Lance his own enemy in record bid
PARIS: Without underestimating his rivals, Lance Armstrong holds the key to an unprecedented seventh Tour de France victory in his own hands.
The big question before the classic race sets off from the island of Noirmoutier on Saturday is not whether anyone else is good enough to beat the most successful Tour rider in history but whether Armstrong himself has the motivation to add another win.
At the start of the season, the American had mixed feelings about going for another Tour and reluctantly announced his decision to give it one more try in the northern spring.
His contract with Discovery Channel stipulated that the Texan had to complete at least one more Tour before retiring and Armstrong finally made up his mind to call it quits when the race ends on July 24 on the Champs-Elysees.
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Lance Armstrong. |
He explained at the start of the Dauphine Libere earlier this month why this last Tour would be a special one.
“Seventh is more of a personal goal and ambition. That's not a record and it's not going to be written in any book. But it will mean a lot personally,” Armstrong said.
“It will mean I've retired at the top of my game and that I might have won another one. It's a motivating factor to win another one, maybe convincingly, and to retire.”
Armstrong has shown signs of weariness however this year.
In the early season, he repeated in a number of interviews that he resented more and more the long time spent abroad far away from his children.
His results were far from convincing before the Dauphine Libere.
For the first time since he returned from near-fatal cancer in 1999 to win his first Tour, Armstrong will start the Tour without a win behind him in the season.
There were many question marks hanging over the American's form, which he finally dispelled in the Dauphine Libere.
After weeks of training in the Pyrenees – the mountains which will decide the outcome of the Tour in the third week – Armstrong returned a leaner, more relaxed rider and showed he was still among the most versatile competitors in the bunch.
Even though he failed to win a stage, he finished fourth overall after an excellent 46km individual time trial and morale-boosting performances on Le Ventoux and Joux-Plane, two of the world's most difficult climbs.
With two stage wins and an impressive overall performance, his team also showed they were probably as strong as, if not stronger than, in previous years.
Jan Ullrich, Alexander Vinokourov, Andreas Kloeden, Santiago Botero, Ivan Basso, Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer, Gilberto Simoni and half a dozen others form an impressive list of contenders lining up to snatch Armstrong's Tour crown.
But if anyone can defeat Armstrong in July, it will probably be Armstrong himself. – Reuters
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