Prologue

SAINT-BRIEUC, France -- Outsider Jacky Durand of France made the most of the early dry weather yesterday to win the prologue time trial of the Tour de France as the favorites saw their hopes washed away in a rainstorm.Tony Rominger of Switzerland and four-time defending champion Miguel Indurain of Spain were unwilling to take risks during the 4.5-mile time trial, and finished well down in the provisional standings.It was a day when staying upright on the wet, slippery track was vital.Britain's Chris Boardman went all out in the rain and it was costly, as he crashed into the railings on a slow corner.

It would take Shakespeare to concoct a tragedy such as the one that befell the Tour de France last year. Consider that its hero - Lance Armstrong - had left the stage in triumph after his seventh victory in 2005. Would a new star emerge to take his place? Then, the day before the race began, many of the contenders for the throne were not allowed to start because of doping allegations. Surely no one would care about this race now. Tour de France Prologue, 9:30 a.m. today TV: VS.

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Jelle Nijdam isn't silly enough to take his win in the prologue of the Tour Du Pont cycling event last night and make something grand out of it.Nijdam is, after all, a specialist in these kinds of races, the sprints that determine seeding for the first stage of the main event.In that sense, Nijdam, 29, is the Brady Anderson of the WordPerfect team, and it's his job to smooth the way for the team's heavy hitter, Raul Alcala of Monterrey, Mexico.So, even though Nijdam was the only participant in the 118-man field to ride the 2.98-mile course in less than 6 minutes (5:55:07)

Her Way The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton By Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr. Little, Brown and Co. / 448 pages / $29.99 Every biography of a presidential candidate implicitly poses the same question: Is the past prologue? Biographers comb through the contenders' lives trying to find signs of the president they might become in the decisions they've made and the experiences they've accumulated. They seek hints of the future by examining shards of the past. Any biographer undertaking that effort with Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic U.S. senator from New York and former first lady now seeking her party's presidential nomination, faces two unusually large hurdles.

LIEGE, Belgium - The first few miles of the Tour de France were dicey enough, requiring tight turns on narrow city streets. Then came wind gusts strong enough to alter a rider's trajectory, plus the occasional sprinkle to make the road surface slick. It was a day for gamblers who know what they're doing, and one of the great risk-takers in sports played a better hand than almost anyone. Lance Armstrong opened his bid for a record sixth Tour de France victory with a second-place finish in yesterday's 3.8-mile prologue, two seconds behind Switzerland's Fabian Cancellara.

PARIS - The urban course called for tight cornering and a fully-revved engine throughout: a track cyclist's skills, applied to cobblestones and asphalt. And so it was that on the 100th anniversary of the world's most famous road cycling race, a converted track rider carried off the first bouquet. Australian Bradley McGee powered through the four-mile Tour de France prologue time trial yesterday in 7 minutes, 26.16 seconds, just 0.08 of a second ahead of his friend David Millar of Great Britain.

The state Department of Housing and Community Development has offered three cottages at Springfield Hospital Center in Sykesville to the governor's Homesharing Program.Each of the vacant three-bedroom homes, the former residences of hospital staff members, could house three people."[Gov. William Donald Schaefer] asked several departments to see what facilities could be used in this program," said Michael Golden, public relations director for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. "We found these cottages."

Selling tickets is something Mary Conklin really enjoys. As box-office manager of Baltimore's Center Stage theater, Conklin uses her computer and sales skills every day.Having the opportunity to use these skills and work at the Summer Olympics is something Conklin never expected to do. But thanks to the Prologue computer ticketing system, she and seven other employees of the Center Stage Box Office will be in Atlanta next month helping to sell more than...

WILMINGTON, Del. -- With an opening victory that slavishly followed the form chart, Erik Breukink, the world's best cyclist at a time-trial distance, won yesterday's prologue in the 1991 Tour Du Pont.Breukink, 27, who competes for the PDM team of his native Netherlands, shot through the 3.1-mile tour of downtown Wilmington in 6 minutes, 20.82 seconds to earn the tour leader's yellow jersey he will wear in today's first stage of the road race.Starting and finishing in Wilmington's Rodney Square, Breukink took a risk at every turn and survived the disruptive bumpiness of the Monkey Hill cobblestone pavement midway through the course to win the second prologue of his six-year career.

WILMINGTON, Del. -- Raul Alcala of Mexico, a two-time Tour Du Pont champion, is back in the coveted yellow leader's jersey.Alcala won yesterday's 2.98-mile prologue on the rain-soaked streets of Wilmington in 6 minutes, 25.7 seconds."

The fiscal sky is supposed to be falling on the state of Maryland. But to John Willis, it's a case of been there, done that, with no serious damage to the sky or the ground. The former secretary of state in the Parris N. Glendening administration says that the current fiscal crisis -- the so-called structural deficit that might require a special session of the General Assembly -- is nothing more than one of the many financial bumps on the road that the state always faces. "For the last 40 years, all Maryland governors have done what they had to do," says Willis, a historian of Maryland politics who teaches at the University of Baltimore.

As a growing minority population spreads throughout the state, Maryland is trying to reconcile its racial past as it also confronts the present. In March, the General Assembly passed a resolution apologizing for the state's legacy of slave ownership. Yet in the past several months, Charles County has had to deal with racist graffiti and other hate crimes.

The purpose of today's seventh annual BikeJam is to celebrate cycling, but those competing are looking forward to more than the festivities. Held in Patterson Park, BikeJam's Kelly Cup race acts as Stage 1 in the biggest week in U.S. Cycling. For male professional cyclists, the Jam leads into next week's Wachovia Series races in Trenton, N.J., and Lancaster, Pa., which culminate in the pinnacle of the racing season, the Wachovia USPRO Championship on June 5. Ben Brooks, an Australian who rides for Jelly Belly-PoolGel, is using the Kelly Cup as a dress rehearsal for the upcoming road races.

Long-winded is a term that could justifiably be applied to George Bernard Shaw -- but not at Theatre Hopkins. That's because director Suzanne Pratt has put together an anthology of Shaw shorts, or as she's calling them, Shaw: Four Starters. The program consists of prologues and/or first acts of four Shaw plays, from the familiar (Arms and the Man) to the semi-obscure (Too True to Be Good). There's a degree of timeliness to Pratt's selections -- war, leadership and health care (even the efficacy of flu shots)

LIEGE, Belgium - The first few miles of the Tour de France were dicey enough, requiring tight turns on narrow city streets. Then came wind gusts strong enough to alter a rider's trajectory, plus the occasional sprinkle to make the road surface slick. It was a day for gamblers who know what they're doing, and one of the great risk-takers in sports played a better hand than almost anyone. Lance Armstrong opened his bid for a record sixth Tour de France victory with a second-place finish in yesterday's 3.8-mile prologue, two seconds behind Switzerland's Fabian Cancellara.

PARIS - The urban course called for tight cornering and a fully-revved engine throughout: a track cyclist's skills, applied to cobblestones and asphalt. And so it was that on the 100th anniversary of the world's most famous road cycling race, a converted track rider carried off the first bouquet. Australian Bradley McGee powered through the four-mile Tour de France prologue time trial yesterday in 7 minutes, 26.16 seconds, just 0.08 of a second ahead of his friend David Millar of Great Britain.

It would take Shakespeare to concoct a tragedy such as the one that befell the Tour de France last year. Consider that its hero - Lance Armstrong - had left the stage in triumph after his seventh victory in 2005. Would a new star emerge to take his place? Then, the day before the race began, many of the contenders for the throne were not allowed to start because of doping allegations. Surely no one would care about this race now. Tour de France Prologue, 9:30 a.m. today TV: VS.

The Tour Du Pont cycling race will be coming to the Baltimore area, after all.Race organizers and Howard County officials will hold a news conference today in Ellicott City, Tour spokesman Steve Brunner said. Columbia apparently will be the site for the finish of a 130-mile stage race May 11. The event, which appeared the previous two years under the Tour de Trump banner, was bumped out of Baltimore's Inner Harbor because of a conflict with this year's Preakness Festival celebrations.The 11-stage, 1,100-mile tour begins with a prologue in Wilmington, Del., May 9. The race to Columbia starts in Newark, Del.Among the cyclists expected to compete are three-time Tour de France champion Greg LeMond, 1989 Tour de Trump winner Dag-Otta Lauritzen of Norway and Olympic gold-medalist Viatcheslav Ekimov of the Soviet Union.

LUXEMBOURG - Defending Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong could have chosen to start yesterday's Tour de France prologue in the leader's yellow jersey. Like many athletes, however, he prefers clothing that's a little broken in. Unlike most athletes, Armstrong has enough talent to win even when he doesn't mean to. Armstrong rose in the saddle on the last grade, pumping hard but smoothly as he won the 4.3-mile time trial in 9 minutes, 8 seconds - two seconds better than France's Laurent Jalabert.

"I'm so damn scared." - e-mail from a reader MIAMI -It's been more than three weeks now. How are you doing with all this? Are you all right? If the answer is no, join the crowd. Medical experts are reporting terrorism-related increases in high blood pressure, heart ailments, chronic pain. We've become an anxious nation. People aren't flying. People aren't shopping. People aren't sleeping. People ARE buying gas masks. And through it all, our leaders - and our hearts - plead for us to just get back to normal.