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Michael Killian of Boston USA is a regular at Interbike. He rides his 'Sideways' bicycle in front of the exposition centre, bamboozling passers-by. But Brit eggheads have taken to Killian. At last weekend's British Invention Show at Alexandra Palace, the Sideways bike was awarded silver for International Invention of the Year, Leisure Section.

Women's boxing has been KO'ed by the Executive Board of the International Olympic Association - it will not feature at the Beijing Olympics in 2008 - but no final decision has been made by the IOC over the UCI's "quota increase" request. Earlier this year the UCI decided to axe the men's kilo and the women's 500m time trial in favour of BMX. The kilo is as old as the Olympics, the women's 500m is a recent addition to the Games. The UCI decided to drop the women's 500m even though the IOC wants more women participants at the Olympics.

The brilliant bike blog is piling on readers faster than blogger Elden Nelson is piling on the pounds, which is good going considering his fetish for smearing peanut butter on Oreos. A start-up bag company has provided a bunch of prizes for his site but no mainstream US bike brands have so far latched on to Nelson's marketability...

The route for the 2006 Tour de France was revealed today, along with the Etape du Tour which finishes on L'Alpe d'Huez. The Tour will visit Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium and Spain, starting "in the thick of the final of the Football World Cup." ASO, owner of the Tour, said the war against doping - a "ceaseless combat" - would be ramped up. But the co-organisers went out of their way to be rude to the seven times winner of "their" Tour.

Set Google Alert to find news stories about 'bicycling' and your inbox will fill with US national and provincial newspapers gassing on about the merits of cycling versus the rising costs of filling SUVs with (highly-subsidised) petrol. But for General James L. Jones, the top-ranking US soldier in Europe, cycling isn't something he does to save the planet, it's a mind-clearer...