News for February 25, 1998

UCI Rankings as at February 2, 1998

Here are the official UCI Top 30. You can find full rankings at the UCI Page - www.uci.ch. In a short time I plan to start publishing the www.cyclingnews.com's rider of the month - I have a statistician who is busy preparing this. Coming soon. 

Now Last
 1   1 	JALABERT, Laurent FRA ONCE 30 		2,353
 2   2 	ULLRICH, Jan GER TEL 25 		1,610
 3   3 	BARTOLI, Michele ITA ASI 28 		1,430
 4   4 	ZUELLE, Alex SUI FES 30 		1,417
 5   5 	TONKOV, Pavel RUS MAP 29 		1,403
 6   6 	TCHMIL, Andrei UKR LOT 35 		1,236
 7   7 	ZABEL, Erik GER TEL 28 			1,134
 8   8 	CASAGRANDE, Francesco ITA COF 28 	1,102
 9   9 	MUSEEUW, Johan BEL MAP 33 		1,102
10  10	OLANO MANZANO, Abraham ESP BAN 28 	1,043
11  11	TAFI, Andrea ITA MAP 32			1,042.5
12  12	ESCARTIN COTI, Fernando ESP KEL 30	1,023
13  13	ZBERG, Beat SUI RAB 27			  977
14  14	VIRENQUE, Richard FRA FES 29		  954
15  15	EKIMOV, Vjatceslav RUS USP 32		  935
16  16	REBELLIN, Davide ITA PLT 27 		  928
17  17	DUFAUX, Laurent SUI FES 29		  858
18  18	BOARDMAN, Christopher GBR GAN 30	  830
19  19	SORENSEN, Rolf DEN RAB 33		  812
20  20	RIIS, Bjarne DEN TEL 34			  776
21  21	CIPOLLINI, Mario ITA SAE 31		  769
22  22	GOTTI, Ivan ITA SAE 29			  748
23  23	BORTOLAMI, Gianluca ITA FES 30		  739
24  25	ELLI, Alberto ITA CSO 34		  716
25  24	SVORADA, Jan CZE MAP 30			  716
26  26	PANTANI, Marco ITA MER 28		  665
27  27	GONTCHENKOV, Alexandre RUS BAL 28	  655
28  28	PETITO, Roberto ITA SAE 27		  652
29  29	BÖLTS, Udo GER TEL 32			  650
30  30	CAMENZIND, Oskar SUI MAP 27		  633

Meijs out of Omloop Het Volk

Dutch professional Raymond Meijs will probably not start in the Omloop Het Volk on Saturday. He has a chest infection. The rider from Valkenburg was injured in Spain where he rode to days of the Ruta del Sol verliet. On Thursday the Gerolsteiner rider went to a doctor for a blood test.

The 29-year old Meijs probably became infected during the Ronde van Mallorca. He said: "Frank Ackermans and Jörg Scherf slept in my roon and they are both also sick. Perhaps they gave it to me."

Last week he took three days off for rest and this week he may have to stop training altogether. Meijs has no nightmares about the possibility of missing the traditional opening race in Belgium. "Het Volk has never been very good to me. I will be aiming for the Tour of Murcia next week. That is a better preparation for the Walloon Classics in April where I plan to be in top form."

Patrick Eijk signs with Navigators

Patrick Eijk, the professional from Amsterdam, who has lived in the USA for 6 years has a contract to ride with the American Navigators team. Eijk is nearly 31. At the end of last year he became the first Dutchman to win a stage in the Tour of Peru.

Lance okay, but lacks strength

Lance Armstrong is so far happy with his first week back after 18 months layoff with cancer. He has said that while the racing was okay he lacks the strength for the long races. After two operations and lots of chemo, Lance has the all clear from the doctors. He made his formal comeback in the Ruta del Sol in Spain last week. He finished 15th.

He is reported as saying: "I noticed that I was becoming more and more tired as the race wore on. I will no longer try to push myself on stage races and to focus on one day races"

Lance will now be aiming for Paris-Nice which starts on March 8 and runs to March 15.

On motivation: "It will be harder to keep up my motivation than before. In the last 16 months I found that my life doesn't revolve around cycling and travelling and training. To come back to where I am now and prove that I can be competitive, and potentially very competitive in the future, I've done what I set out to do. That's not to say I'm going to retire on that, but if I stopped today I would be very content."