SRAM triathlete Jan Frodeno of Germany has won the gold medal in Beijing! It was a close finish, with Jan barely outkicking Canada’s Simon Whitfield. Yahoo Sports has some great photo coverage, and here’s an interview with Jan that we taped after his second place at the Hamburg World Cup in July, where he talks about his pre-Olympic form. Congratulations!!

Paul Damato gets to travel to a lot of the big races in the US, so he’s really familiar with a lot of our grassroots and elite amateur teams. Here are some of his photos from yesterday in Downers Grove. The full Flickr gallery is here.

Big crowds during the pro men’s race

Brooke on the podium. SRAM rider Kat Carroll from the Aaron’s team was 5th (in the red jersey)

SRAM riders from TIBCO, HIncapie-Barkley, and Team Kenda in a pre-race standoff with some non-SRAM riders

Our big pro team sponsorships get a lot of attention, but SRAM also supports dozens of amateur teams around the country, from the elite level to local grassroots clubs. Many of these teams are based in the Chicago area, our home town, so we decided to set up a space at the US National Criterium Championships for them to have a seat and a cold drink, grab some swag and spare parts, get service from SRAM Neutral Race Support, and check out the new 2009 Rival group. We had a …

The US National Criterium Championships are this weekend in Downer’s Grove, just outside of Chicago. A number of SRAM teams are in town for the race, including Kelly Benefits-Medifast and Team TIBCO. We followed both squads for throughout the day leading up to the Saturday evening warmup races before Sunday’s championship events. Here’s what both teams were doing at 11:15 this morning.

One of our first posts on The Road Diaries was about Alberto Contador’s custom pink Trek Madone 6.9 from the Giro d’Italia, as pictured here. But did John Bruyneel let him race on it? We got to take another look this week at Trek World in Madison, Wisconsin, and this video gives you the scoop.

The Tour of Utah started today and SRAM’s big time triathlete Chris Lieto is there with the California Giant Strawberry team - featuring newly crowned US amateur champion James Mattis. Here’s the first part of the interview that we taped with Chris earlier this week, where he talks about the benefits of incorporating road racing - stage races in particular - into his triathlon training. However, it’s probably not a surprise that his teammates aren’t incorporating triathlon training into their road racing by joining Chris for a post-stage run.

Levi Leipheimer and Alberto Contador took third and fourth in the Olympic time trial today, which of course begs the question: what if they had ridden the Tour?

Levi told VeloNews that “For the time trial I think it was an advantage to not have the tour in my legs.” That said, Cancellara took 1′09″ out of him and it’s hard to imagine Levi yielding any more time than that. But we’ll take the man at his word. Who are we to disagree?

The Road Diaries caught up with triathlete Chris Lieto at his house in Danville, California for a quick ride and an interview before he left do race the Tour of Utah with the California Giant Strawberry team, who also happen to ride SRAM. We’ll be posting the interview shortly, but in the meantime check out Chris’ crazy van/RV/monster truck that runs on biodiesel and solar power. This thing is nuts. Full photo set is here.

Watching the Olympics is always easy and actually watching athletes do something as well as it can be done is the most gratifying thing for me. Achievement and greatness are defined by the World’s best being the best. But, more than that, it’s hopefully what we are all striving for in some small way but, no matter how we compete, knowing that you are witnessing somebody define their life’s athletic effort in a few moments is a gift. I never try to forget that when I see their elation, what a release it must be.

Watching the Men’s Road Race coverage …