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Monday August 17, 2009

Lance wins in record time despite flat tyre

LEADVILLE (Colorado): Lance Armstrong won the Leadville 100 in a record time on Saturday, finishing America’s highest-altitude mountain bike race on a flat tyre.

Armstrong, on a flat back tyre for the final 16km, dethroned six-time defending champion Dave Wiens in 6’28:50, nearly 17 minutes better than Wiens’ 2008 record of 6’45:45.

Wiens was second in 6’57:01 a year after holding off the seven-time Tour de France champion by about two minutes.

“He’s Lance Armstrong. And he’s just off of the Tour,” Wiens said. “Last year he was just off of the couch. That made it a pretty fair fight for he and I. This year I rode fantastic today. I’m happy.”

The race featured 1,400 mostly amateur cyclists and began with snow-crested peaks as a backdrop. Armstrong and Wiens were in a pack of pro racers who broke away early, but they fell back one by one, including Tinker Juarez because of a broken seat clamp 48km into the race.

Armstrong left the rest of the field in the mud just 55km in, and raced the last 105km by himself.

He couldn’t remember the last time he raced for so long on his own.

“I don’t know, maybe when I was a young, young kid,” he said. “You would never do that on the Tour, so none of the Tours I won.

“Quite literally in those Tours, excluding time trials, I probably rode alone for 20 miles. ... It’s been a long time since I was time trialing for that long.” — AP

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