Despite a few anxious laps during the climactic Stage 7, wire-to-wire overall race leader Levi Leipheimer (Discovery Channel) found just enough energy to fend off a cheeky breakaway from Danny Pate (Slipstream) and win the 2007 Amgen Tour of California (TOC) . A seven-man group including Pate broke out from the main peloton very early in the race and worked a beautiful pace line to stretch the lead out to 2'50". Pate came into......

Levi Leipheimer successfully defended his gold leader's jersey yesterday in Stage 6 of the 2007 Amgen Tour of California (TOC), but it was Team CSC that commanded everybody's attention. Refusing to concede a single pedal stroke to Leipheimer or his Discovery Channel team, CSC kept the stage hopping with steady pressure on the front from veteran scrappers like Bobby Julich and Stuey O'Grady. For their efforts, CSC locked up the overall team classification and propelled their TOC sprint man Juan Jose "JJ" Haedo to his second stage victory of the tour.

Running 169.6 kilometers (km) from Santa Barbara to Santa Clarita across challenging terrain that included four King of the Mountain (KOM) category climbs, two points sprints, and three 5.6-km circuits to finish, Saturday's Stage 6 featured nonstop, granular action motivated by visions of personal glory and dedication to team and teammates.

Snoo-zer. Aside from the final five seconds of the race, the most exciting part of Thursday's Stage 4 in the 2007 Amgen Tour of California was the scenery. Relatively undistinguished topography and the desire of most riders to save themselves for tomorrow's critical individual time trial turned yesterday's stage into little more than a placeholder in the week-long tour.

It was a day of defensive rest, with everybody working extra hard to do the least amount necessary to maintain the status quo and playing it as safe as possible while doing so.

There was some nominal bad weather to keep the racers on their toes, a lukewarm breakaway led by Hilton Clarke of the Navigators Insurance team, a minimal response from Discovery Channel and the peloton, and a rather pedestrian, if not historic, sprint finish capped by Paolo "the Cricket" Bettini's (Quick Step-Innergetic) technically brilliant track throw to nip Gerald Coilek (T-Mobile) at the tape. Other than that, we loved it, thanks for asking.

For most of the day it looked like a total Cinderella story for unknown Jason Donald, but when the very last rider of the 2007 Tour of California (TOC) prologue crossed the finish line Sunday, it was Levi Leipheimer who had tears in his eyes.

A Credit Agricole rider suffers his way up the last 300 meters to the finish line atop Telegraph Hill. Photo from SF_Chris.

Following a ribbon-cutting ceremony and the national anthem, Jean-Marc Marino of team Credit Agricole rolled down the starting chute at 1:00 p.m. sharp and the prologue was on. In a time trial like Sunday's prologue, riders race alone and against the clock rather than against each other en masse. Following Marino, 144 more riders attacked the course at one-minute intervals for the next two hours.