Berlin - The national anthem sounded shortly before midnight Tuesday and Erik Zabel got a bunch of flowers from his parents as he stepped off his bicycle for good.

Victory with Robert Bartko in the Berlin six-days marked the end of a 16-year career which saw him win a record six Tour de France sprint titles and make a tearful doping confession.

"I went to school 400 metres from here, started cycling at the local club and today it is over," the 38-year-old told the fans in the Berlin velodrome.

Adelaide, Australia - Lance Armstrong has a lot to be immodest about: champion triathlete in his schooldays, world road racing champion at 21, seven Tour de France victories before retiring in 2005 and, most amazing of all, surviving cancer surgery in 1996 that doctors thought would kill him.

Yet modesty was the great man's hallmark in his comeback appearance in Australia's Tour Down Under.

Out of yellow, the 37-year-old Texan was surprisingly mellow, surprisingly accessible, and surprisingly candid.

Melbourne/Adelaide  - Don Catlin was the man who revealed the secrets of THG and darbepoetin, a variant of EPO. However, at age 70, he suddenly became popular in recent weeks as the man chosen by cycling hero Lance Armstrong to certify that he is clean.

Three-and-a-half years after he retired - after winning his seventh consecutive Tour de France - the US cyclist, 37, returned to racing last week at the Tour Down Under.

Adelaide, Australia - Australia's Allan Davis fancied his chances of keeping the race leader's ochre jersey in Friday's 143-kilometre fourth stage of the Tour Down Under.

"If the chance arrives, I'll definitely have a crack, but the plan is to keep it simple," the 26-year-old said on the starting line. "Normal thing is a break will go with some guys who are lower on GC [general classification - or the leader board], and they'll contend the stage. Then we'll get ready for the big showdown tomorrow."

Sydney - Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong ended more than three years of retirement Sunday in a 51-kilometre race around the streets of the Australian south-coast city of Adelaide.

More than 100,000 spectators lined the barriers for the twilight 30-lap stand-alone criterion that serves as a curtain raiser for the start Tuesday of the six-day Tour Down Under.

The criterion will reacquaint Armstrong with the demands of staying upright in a bunch of 133 riders going helter-skelter round narrow streets.

"It wouldn't be my first choice," the 37-year-old Texan said of the mad-dash criterion. "The main thing is to stay out of trouble, stay up front and avoid the drama."

Hamburg  - A positive test by the Italian rider Leonardo Piepoli for CERA, the third generation of the blood booster EPO, at this year's Tour de France has been confirmed by a French laboratory.