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No Tour de France this year for Glenwood Springs High School grad

Glenwood Springs, CO Colorado

GLENWOOD SPRINGS, Colorado – For a second straight year, Bobby Julich won’t be pedaling in the Tour de France.The Glenwood Springs High School alum, who finished third overall in cycling’s Super Bowl back in 1998, was left off the France-bound Team CSC-Saxo Bank roster released to the public Monday.”I think we could have taken two teams to the Tour de France, with so many good riders to choose from,” team manager Bjarne Riis said in a Team CSC press release. “We have taken the nine sharpest riders, and we hope we can meet our ambitions with them.”Making the nine-rider team were Fabian Cancellara, Carlos Sastre, Andy Schleck, Fränk Schleck, Nicki Sørensen, Jens Voigt, Stuart O’Grady, Kurt Asle Arvesen and Volodymir Gustov.Sastre, a five-time Tour top-10 finisher, will serve as captain of the CSC squad.Julich, 36 and in the twilight of a storied cycling career that began in 1992, entered 2008 with goals of making the U.S. Olympic road racing team and competing in what would have been his 10th Tour de France.A trip to the Aug. 8-24 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, remains a possibility for Julich, who’s hoping for a spot on the five-man, three-woman road race roster. U.S. cycling veterans Levi Leipheimer, who finished third in last year’s Tour de France, and George Hincapie, who won a stage in the 2005 Tour, are already assured spots on the Olympic team by way of automatic nomination criteria. Hincapie will turn 35 later this month, while Leipheimer, a Montana native, is 34.There is no Olympic team selection event, meaning things like rankings, tour performances and medal probability largely dictate who makes the roster. USA Cycling’s deadline to turn over its list of nominations to the U.S. Olympic Committee is July 1.If Julich, who’s on the fringe of a crowd of hopefuls, makes it to Beijing, it’d be his second consecutive Olympics appearance. He took an individual time trial bronze home from the 2004 Olympics in Greece.Most recently, Julich finished 50th overall at the nine-stage Tour de Suisse that ended on Sunday.Besides Julich’s third-place finish in the 1998 Tour and the Olympic bronze, one of his career highlights was being the first American to ever win the Paris-Nice race, which he did in 2005.


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