Lets get ready to rumble. Oprah versus Lance Armstrong is shaping up as the first big sporting battle of the year, writes Chris Rattue.

British cyclist Nicole Cooke, the 2008 Beijing Games road race gold medallist, took aim at drug cheats Lance Armstrong and Tyler Hamilton as she announced her retirement from the sport yesterday.

Julian Dean's final race as a professional was always going to be an emotional event for him - and for another rider, too.

He has been shot at, headbutted at high speed and his injuryography would read like a double-album of smash hits - but that hasn't stopped Julian Dean from having a blast these past 17 years.

It won't be a stylish honeymoon, but Kat and Steve Turner hope to be sweet upon the seat of a bicycle made for two - for 38,000 kilometres.

This will forever be remembered as the year in which a sporting legend was brought down. American Lance Armstrong, cancer survivor and multiple Tour de France winner, was crushed by an inquiry into doping.

A cyclist who was almost killed when she and her husband were hit by a vehicle on a rural Taupo road says she no longer has any anger towards the driver.

Who won and who lost with the new funding restructuring announced by High Performance Sport New Zealand today?