Tour De France 2005 : NYTimes : Armstrong Discovers the Faults in His Team
Saturday, July 09, 2005
Armstrong Discovers the Faults in His Team
GERARDMER, France, July 9 - Lance Armstrong, faced with his first direct challenge on the initial important climb in the 92nd Tour de France, came through unscathed but concerned Saturday as he retained the yellow jersey of the race's leader while his team faltered badly.
His major rivals did not make it easy for him. Three of them closed in on Armstrong in the overall standings after a stage in which his Discovery Channel team failed to offer its usual support. Still, Armstrong is the leader by a minute.
"Definitely, a crisis within our team on the final climb," Armstrong said. "For whatever reason, I was left alone. We had a bad day as a team, and that makes it that much harder, and I had to cover some big moves myself."
He did not have an immediate explanation why his teammates were not around to offer assistance on the day's big climb. None finished with the main group of contenders, in which Armstrong was 20th in the same time as most of his rivals.
"I'll have to sit down with them tonight and ask what went wrong," Armstrong said. "I'll have to ask, 'What's wrong with your legs?' "
He did not seem alarmed as he noted that the Tour had two weeks to go before it ends in Paris on July 24.
"Perhaps we've been too active early on in the race," Armstrong said. "Perhaps we've been riding too hard."
This seemed to be a good test of his form before strenuous climbing begins Sunday and increases in difficulty Tuesday and Wednesday. Before the ride, sounding certain that he and his team were in top form, Armstrong invited attacks, and he received them. He wanted no mass sprints, and there were none.
Not that his rivals based their tactics Saturday on his preferences. The topography of the eighth of 21 Tour stages did that.
The day's chief difficulty rose about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the end of the 231.5-kilometer (144-mile) stage: the Schlucht Pass in the hills of the Vosges region of eastern France. With a gradient of 4.4 percent, it was not particularly steep, although it lasted nearly 17 kilometers (10.5 miles).
That was a trial for riders accustomed to flat roads or small climbs during the first week of the race. The result was a collapse in the 180-man field, with all but 34 riders losing more than a minute.
Armstrong was tested on the climb by Alexandre Vinokourov, a Kazakh with T-Mobile, and Andreas Kl�den, a German with the same team and the second-place Tour finisher last year. Vinokourov sped away from Armstrong early in the stage. Armstrong, the six-time Tour winner, responded to the attack by Vinokourov and caught him, riding with Vinokourov and his team leader, Jan Ullrich, a German and a perennial second-place finisher.
"We really tested his legs, and we saw that he is in pretty good form, but that his team is not," Vinokourov told reporters, according to The Associated Press. "Even though this is hard to judge in a medium mountain, it's good for morale. It's a good sign. We wanted to attack him before the high mountains. We didn't want to wait."
Kl�den sped off unmarked and caught the stage leader, Pieter Weening, a Dutchman with Rabobank, at the top of the climb.
Cooperating well, the two increased their slight lead on the 15-kilometer (9.3-mile) descent to the finish in G�rardmer, a resort on a pretty lake flecked with canoes.
Weening got his bicycle across the line first, inches ahead of Kl�den. They were timed in 5 hours 3 minutes 54 seconds, a speed of 28.4 miles an hour.
Alejandro Valverde, a Spaniard with Illes Balears, was third, 27 seconds behind. Armstrong, Vinokourov, Ullrich and other favorites like Ivan Basso, an Italian with CSC, and Bobby Julich, an American with CSC, all had the same deficit.
In the overall standings, Armstrong leads Jens Voigt, a German with CSC, by a minute, with Vinokourov third, 1:02 behind; Julich fourth, 1:07 behind; Basso fifth, 1:26 behind; and Ullrich sixth, 1:36 behind. When George Hincapie, Armstrong's American teammate, finished 48th and lost 1:25, he fell from second place to eighth. Basso moved up from ninth place to fifth, Ullrich from 13th to 6th and Kl�den from 24th to 9th.
The day started in Pforzheim, Germany, and moved into small climbs in the Black Forest, where enormous crowds waited on the hills. So many people were there that they spilled over the top and down the descent, where usually nobody watches because the riders pass so quickly.
That big turnout continued all day.
Germany has become a center of bicycle racing enthusiasm since Ullrich's victory in the 1997 Tour.
Despite his subsequent four second-place finishes and his many personal problems, Ullrich remains a national hero and attracts multitudes of fans. Even when he finished second to Armstrong in 2003 in a Tour that he might have won with smarter racing, he was voted Germany's athlete of the year.
"Ulle" signs were everywhere, and Germans were happy to talk about their enthusiasm for him.
Nevertheless, in this race Ullrich ranks realistically as T-Mobile's second man behind Vinokourov. The two of them, with Kl�den as a wild card, form a strong team.
Right now, as Armstrong said, he does not have the same support on his Discovery Channel team.
"They'll bounce back," predicted Julich, who formerly rode for T-Mobile. "They never have two bad days in a row."
Armstrong, who told reporters that he felt isolated and that he was suffering during the stage, did not sound so sure.
"We'll have to wait for tomorrow," he said.
GERARDMER, France, July 9 - Lance Armstrong, faced with his first direct challenge on the initial important climb in the 92nd Tour de France, came through unscathed but concerned Saturday as he retained the yellow jersey of the race's leader while his team faltered badly.
His major rivals did not make it easy for him. Three of them closed in on Armstrong in the overall standings after a stage in which his Discovery Channel team failed to offer its usual support. Still, Armstrong is the leader by a minute.
"Definitely, a crisis within our team on the final climb," Armstrong said. "For whatever reason, I was left alone. We had a bad day as a team, and that makes it that much harder, and I had to cover some big moves myself."
He did not have an immediate explanation why his teammates were not around to offer assistance on the day's big climb. None finished with the main group of contenders, in which Armstrong was 20th in the same time as most of his rivals.
"I'll have to sit down with them tonight and ask what went wrong," Armstrong said. "I'll have to ask, 'What's wrong with your legs?' "
He did not seem alarmed as he noted that the Tour had two weeks to go before it ends in Paris on July 24.
"Perhaps we've been too active early on in the race," Armstrong said. "Perhaps we've been riding too hard."
This seemed to be a good test of his form before strenuous climbing begins Sunday and increases in difficulty Tuesday and Wednesday. Before the ride, sounding certain that he and his team were in top form, Armstrong invited attacks, and he received them. He wanted no mass sprints, and there were none.
Not that his rivals based their tactics Saturday on his preferences. The topography of the eighth of 21 Tour stages did that.
The day's chief difficulty rose about 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) from the end of the 231.5-kilometer (144-mile) stage: the Schlucht Pass in the hills of the Vosges region of eastern France. With a gradient of 4.4 percent, it was not particularly steep, although it lasted nearly 17 kilometers (10.5 miles).
That was a trial for riders accustomed to flat roads or small climbs during the first week of the race. The result was a collapse in the 180-man field, with all but 34 riders losing more than a minute.
Armstrong was tested on the climb by Alexandre Vinokourov, a Kazakh with T-Mobile, and Andreas Kl�den, a German with the same team and the second-place Tour finisher last year. Vinokourov sped away from Armstrong early in the stage. Armstrong, the six-time Tour winner, responded to the attack by Vinokourov and caught him, riding with Vinokourov and his team leader, Jan Ullrich, a German and a perennial second-place finisher.
"We really tested his legs, and we saw that he is in pretty good form, but that his team is not," Vinokourov told reporters, according to The Associated Press. "Even though this is hard to judge in a medium mountain, it's good for morale. It's a good sign. We wanted to attack him before the high mountains. We didn't want to wait."
Kl�den sped off unmarked and caught the stage leader, Pieter Weening, a Dutchman with Rabobank, at the top of the climb.
Cooperating well, the two increased their slight lead on the 15-kilometer (9.3-mile) descent to the finish in G�rardmer, a resort on a pretty lake flecked with canoes.
Weening got his bicycle across the line first, inches ahead of Kl�den. They were timed in 5 hours 3 minutes 54 seconds, a speed of 28.4 miles an hour.
Alejandro Valverde, a Spaniard with Illes Balears, was third, 27 seconds behind. Armstrong, Vinokourov, Ullrich and other favorites like Ivan Basso, an Italian with CSC, and Bobby Julich, an American with CSC, all had the same deficit.
In the overall standings, Armstrong leads Jens Voigt, a German with CSC, by a minute, with Vinokourov third, 1:02 behind; Julich fourth, 1:07 behind; Basso fifth, 1:26 behind; and Ullrich sixth, 1:36 behind. When George Hincapie, Armstrong's American teammate, finished 48th and lost 1:25, he fell from second place to eighth. Basso moved up from ninth place to fifth, Ullrich from 13th to 6th and Kl�den from 24th to 9th.
The day started in Pforzheim, Germany, and moved into small climbs in the Black Forest, where enormous crowds waited on the hills. So many people were there that they spilled over the top and down the descent, where usually nobody watches because the riders pass so quickly.
That big turnout continued all day.
Germany has become a center of bicycle racing enthusiasm since Ullrich's victory in the 1997 Tour.
Despite his subsequent four second-place finishes and his many personal problems, Ullrich remains a national hero and attracts multitudes of fans. Even when he finished second to Armstrong in 2003 in a Tour that he might have won with smarter racing, he was voted Germany's athlete of the year.
"Ulle" signs were everywhere, and Germans were happy to talk about their enthusiasm for him.
Nevertheless, in this race Ullrich ranks realistically as T-Mobile's second man behind Vinokourov. The two of them, with Kl�den as a wild card, form a strong team.
Right now, as Armstrong said, he does not have the same support on his Discovery Channel team.
"They'll bounce back," predicted Julich, who formerly rode for T-Mobile. "They never have two bad days in a row."
Armstrong, who told reporters that he felt isolated and that he was suffering during the stage, did not sound so sure.
"We'll have to wait for tomorrow," he said.
