Tour de France 2004

The Wire, July 7, 2004

Two summers ago I was reading the paper during
the Tour de France. I turned to the sports page,
and there, staring back at me, was a picture of my
best friend, Greg, high in the French Alps,
wearing a U.S. Postal jersey and an American
Flag as a cape, and running alongside a climbing
Lance Armstrong and shouting encouragement.

This was Greg, my roommate in college, an All-
American kind of guy who was a rabid football and
hockey fan. Along with hordes of French, Spanish,
English, Dutch and Swiss fans, he had been camping
alongside the road next to his car in the Alps waiting
for the Tour de France to pass by. Lubricated by liberal
amounts of beer and rum, he was able to match Lance’s
pace as he labored up the mountain for a hundred yards
or so.

When I met Greg in 1991, the Tour de France was of little interest in America. Sure, American Greg LeMond had miraculously won the tour for the second time in 1989, after recovering from being accidentally shot by his brother while hunting. His come-from-behind win by a miniscule eight seconds at the final time trial of the three-week tour was the stull of legends, owing to the fact that he was still carrying a chestful of buckshot. Then he followed up by winning for a third and final time in 1990. But the American media didn’t give the quintessential European pastime much coverage.

For the past five years, though, Lance Armstrong has been blazing a ring of fire around the country of France every July. When he first emerged victorious in the 1999 Tour, it was a story on par with LeMond’s and one that the media latched on to. A survivor of testicular cancer that had metastasized and spread to his lungs and brain, Armstrong had been given less that a 50 percent chance to live. An arrogant, cocky, swaggering Texan racer before the cancer, Armstrong surfaced from a cocoon of chemotherapy to bloom into the king of the biggest annual sporting event on the planet. Cancer metamorphosed him physically too, tearing his musculature down as he lay dying in a hospital in Texas and leaving him without the swimmer’s shoulders and muscle mass that had previously hampered him from becoming a world-class climber.

Armstrong has ruled the tour with his U.S. Postal Team ever since, containing his biggest rivals over the three-week race and tearing their legs off in the time trials and on the steepest mountain roads in the Pyrennees and the Alps. Last year, Lance won his fifth tour in a row, joining an elite group of just four other riders who have managed the feat since the race was founded in 1903. But at the same time, Armstrong showed the first signs of vulnerability.

In the Stage 12 individual time trial just before the Pyrennees, Armstrong became severely dehydrated in the 100-degree heat and lost 15 pounds in water weight over the course of an hour. He struggled to minimize the damage, but gave up 1:36 to number-one rival Jan Ullrich.

Armstrong was proving to be human, and with two of the toughest mountain stages in the race directly following the time trial, his opponents sensed his weakness and attacked. On the following day in blistering heat Jan Ullrich pulled away from a deflated-looking Armstrong, and it looked like the Armstrong reign was over. Though Outdoor Life Network’s coverage didn’t really show it, Lance dug deep and struggled to limit his losses, conceding only seven seconds to Ullrich by the finish of the stage. More importantly, however, he had retained the yellow leader’s jersey by a mere 15 seconds. By the next morning the old Lance was back: he went on to win the last major mountain stage, extending his lead over Ullrich to 1:07.

Armstrong and his Postal Service team went on to control the last week and win the tour, but it was that bobble in front of the cameras that has led to speculation of Armstrong’s chances this year. It’s also made 2004 the most exciting tour in 20 years. No one has ever won six tours. The last man to try, Spaniard Miguel Indurain, dominated the tour five times in a row a decade ago. On his sixth try he cracked one day in the mountains, and his tour was over. He didn’t even finish the race.

So all eyes will e on Armstrong, but he’s certainly not the only American capable of bringing home the goods. It’s conceivable that Americans could fill the winner’s podium in Paris.

Bobby Julich is the only American other than Armstrong and Greg LeMond to have stood on the podium. In 1998 he finished third, but he hasn’t finished above 18th since. This year might be his year. He has had a promising spring, finishing third in Paris-Nice and fourth in the Criterium International. After Monday’s stage, he’s in ninth place (just 10 seconds behind Armstrong).

Levi Leipenheimer is a solid, all-around racer who will be the race leader for his Rabobank team this year. After finishing eighth in his tour debut in 2002, though, Leipenheimer crashed out of last year’s tour in the first stage.

Tyler Hamilton’s name is on everyone’s lips. A solid time trialist and climber who hails from just down the road in Marblehead, Mass., he seems to have a heart three times the size of anyone else in the peleton. In the 2002 Giro Italia, the freewheel mechanism in Hamilton’s rear wheel exploded during a high-speed descent, launching him over the handlebars. He continued the race with a broken shoulder bone, literally grinding his way through the pain (after the race he had to have 11 teeth capped). Tyler was then caught in a crash in Stage 1 of last year’s tour that snapped his collarbone. Instead of abandoning the race, he continued to start each morning to everyone’s amazement. Unable to get out of his saddle or use his upper body, he nonetheless managed to hang with the favorites in the mountains.

Then came Stage 16, the last mountain stage of the tour. Due to some sort of mental lapse, he was left behind the leading group after the first climb of the 197 km stage and had to call four teammates back to drag him up to the main group. Almost immediately, he bridged up to the 17-man break and then launched a solo attack 90 km from the finish. He continued his Herculean effort and crossed the finish line 1:55 minutes ahead of the charging peleton. A week later he would end up in fourth place overall in Paris. It’s impossible to predict what Tyler Hamilton is capable of if he can remain healthy and uninjured for once this year.

This is an event that continues to deliver the impossible—from racers, and sometimes even spectators. You can get your fix on the Outdoor Life Network, through Sunday, July 25.