AVIGNON, France — Third place has never felt better to Lance Armstrong.
Following a 3 1/2-year retirement, the seven-time Tour de France champion all but sealed his improbable comeback with a promised third-place finish in cycling’s showcase event. And he expects to do even better next year.
The Texan was tamed by the new Tour boss Alberto Contador, who is headed for his second Tour victory by keeping the yellow jersey after Saturday’s punishing penultimate stage. Yet Armstrong has no regrets.
On the eve of the final ceremonial stage on the Champs-Elysees, Armstrong said he did as well as could be expected.
“It’s different,” Armstrong said about getting third. “I have no regrets. I wouldn’t change anything about my performance, the tactics, about the preparation. I’m happy with that. For me, it’s a healthy result, healthy in the sense that in my life, in my previous career, if you would have said, ‘You’re going to get third,’ I would have been on fire. So to now be third and to be proud of that, and my kids to be proud of that, the fans, and the people of France. Everybody loves that. It’s a good thing.”
Armstrong, who had been written off by most cycling experts before the race started three weeks ago, lived through tough days on this Tour. Confronted by arguably the best rider in the world, his Astana teammate Contador, the 37-year-old kept the suspense alive for two weeks before realizing his aging legs wouldn’t propel him to an eighth Tour win.
That was last Sunday in the Swiss ski resort of Verbier, where Contador dominated all other contenders with a move that gave him the leader’s yellow jersey.
“In Verbier, I knew that it wasn’t going to happen,” Armstrong said.
Going into today’s last stage, Contador leads Andy Schleck of Luxembourg by 4 minutes and 11 seconds, while Armstrong is 5:24 adrift.
Armstrong offered high praise for Contador, who won his first Tour in 2007. He said that even at his peak while winning the Tour from 1999-2005, he may have lost to his 26-year-old Spanish teammate.
“Contador is that good, so I don’t see how I would have been higher than that, even in the other years. I think his performance this year would have beaten my performances in ’01 and ’04 and ’05,” Armstrong said, referring to his best years on the Tour.
After the impressive Astana team time trial win in the first week of the race, Armstrong almost seized the coveted yellow jersey, missing by a fraction of a second. His lack of acceleration in the mountains and his failure in the Annecy individual time trial killed any chance of winning.
