It’s Day 15 of next month’s Tour de France, and Lance Armstrong is struggling up the Pyrenees’ Saint-Lary-Soulan, one of the most brutal mountain stages in the Tour’s history. It’s 90 degrees. He’s dehydrated. He’s trailing chief rival Jan Ullrich of Germany by 15 seconds overall with Paris only seven days away.
He sees Ullrich come up on his wheel.
When Armstrong, 33 and already with a record six straight Tour victories, digs down deep, what will he find?
Will he find the motivation he dug out two years ago to win the Tour by 61 seconds? Or will he envision sitting on a beach in France, with a beer in one hand and girlfriend Sheryl Crow’s hand in the other?
“My kids weren’t there last year,” Armstrong said Sunday from Nice, France, where he is preparing for Saturday’s start of his last Tour. “That was a real bummer for me. They are going to be there this year. They’re old enough now to understand what their dad does for a living. They understand when I get on the bike, I’m going to work.
“They’re going to come over here, come to my office, essentially, and see their father work. That’s important to me. I’d love for them to see me in the yellow jersey. That alone is plenty of motivation.”
There is more: Extend his record to seven, two more than anyone in history. Finish his career on top. Return the faith the Discovery Channel showed by taking over team sponsorship from the U.S. Postal Service.
During a 30-minute conversation, Armstrong sounded as fired up as ever, but with the relaxed demeanor of a man who has a beach and a rock star girlfriend waiting after one last jaunt down the Champs-Elysees.
Not even a scary crash Wednesday at the beginning of a training ride outside Nice curbed his enthusiasm. Then again, he felt lucky to escape with only road rash on his knee and hands and a black eye.
His equipment suffered more. His helmet broke in two, and his time trial bike broke into pieces.
“I’m embarrassed to say I was going slow,” he said with a laugh. “You’re just starting out; you’ve got to start slow when you’re getting older.”
People are looking at Armstrong’s last Tour in different ways. On one hand, he has nothing to lose. The record is his.
On the other, with nothing to lose, how much drive will he have to fight off an improved field dying to win a Tour with history’s greatest Tour rider in it?
“Motivation was an issue early in the year, but I think he recognizes that,” said his Colorado Springs-based trainer, Chris Carmichael. “By really putting a stake in the ground and saying: ‘This is it. I’m done. After that, I’m retired.’ I think it puts it in that time frame instead of saying you’re going on. I think it has motivated him, inspired him.”
True, Armstrong said.
“I’m not interested in going out on my back,” he said. “Without getting into other athletes in sports, I’ve seen when they play perhaps too long.”
Other than the crash and a horrible time trial in the Tour of Georgia, his training is on schedule. He finished fourth in the Dauphine Libere, just the right place after he fought to win in 2003 and entered the Tour flat.
Jonathan Vaughters, Armstrong’s former teammate on U.S. Postal and a part-time commentator, thinks Armstrong may lack that extra motivation.
“Like the race in the 2003 situation where he really had to fight for it,” said Vaughters, who heads the Denver-based TIAA- CREF cycling team. “I think he’d crack and would not win this year. If it’s a 2004 situation where he’s never put into difficulty through the whole race, then I think he still enjoys racing his bike enough and has prepared sufficiently to still win.”
Armstrong has other concerns, too. He lost two top support riders, Floyd Landis to Swiss-based Phonak and Viatcheslav Ekimov, to injury. One role will be filled by 2002 Tour of Italy winner Paolo Savoldelli, but Landis already has predicted a Phonak win in the team time trial July 5.
Even Armstrong admits of Ekimov, “Nobody can fill that role.”
Also, unlike last year, Ullrich has not been sick and did not overexert himself in the Tour of Switzerland. Italy’s Ivan Basso, another top rival, got sick at the Tour of Italy, and his recovery is in question. Santiago Botero of Colombia has defeated Armstrong, but never for more than a day or two.
It would help them all if Armstrong didn’t have that extra little edge. He apparently does.
“I’d venture to say I feel better than I’ve ever felt,” Armstrong said. “Hopefully when you’re that exciting, you go out and hopefully finish well but also leave the impression to the world and yourself that perhaps you could do another one if you wanted to.”
Um, one more year? Nope. Today is his last, hard training ride, a brutal all-day ride in the Alps.
“It’ll be the last time I’ll do that as a rider,” he said. “I won’t lie and say I’ll start crying. I’ve sort of been glad I won’t do that anymore.”
Staff writer John Henderson can be reached at 303-820-1299 or jhenderson@denverpost.com.
Yellow suits him
Lance Armstrong, above, begins the quest for a record seventh consecutive Tour de France title Saturday. Armstrong and the riders who are in second:
SIX VICTORIES
Lance Armstrong, U.S.
1999-2004
FIVE VICTORIES
Jacques Anquetil, France
1957, 1961-64
Eddy Merckx, Belgium
1969-72, 1974
Bernard Hinault, France
1978-79, 1981-82, 1985
Miguel Indurain, Spain
1991-95
