Lance Armstrong - Bone Crushing Tempo Ride - Back In Yellow

Team Discovery Drops Gauntlet – Launches Armstrong Back Into The Yellow Jersey – Stage 10 2005 Tour de France

Epic, bone crushing, Super-Man type effort, carnage on the road, these were the words spoken by the OLN announcing team of Phil Liggitt, Paul Sherwen, Bob Roll and Al Troutwig. And for good reason, todays stage was dam exciting and indeed epic. This last weekend the world watched as T-Mobile, CSC and other top teams took a bite out of Armstrong in last Saturdays stage 8. As the pack started the last climb of the day (only 10k to the finish) everyone including Armstrong knew attacks would come. They did and at a feverish pace, however what no one did plan for was the disintegration of Team Discovery. Leaving Lance “out to dry” Armstrong was able to defend his overall GC position but he was on the defensive.

Today however team Discovery “ripped” into the flesh of of over 180 riders dropping them off one by one. It was a show of dominance, power and team depth as the Discovery team launched their 6 time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong on the days last climb with about 12 k to go. About two weeks ago I knew that this would be the weekend the Tour would start to heat up. I figured their would be some attacks on the weekend but that the big moves would come today, and they did. Discovery got was well organized at the front of more than half of the race pacing (blistering pace that dropped many) on the first climb of the day where we saw trouble for our first major GC contender Iban Mayo. Supprisingly Mayo was dropped with about 3k to go on the days first climb “Roselend” (both climbs today were catagory one climbs). Once the pack crested the top of the first climb Mayo was able to bring himself back into the group, however shortly after the second and final climb started he began to drop back. One down and about 10 to go for Armstrong ….

The next two “suprise” dropps were of Spanish Team “Liberty Seguros” Roberto Heras who can be seen leading Armstrong up a climb just two years earlier floated back as Phil Ligget mentioned over the air “now this is a suprise”. Next his teammate who had started to show promise was Joseba Beloki … and gone were the two more ….. 3 down and several more to go for the Texan Armstrong.

Within about 2 or 3 minutes of seeing the last of Heras and Beloki another few riders saw the last of the elite lead group. Bobby Julich, Vladimar Karpets and Christophe Moreau were gone as well. At this point their was still another 12 k or so to the summit and Armstrong did have with him GC contenders like Vino, Basso, Levi, Kloden and Ullrich. The trump card at this point was that Armstrong was still with two other Discovery riders and they pressed on at such a torrid pace that only he seamed to be able to keep the pace up this high. At this point Lance began looking around “sizing up” his rivals and watches as the rest of his GC contenders began to faulter.

At the front was Yaroslav Popovych (Discovery), to my amazement he had just crashed some 60 minutes prevous down the decent at probibly atleast 45 mile per hour and managed to work his way right back up to the front of the peleton and was the last man to “ride tempo” for Armstong. Minutes later Lance rode up next to Popovich and must have said “let it ripp” because he really dug in as he bounced out of the saddle and rode for another 1k at this pace which really hurt the group. As soon as Popovich pulled off Armstrong swung around and held the pace Popovich had set.

This final burst by Popovich had Alexandre Vinoukorov reeling, you could see him digging deep as he was the last rider with the group. A minute later and he was gone as well. Armstrong had now dropped about 5 or 6 contenders and was looking ripe for the win, I was crazy and had found my loudest screaming voice of the tour this year (still penty of stages to come however).

With 11k to go Lance then hammered down, Yan Ullirch, Andreas Kloden, and Flyod Landis could not match the pace and drifted off like so many other riders had.  As Lance finished off the remaining kilometers he pass none other than Didi Senft who as always was dressed as a devil and ran next to Armstrong with about 7 or 8 k’s remaining. The groups was now only 5, Bass, Armstrong, Valverde, Rasmussen and Mancebo. The next rider to fall off the pace was Ivan Basso. The remaining four would ride to the summit with already a nice hunk of time out of Kloden and Ullrich.

With less than 1k remaining Armstrong jumped in a nice from the back attacking style but was beaten on the line by about half a bike length by Valverde. When the stage was finished the GC standings looked quite different from the start of the day:

Start Of The Day GC Standings

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  1. Jens Voigt (Ger) Team CSC - at 32h18m23s
  2. Christophe Moreau (Fra) Crédit Agricole - at 1m50s
  3. Lance Armstrong (USA) Discovery Channel - at 2m18s
  4. Michael Rasmussen (Ned) Rabobank - at 2m43s
  5. Alexandre Vinokourov (Kaz) T-Mobile Team - at 3m20s
  6. Bobby Julich (USA) Team CSC - at 3m25s
  7. Ivan Basso (Ita) Team CSC - at 3m44s
  8. Jan Ullrich (Ger) T-Mobile Team - at 3m54s
  9. Carlos Sastre (Spa) Team CSC - s/t
  10. George Hincapie (USA) Discovery Channel - at 4m05s

GC Standings After Stage 10

1. Lance Armstrong (USA) Discovery Channel - 1,6866.0km in 37h11’04″ (44.92km/h)
2. Mickael Rasmussen (Denmark) Rabobank at 38″
3. Ivan Basso (Italy) CSC at 2’40″
4. Christophe Moreau (France) Credit Agricole at 2’42″
5. Alejandro Valverde (Spain) Illes Balears at 3’16″
6. Levi Leipheimer (USA) Gerolsteiner at 3’58″
7. Francisco Mancebo (Spain) Illes Balears at 4’00″
8. Jan Ullrich (Germany) T-Mobile at 4’02″
9. Andreas Kloden (Germany) T-Mobile at 4’16″
10. Floyd Landis (USA) Phonak at 4’16″