent a stronger team (of climbers) to the Giro, Kruijswijk would have won IMO. Very impressed that he's still riding on, despite being injured.

Well done Nibali !

I agree that it was more a case of the others falling away rather than him doing anything spectacular........but then that's generally how grand tours are won

I like Nibali........there was an incident involving Nibali and Wiggins which I can't remember now but involved Nibali showing respect to Wiggins after they'd been built up as big rivals........I thought 'he seems like a good chap'

Yep. Good chap. Not his fault at all that his team car scooted him up the road in Spain last year. Or that Froome stupidly chose to have a mechanical at the precise moment his Nibs decided to attack in France.

He's just competitive.

So no live racing next week, the only thing on is three episodes of highlights of the Pearl Izumi Tour Series. Then on Saturday we have live evening racing with the women's and men's London Nocturne crit races, and on Sunday we start the prestigious TdF rehearsal race, the Dauphine Libere (although it's not called that anymore.)

Dowsett's new domestic 25m ITT record:
https://www.strava.com/activities/591659802

the BMX world championships are on the BBC website now......

currently showing the women's elite time trial........

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/live/cycling/36329948

I think they're showing highlights of earlier events because the live action has been weather - delayed

sounds like Chris Hoy doing the co-commentating

Live action about to get underway with the Men's quarter-finals

Oh dear.......the championships are coming from Medellin, Colombia

isn't that the drugs capital of the world?.......

Oh, that's a bit odd.....

I checked to see if the BMX was on red button on the TV and it was.........but the coverage is about an hour behind the website......

why on earth would they have an hour's delay on red button coverage ?......

Joris Daudet won his second elite men's world title; Olympic champion Mariana Pajón thrilled the home crowd to win her third elite women's world title. Worth noting the track in Medellin is named after her, which combined with her palmarès is impressive for someone who's not yet lived a full quarter-century!

Tough day for Liam Phillips, who along with a few other big names went out in the semis. Bethany Shriever had a bittersweet weekend - silver in the junior women's TT, then mistimed her start in the junior race final after winning all her races en-route. She's still a junior next year.

Team GB qualified 2 Olympic berths in men's BMX. The only outstanding cycling rankings yet to be determined are those for the women's RR & ITT on Wednesday.

I only watched 'live' for the men's and junior men's quarter finals on the website......but it's good stuff is BMX

They seem to have a race every 3 minutes or so and when one finished the riders are on the gate for the next one.......

It's fast and furious with lots of thrills and spills

I think I'd like to watch more of this.........

It gets a bit of coverage. BBC usually do the annual world Champs, and also the British leg of the World Cup, which is usually in Manchester. And the Olympics obviously. Otherwise there is streaming on the UCI YouTube page.

Sergio Henao has been cleared after his anomalous tests, will be back at Sky soon.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/20...ng-uci-cycling

Glad this was cleared up relatively quickly this time, he must be getting quite annoyed with the biological passport, if it happens again Sky should just carry on letting him race, hardly fair to keep pulling him.

Sky's zero tolerance largely accounted for the time he was sidelined (along with his serious leg injury) the first time round. The UCI got involved late on after Sky were satisfied by further investigation and reports.

I presume the threshold for action had been reset at a higher level for South American riders. Sky will only pull him from future races if he exceeds new limits.

Will the research that cleared him be published?