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Armstrong cedes lead at Tour De France
(Agencies)
Updated: 2004-07-09 09:12
Lance Armstrong gave up two things at the Tour de France on Thursday: the
yellow jersey and a chance to ride at the Athens Olympics.
Surrendering the jersey was a tactical move. Armstrong, bidding for a record
sixth straight Tour de France title, willingly ceded the overall lead — for now
— to Frenchman Thomas Voeckler. The Texan knows he must conserve strength for
the brutal stages ahead.
Overall leader Lance Armstrong, of Austin,
Texas, adjusts his helmet before the start of the 5th stage of the Tour de
France cycling race between Amiens, northern France, and Chartres, west of
Paris, Thursday, July 8, 2004.[AP] |
Armstrong
finished 24th and dropped to sixth overall — 9 minutes, 35 seconds off
Voeckler's pace.
As for next month's Olympics, Armstrong wants to return home to his children
after months away training for cycling's toughest test. He knew his heart
wouldn't be in the Summer Games.
"I've done the Olympics many times and if I don't have 100 percent motivation
for something that's an important event, a very important event, then I don't
want to take somebody else's spot," he said.
In training for the Tour, Armstrong said he had spent five months away from
his son, Luke, and twins Grace and Isabelle.
"It's really hard to do and so I want to go home," said Armstrong, the bronze
medalist at the 2000 Sydney Games, his best showing in three Olympic
appearances.
The decision to concede Thursday's fifth stage was part of Armstrong's grand
strategy in this three-week ordeal. When the Tour veers into the Alps and
climaxes with a punishing time trial, Armstrong wants to be ready.
Until then, Armstrong is willing to let second-tier riders like Voeckler and
his Brioches La Boulangere team shoulder the pressure that goes with the leader.
Armstrong is confident he'll have overtaken them by the time the race finishes
in Paris on July 25.
"Tactically, it's a great move for us with Brioches La Boulangere in the
yellow jersey," Armstrong said. "Voeckler is a good young rider. He's French and
I think it's a good thing."
With wind-swept rain and crashes troubling riders, Armstrong and his US
Postal Service team decided not to chase as Voeckler and four other riders broke
away from the main pack.
Armstrong said he believed Voeckler may be able to defend the lead into the
Pyrenees at the end of the second week, but he expects the Frenchman to buckle
under the race's grueling demands.
"A team like Brioches will work really hard to defend," Armstrong said. But
"we're confident with the gap where it is. This bike race is so much different
from any other race, the intensity of the climbs is a lot greater than
anything."
Voeckler acknowledged he's no match for cycling's dominant rider.
"Oh, I don't think he's worried about me," he said.
Australia's Stuart O'Grady of Cofidis, who escaped the pack with Voeckler and
three others, won Thursday's stage, a 124.6-mile trek from Amiens to Chartres.
O'Grady dedicated the stage victory to his team, which has been embroiled in
a doping scandal that led Tour organizers to ban British star David Millar.
"It's just been an emotional roller-coaster," O'Grady said. "We really needed
this win."
The breakaway riders finished 12:33 ahead of Armstrong and the pack.
Mishaps such as flat tires, derailed chains and spills on rain-soaked roads
marred much of the course along bucolic wheat fields and rolling hills west of
Paris.
Voeckler, riding in his third Tour, epitomized how fickle the race can be
from one day to the next. He entered the stage three minutes behind Armstrong in
59th place.
At one point, the breakaway riders built a 17-minute lead. They included
France's Sandy Casar, Denmark's Jakob Piil and Sweden's Magnus Backstedt, at 220
pounds the Tour's heaviest rider. O'Grady once said that trailing Backstedt was
like riding behind a truck.
Armstrong said his team, which had given him the overall lead just a day
earlier in a time trial, deserved a breather.
"I kept telling them they wouldn't have to work for a week, and so they
probably were happy to hear that," he said.
Armstrong is mostly concerned about Germany's Jan Ullrich, the 1997 Tour
winner, and challengers like Italy's Ivan Basso of CSC and Phonak's Tyler
Hamilton of the United States.
Ullrich trails the Texan by 55 seconds, a significant but not insurmountable
gap. But Armstrong said he wouldn't want to be in the German's position.
"A minute's a lot in my opinion," he said. "The only reason that I say that
is that if I reverse the roles, I would be thinking, 'Oh, man, I'm already a
minute down.'"
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