Another beautiful day at the 2012 Volkswagen Sea Otter Classic with road races, mountain bike events and product launches is now behind us.

Nicola Spirig of Switzerland outdueled Ainhoa Murua of Spain down the stretch to win her third ETU European Championship title Friday in Eilat, Israel.

Magura finally unveiled the long anticipated hydraulic road lever conversion option at Sea Otter Classic called simply MC1. Magura also finally showed off their RT6 TT brake.

The 2012 Volkswagen Sea Otter Classic got on the way today with quite a few competitive events and the typical monster sizes expo. We snooped around and captured a few impressions from the day.

Lesley Paterson played rugby with the boys and danced ballet as a kid, wrote, produced and acted in films and videos, won 70.3s, fought Lyme disease, modeled swimsuits and is the 2011 XTERRA World Champion.

I believe this suit every bit as fast as the TYR Hurricane. However, it’s better for the right swimmer, and I’m not him. I’m slightly long in the torso, and this company’s ideal morphology is average to leggy.

New Zealand names its Olympic triathlon team – Andrea Hewitt, Kris Gemmell, Bevan Docherty, Nicky Samuels, Ryan Sissons, and Kate McIlroy – Debbie Tanner and Clark Ellice are reserves.

We recently had the opportunity to visit Industry Nine Components in Asheville, NC and here is a gallery of images of the day in the life of that cool brand.

This is one hell of a shoe, created with passion for the sport, and it will definitely be my shoe for the coming season. Still, distribution and customer service will be this shoe company’s challenge.

Breakdowns in communication and planning have imperiled the Olympic dreams of several of USAT’s elite athletes. As USAT prepares to host a WTS race doubling as an Olympic Trials, few American athletes are set to compete.

This week we took a look at the Rotor 3D + cranks, the 3T Zefiro bars, a Tour de France periodic table poster, Coco Cafe coconut water, Converse Chuck Taylor shoes and the 2012 Volkswagen Sea Otter Classic.

Conrad Stoltz of South Africa outraced Josiah Middaugh of Vail, Colorado and Renata Bucher of Switzerland held off Lesley Paterson of Scotland in a photo finish to win the XTERRA West Championship at Las Vegas.

Rasmus Henning used a home court advantage of sorts and stormed to the win at the 2012 Half Challenge Fuerteventura in 3:57:16. Brit Emma-Kate Lidbury grabbed the women’s title in 4:32:41.

Erin Densham follows Mooloolaba win with spectacular victory at Sydney WTS, makes significant bid to make Australian Olympic team; Helen Jenkins 2nd, Andrea Hewitt 3rd.

Steffen Justus of Germany won his first ITU World Triathlon Series event with a victory at Sydney; Richard Murray of South Africa took a breakthrough 2nd and Laurent Vidal of France was 3rd.

Cane Creek is best known for their headsets, but this Fletcher, NC based company does much more than that. We visited Cane Creek for a day to see what they are about.

How a skinny kid from Maui became a Navy SEAL, a Vietnam hero, one of triathlon’s first wave and the founder of the SUPERFROG Triathlon – now approaching its 34th year.

If I was to pull a suit out for a leisurely open water workout with the posse, it’s very likely this is a suit I’d consider, because it’s so comfortable and easy to get on.

This TYR Hurricane 5 has pluses and minuses, and usually the pluses cause the minuses. I swam in this suit, juxtaposing it with a De Soto T1 Concept 5. Here are the results.

Veloflex is the silent killer, Schwalbe has the most potential for growth, and if youve never heard of FMB, they are the hot ticket when it comes to road cycling. Tire reviews Part 2.

The Lukas Verzbicas phenomenon is no one-off. It’s sky is raining elite prep runners who are triathletes first and runners second. The latest is track speedster Daniel Vertiz, and we had a few words with him.

Part-1 of a two-part overview of current tire offerings, clincher and tubular, for all major brands. Consider this an “as-of-early-2012” summary of what’s out there. We focus primarily on tires sold as race-intended.

This week we noticed Cytomax Energy Drops, the Trix Swim Bike Run onesies, the Pear Izumi P.R.O. Leader jersey, the Daniale IceCycle, a duel in the pool and a Norwegian winter triathlon.

In this installment of our Q&A column focusing on personal sports electronics, Ray gives his own thoughts on the new Suunto Ambit and whether it not it’s a good match for triathletes, the Garmin GTU-10 personal tracker, and choosing between the CycleOps PowerBeam Pro and the Tacx Bushido trainers.