Armstrong's quest for immortatilty continues

YOU search for chinks in Lance Armstrong’s armour before the start of every Tour de France. Some are real, some turn out to be imagined. Last year he crashed in a pre-Tour race, and still bore some of the scars at the start in Paris. There was disharmony at home. He and his wife, Kristin, had separated earlier in the year, but prior to the Tour she flew out to join him and the couple put on a united front throughout the three weeks, only to divorce shortly after.

Still Armstrong won, but only by 61 seconds from his great rival, Jan Ullrich, having overcome a stomach illness, crashes, the superb form of Ullrich, and perhaps even the odd domestic along the 2,300 miles back to Paris. It was the toughest of the Texan’s record-equalling five straight wins, and hinted at an even more open race this year.

And so to the start in Liege, three weeks ago today, and the same ritual: that perpetual, some might say desperate, search for weaknesses. Could a heavy defeat in a time trial up Mont Ventoux, just a fortnight earlier, signal that Armstrong might be in decline? And then there was a book, published in France that same week, alleging foul pharmaceutical play, which seemed calculated to disrupt his preparation - and judging by Armstrong’s angry reaction, succeeded in doing so.

Armstrong’s lawyers were mobilised, but they have gone about their work while he has gone about his, seemingly without distraction. "I know [the book] will be interesting if you also like to read about two-headed babies, UFOs and the fact that Osama bin Laden is playing golf in Las Vegas," said Armstrong. "They’re all interesting titbits. But they’re not factual."

Now, barring a truly cataclysmic occurrence, he will arrive on the Champs Elyses tomorrow to stake his claim as the greatest ever Tour de France champion. You can argue with that, but you can’t argue with an unprecedented six straight wins in the world’s biggest cycle race; and nor can you argue with the manner in which he will have won his sixth.

As one headline put it, Armstrong "buried his rivals in the Alps". In winning three consecutive Alpine stages - equalling a record from 1948, held by the great Gino Bartali - he displayed an appetite for winning that has not been apparent in the past; he has gobbled up the stages and devoured the race. This calculating, clinical athlete seems, particularly in the last week, to have ridden with a joie de vivre that has been notably absent in the past.

It might be crass, not to say simplistic, to put this down to having Sheryl Crow by his side, below. But the singer, Armstrong’s girlfriend since the end of last year, seems to have had a positive effect, rubbishing the fears of Lance fans that she would become the "Yoko Ono of cycling".

There is another theory for Armstrong’s apparent contentment - that he is relishing his coup de grce. On Thursday it was reported by the respected New York Times cycling correspondent Samuel Abt that this will be Armstrong’s final Tour.

Abt claimed that a high-ranking Tour official has assured him that in the event of a sixth win, Armstrong will not return. Instead, he will focus on the Giro d’Italia or the Vuelta a Espaa next year, as well as some of the one-day classics in which he specialised before contracting cancer in 1996.

"He’s going to race, but we didn’t decide on a programme," said Johan Bruyneel, directeur sportif of the US Postal team. "A lot of things can change, a lot of things can happen."

Armstrong sought to clarify his position yesterday and hinted he may miss the Tour next year but return at some later point.

"I’m not saying I would never do it again. I would absolutely," he said after Stage18. "I’ll do it again before I stop.

"I haven’t made a schedule yet. It’s fair to say there’s still a lot of things I’d like to do in cycling, like the Classics and the hour record, that require a different type of focus."

Before the Tour it was confirmed that the Discovery Channel will take over from US Postal as the main sponsors of Armstrong’s team next year. As part of this agreement, the team is obliged to ride the Tour de France. But it is not clear whether the deal stipulates that the team must include Armstrong.

Armstrong added: "I have a new sponsor and the Tour’s the biggest cycling race in the world and I have to discuss it with them," he said. "If they give me the green light on something like that [riding in the Classics and the hour record] I might do it.

"But if they say ‘Lance, we’d like you to do the Tour,’ I understand that too."

Armstrong regularly gives the impression that he is in awe of the Tour, and in particular Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain, the four men before him to win the race five times. One reason given for his possible departure from the Tour was that does not want to appear to be rubbing in his superiority over the quartet.

Of course, it could just be diplomacy on Armstrong’s part, and a logical strategy given that he has had a tough battle in winning over the sceptics - those who simply don’t like him, and those who distrust him.

It was Armstrong’s misfortune to become the dominant Tour rider of the post-Festina era. In 1998 the race almost ground to a halt under the weight of drugs scandals, sparked by the revelation that the world’s No1 ranked team, Festina, operated a systematic doping programme.

Yet here was Armstrong, just a year later and having recovered from life-threatening cancer, winning the fastest Tour de France on record. In the 2000 trial that followed the Festina scandal the team’s former trainer, Antoine Vayer, took to the stand and made an assertion that’s been repeatedly made. "Armstrong rides at an average speed of 54kph," said Vayer. "I find this scandalous. It’s a nonsense. Indirectly, it proves he is on dope."

Fine - although, actually, it doesn’t. Similarly, a two-year investigation by the French authorities into Armstrong’s team proved nothing. And that recently published book, LA Confidential: The Secrets of Lance Armstrong, contains only, as the authors admit, "circumstantial evidence". The fact remains that for all the searching, there has been nothing to prove that Armstrong has done anything illegal.

Maybe he is simply a victim of timing. The winner of the 1999 Tour was always going to be asked questions. And when the winner proved to be somebody who had made a miraculous recovery from cancer, having done little previously to suggest that he might be capable of winning the Tour, well, as Armstrong himself might say: go figure.

The suspicion continues, and only Armstrong himself knows if it is valid. Yet what is often obscured by this cloud is his pedigree, pre-cancer. In 1993 he was crowned cycling’s youngest ever professional world champion, but the size of his upper body, developed as a triathlete in his teens, was a serious barrier to being a contender in a race like the Tour, which is won and lost in the high mountains. So he focused instead on the one-day races.

After cancer much of the weight had gone, blasted by chemotherapy. Gradually Armstrong regained his old power, but he carried less bulk - it followed that the mountains became a happy hunting ground.

He also returned to the sport with a different pedalling style. While Ullrich churns big gears - as Armstrong did before - the American now spins the pedals at a much faster cadence. It causes less damage to the muscles, with the emphasis more on the process of oxygen transfer. It’s not easy to maintain the discipline of keeping the gears low, but Armstrong has managed it now through six Tours, and it has proved an invaluable tool in preserving strength over three weeks.

Even his most ardent critics will have admired Armstrong in this final week of the Tour. But this is the crux: other than by the legions of Americans who now appear by the roadside in France, he does tend to be admired rather than loved.

Anquetil was loved for his style, Merckx for his desire, Hinault for his charisma, and Indurain for his class and temperament; but Armstrong encounters an unprecedented degree of hostility, and appears to thrive on it.

"I repeat the negatives over and over every day," he said on the eve of this Tour. "It’s definitely a perception that I need that chip [on my shoulder]. It’s probably also accurate most of the time. But, and this is an important ‘but,’ most athletes perform better when they’re really motivated or angry about something.

"I’m plenty motivated now," he added, "although I don’t need to publicise why I’m motivated."

Will Armstrong be back to try for a seventh next year? It may depend on whether or not he is still angry.