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Armstrong Survives Tough First Week
By Chris Carmichael
Jul 12, 2004, 06:54
Armstrong’s coach comments on the first week of the 2004 Tour de France...
After Monday's rest day Armstong and the rest of the US Postal team will slowly start to face the real challenges of this year's Tour de France. Will Armstrong take his 6th Tour win -- or are the dark clouds signs of things to come? Stay tuned to Roadcycling.com to find out! Photo copyright Fotoreporter Sirotti.
After the first week of the Tour de France, I half expect commentators to say, “The 2004 Tour de France, brought to you by BAND-AID®.”
At this point it seems we’ve seen at least half the riders sliding across the road or flipping into ditches. Lance Armstrong and the US Postal Service team haven’t escaped the carnage, though they’ve avoided the worst of it. The nine-man team has a collection of bumps and scrapes, but no injuries that should impede Lance’s quest for a sixth Tour de France victory.
As the race’s second week begins, Lance is just where he wants to be. He’s ahead of his main rivals, his team won a stage, and he wore the yellow jersey for a day before purposely giving it up to a young French rider. Sound confusing? Welcome to the Tour de France; grab some coffee and let me explain.
The Prologue
The Tour began perfectly for Armstrong with a second-place finish in the short, 3.8-mile Prologue time trial. More important than the 15-plus seconds he gained, Armstrong’s powerful performance delivered a serious psychological blow to his main rivals: German Jan Ullrich (T-Mobile), American Tyler Hamilton (Phonak), and Spaniards Roberto Heras (Liberty Seguros) and Iban Mayo (Euskaltel Euskadi). If Lance took 15 seconds or more in just 3.8 miles of flat ground, how hard was he going to make their lives for the next three weeks?
Even before he started the Prologue, Lance’s heart rate indicated he was going to have a good day. He called me over during his warm-up and said, “Check this out. I’m at 162 [beats per minute] and I feel like I’m barely working hard.” It wasn’t that his heart rate was abnormally high from dehydration or stress, but rather that he was able to maintain that intensity level with little effort. When he pushed harder, his heart rate responded quickly; and when he eased up, it went down just as fast. It was a good sign he was fresh, well rested, and ready to go.
Stages 1-3
The first few days of the Tour de France are always dangerous, and this year was no exception. Though there were several crashes during the Stages 1 and 2, Lance’s teammates did their jobs well and kept their leader out of harm’s way.
Stage 3 offered the first hazard that threatened to derail Lance’s Tour de France hopes. Organizers took the riders over two sections of Napoleon-era cobblestone roads, further increasing the risks of crashes and flat tires. The best place to be was at the front of the line, and with nearly 200 cyclists fighting to be within the first 10 men to reach a six-foot wide path of rough cobblestones, a crash was inevitable.
Armstrong, Ullrich, Hamilton, and Heras made it through safely, but Mayo wasn’t so lucky. Caught in a crash just before the cobblestones began, he never made it back to the lead group. Ahead on the road, US Postal Service, T-Mobile, Liberty Seguros, and Phonak drove the pace, opening up a four-minute lead on Mayo by the finish line.
Stage 4: The Team Time Trial
The team time trial is one of the hardest events in cycling, and one of Lance’s favorites. The entire nine-man team rides together, sharing the work of completing 64.5 kilometers as fast as they can. It has to be a collective effort because the team’s time is taken when the fifth rider crosses the finish line.
The conditions were horrendous, with pelting rain and driving wind. There were numerous crashes and flat tires; Tyler Hamilton’s team left four men behind with flat tires and rode the final third of the race with just five men. Armstrong and company put in a masterful performance to win the stage by over a minute, but a new rule wiped away most of their winning margin.
"Lance donned the yellow jersey, gained a little more time on his rivals, and showed everyone that the US Postal Service was the strongest team in the race," says Carmichael.
Tour organizers, in an effort to reduce the damage the team time trial does to leaders of weaker teams, set maximum time losses based on the results of the event. The second place team could lose a maximum of 20 seconds, third place could lose a maximum of 30 seconds, and so on. Hamilton’s Phonak team finished more than a minute behind, but was penalized only 20 seconds. Ullrich’s team lost 1:19 but was only penalized 40 seconds. Regardless, Lance donned the yellow jersey, gained a little more time on his rivals, and showed everyone that the US Postal Service was the strongest team in the race.
Stages 5-6: The Crashing Continues
The leader’s yellow jersey carries with it a lot of pressure, so Lance was more than willing to give it up on a rainy and crash-marred Stage 5. Tradition mandates the team holding the jersey controls the pace during road stages, which burns a lot of energy. Thomas Voeckler is not a threat for the overall victory, so giving him the jersey and his team the responsibility for defending it was a smart move for the US Postal Service.
Even without the jersey, Stage 6 was hard on Lance. He crashed just 10 miles into the stage, but quickly rejoined the lead group with the help of his teammates. Then, less than 1000 meters from the finish line, a major crash stopped the majority of the race in its tracks. Though Lance did not hit the ground, he suffered additional bumps and scrapes as over 150 riders piled into each other. Fortunately, the crash did not affect the overall standings because of a rule that awards everyone in the group the same finishing time if there’s a crash in the final 1000 meters. Though the crash sent a few riders home as a result of their injuries, none of the major contenders were seriously hurt and neither were any of Lance’s teammates.
As a battered and bruised bunch of racers head into the second week of the Tour de France, Lance Armstrong is still right where he needs to be. As long as everyone stays upright for a while, the next big battles should start when the race reaches the mountains on Friday.
