Armstrong cycles into immortality

IN ST ETIENNE last night, Lance Armstrong broke his duck in an otherwise triumphant march to the 2005 Tour de France. After three weeks he finally won a stage, his first of this Tour. And the timing could hardly have been better, coming on the eve of the American's retirement from the sport.

It was the 90th professional victory of Armstrong's 14-year career and, barring a highly unlikely stage win on the Champs Elysees today, also his last. On Monday, he will wake up in Paris having won a record seven Tours and fly to the south of France for a holiday with Sheryl Crow and his three children, who joined him on Friday.

After the stage, Armstrong dedicated his victory to "the three most important people in my life" - Luke, Grace and Isabelle Armstrong. "At this Tour there was nothing at stake - not history, not a legacy and not money," he said. "I wanted to ride into Paris in yellow for [my children], for their last memory of their father as a sportsman to be as a champion. That was a pretty powerful motivation."

Armstrong dismissed the charge that he had shown little panache en route to winning his final Tour, an accusation based on the fact that he hadn't ridden a particularly aggressive race, and that it took until yesterday's penultimate day for him to register a stage win. But what cannot be denied is that his departure from the sport is as stylish as any.

He has realised the dream scenario, retiring at a time when he looks capable of carrying on and winning more. "I'm more convinced now than I've ever been that now is the time to stop," he said. "I have been blessed, I have no regrets and I have no reason to continue.

"It wouldn't be fair for me to say whether I could win another one," he continued. "If I continued next year, then that could be the year that I lose by five minutes. We'll never know. But I'm not going to say to next year's winner that they're lucky I never showed up."

Armstrong's stage win yesterday came on a tight, twisting and undulating 34-mile time trial around the industrial town of St Etienne, which had originally been considered as the stage that might decide this year's race. Though the past three weeks have included stages in both the Alps and Pyrenees - as well as the smaller Vosges mountains - there was less of an emphasis on climbing, and fewer mountain-top finishes than for much of Armstrong's six-year period of domination.

Armstrong would have been frustrated before yesterday over his failure to win a stage, and had he made it to Paris in yellow without winning one then he would have been the first rider to do so since Greg LeMond in 1990.

He survived a scare at the first time check, when he was seven seconds slower than Ivan Basso, who was fastest over the first, mainly uphill 17km. But while Basso slowed dramatically, Armstrong maintained his metronomic rhythm, and he was fastest by the next check at 40.2km. Thirty-two seconds faster than Jan Ullrich there, his lead over the German shrank to 23 seconds by the finish, but it was enough.

He was welcomed at the finish by Crow, his three children, and, more bizarrely, John Kerry, the defeated candidate in last year's American presidential election. That fuelled the speculation that Armstrong's next move will be in to politics, though he denied that last night.

"My intention is not to remain a public figure for the next few years," he said. "I need a period of peace and quiet and privacy. I think I'll be back at the Tour next year with the team, helping Johan [Bruyneel, the team director], and if I'm not here, I'll be parked in front of the TV watching it.

"But right now I just want to go on holiday and lie on a beach, drink wine, eat food, splash around in the sea with my kids. I want to relax and not worry about a thing and hopefully that will be a preview of what my life will be like for the next 50 years."

While Armstrong appeared to have sewn up the victory ahead of yesterday's time trial there remained the potential for disaster. That was underlined by Mickael Rasmussen, the Dane lying third going into the stage, whose time trial represented a horror show. Negotiating a roundabout early in the stage, he crashed heavily, but from there it went from bad to worse to embarrassing.

He had mechanical problems which forced him to make four bike changes, and then he crashed for a second time, overshooting a bend and tumbling into the undergrowth. Not surprisingly, he was leapfrogged by Ullrich, who is now set to finish third in Paris, with the Italian Basso safe in second.

Today's final stage will take the riders on the traditional procession from Corbeil Essones, south of Paris, and into the French capital for the showpiece finale. Before they hit the Place de la Concorde, the 155 survivors of what is set to be the fastest Tour will honour tradition, posing for photographs and quaffing champagne before the serious racing begins.

On Monday, the front pages of the papers will doubtless feature Armstrong on the road to Paris, happy, smiling and wearing yellow for the seventh, and final, time.