jersey holders

Lance ARMSTRONG

Tom BOONEN

Erik DEKKER

Yaroslav POPOVYCH

THE RACE LIVE

The film of the stage

Armstrong: Happy In Yellow

“The TTT is so hard at the end. Everybody is on the limit,” said Lance Armstrong minutes after claiming the overall lead in the Tour de France again. “Everybody is a little bit cross-eyed and you come into the city and there are a lot of turns and there’s a whipping wind… if he’s going to make a mistake like that, I can certainly [understand] how it happened. But clearly it’s bad luck for him.”
The defending champion, stage winner and Tour leader was talking about the unfortunate end to Dave Zabriskie’s tenure in the yellow jersey. The CSC rider crashed heavily in the final two kilometers of the 67.5km team time trial. He lost a lot of skin as he slid along the bitumen in Blois and his team-mates knew they could not afford to wait for him. Zabriskie’s colleagues were in a winning position; they controlled the stage, leading at every time check, but lost the momentum at the crucial moment to allow Armstrong’s Discovery Channel squad to claim line honors.
“They were flying,” said Armstrong of the rival team. CSC led Discovery by 15 seconds at 25km, six second at 45km and just two seconds at 61km. They appeared to be in control. But then Zabriskie’s front wheel washed out from under him with one more turn to go in the stage. At the finish the Danish squad was just two seconds behind the American formation which has now won the past three team time trials at the Tour de France. “They were strong,” continued Armstrong with his appraisal of CSC and Zabriskie in particular.
“It took everything we had to catch up to them.
“He’s a great young rider and I expect he will be in yellow again in the future.”
For now, however, The Boss is back in control of the Tour de France. And the American influence at the French race is obvious. There are four riders from the United States in the top 10 of the general classification; two each from Discovery and CSC. These two teams dominate the top order with T-Mobile’s Alexandre Vinokourov the only ‘imposter’ in the top 10.
Not only did Discovery win the stage, they finished with all nine riders. CSC lost Giovanni Lombardi with 10km to go and Zabriskie in the final two kilometers to claim second place with seven riders. (Had the yellow jersey crashed in the final kilometer, however, he would have been awarded the same time as his team-mates and only a fraction of a second would have determined the race leader.)
T-Mobile came to the Tour touted as the most formidable opponent to Armstrong and his Discovery crew. But they finished with just six riders 30 seconds behind Armstrong et al. It’s further evidence that a seventh successive title is a realistic goal for the Texan.
Although there’s a lot of racing to go and the Discovery Channel team’s manager, Johan Bruyneel, is uncertain if he wants to defend the yellow jersey in the coming days, there’s no sign of any other rider challenging the defending champion for the title. His squad have established another benchmark: a new record average speed for a team time trial in the Tour – 57.324km/h! (The previous best effort was by Gewiss-Ballan 10 years ago.)
What happens during the rest of the first week is unlikely to alter the top of the general classification quite like today’s stage did. There are flat stages which are suited to the sprinters through to the second weekend and Bruyneel admits that his team needs to consider its options. “We have the yellow jersey and we’re going to think about (whether or not we defend it) tonight,” he said before Lance interjected at the post-stage press conference.
“I’m going to put a little pressure on him,” said the rider who clearly wants to stamp his authority on the final race of his career.
Bruyneel didn’t flinch and continued with his commentary. “We are here to try and win the Tour de France and we’re going to try and find the best strategy.
“I think the advantage of winning the team time trial is that we have a lot of guys in a good position so we can play a little bit with that. Maybe the team could keep the yellow jersey but it may be that it’s not Lance. It depends on the next few days, but I repeat our goal is to win in Paris. If that means that, in a certain situation, another guy takes the jersey then that’s the way it’s going to be.”
Between here and the climbs of the Alps, Armstrong believes he knows who will dominate the headlines. “Sometimes there is someone in the race who is clearly the fastest,” he said. “We’ve seen that in the last two days with Tom Boonen… and the thing about Tom is that he’s the most ambitious. I can see him lying in bed at night thinking, ‘I want to win six or seven stages of the Tour de France.’ And I think he could do that.”
Tomorrow we’ll find out if Armstrong’s forecast for the stage win is right. For the moment, however, it’s pretty clear that six victories haven’t dulled Lance’s ambitions.
He’s happy in yellow and it’s where he’s likely to end this race. His rivals either crash or crumble under the pressure and while Armstrong again admitted that he’s insecure, his grip on the jersey appears to be a solid one. So how does it feel to be back in charge? “It feels very good actually. It’s always nice to win this event and show that the team is strong.” So strong in fact that they can toy with who the leader might be.

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