PARIS – Each year, the course has been different. Each year, the result the same.
For a half-dozen years now, Tour de France organizers have tried to come up with a setup that would shake up Lance Armstrong, much the same way the golfing lords of Augusta National set out to “Tiger-proof” their course. And just like Tiger Woods, the 33-year-old Texan would not be deterred.
On the eve of a remarkable seventh straight win, despite racing at an age when all of cycling’s other greats were finished, Armstrong’s vise grip on the most grueling test in sports remains as strong as ever.
“It’s nice to finish your career on a high note,” he said. “As a sportsman, I wanted to go out on top.”
The 20th and next-to-last stage of the tour began in Saint-Etienne, beneath sunny skies some 260 miles from the capital, with the prospects for real drama flatter than most stretches of the asphalt road over which Saturday’s time trial was contested. The only question was whether Armstrong would risk a comfortable lead trying for an individual stage win to punctuate his dominance.
Little more than an hour later – 71 minutes, 46 seconds to be exact – the frantic crowds lining the roads and the racers who have provided the backdrop in nearly every one of his personal highlight reels had their answer.
Armstrong rolled down the start ramp already off his seat and pedaling powerfully, leaving the leader’s yellow jersey – le maillot jaune – half-unzipped against the heat. By the time he crossed the finish line of the 34.5-mile stage, teeth bared at the effort of averaging nearly 29 mph, he had boosted his cushion over closest pursuer Ivan Basso by almost two minutes – to 4:40 – ahead of today’s largely ceremonial run-in to Paris.
A half-hour before Armstrong took off, he pulled his son alongside his bike in a holding pen, then leaned into the picture and smiled while rock star girlfriend Sheryl Crow snapped away for the scrapbook. When Armstrong climbed off the podium, 5-year-old Luke and his 3-year-old twin sisters, Isabelle and Grace, joined Crow and Armstrong’s mother, Linda Armstrong, for a brief celebration.
None of the kids was born when Armstrong won his first tour in 1999. And the idea he would even have children must have seemed infinitely remote just three years before that, when the testicular cancer that forced Armstrong off his bike spread to his lungs and brain, and his doctors gave him a 40 percent chance of survival. But he’d beaten long odds before.
Born to a 17-year-old single mother and both of them abandoned by the birth father soon after, Armstrong had been racing ahead of adversity his whole life. He was winning 10-kilometer runs against grown-ups before he finished sixth grade, competing in statewide swim meets soon after, then added bike racing to his repertoire and became a topflight triathlete by age 15. Two years later, after watching fellow American Greg LeMond win the Tour de France a second time, Armstrong decided it was something he, too, could achieve.
Now he stood just 24 hours from the grandest achievement in a career chockfull of them, surrounded by loved ones, his steely blue eyes filling with tears.
“It’s a dream for me,” Armstrong said.
It was a rare glimpse into the soul of a champion, a restless striver with nothing, finally, left to prove.
Armstrong won his first tour to convince himself and others that cancer wasn’t always a death sentence, then tore off four more wins to demonstrate that he had learned how much hard, mind-numbing work is necessary for a prodigy to become a cold-blooded professional.
Last year, Armstrong captured five stages and roared past all of the tour’s other legends – five-time winners Eddy Merckx of Belgium, Miguel Indurain of Spain and Frenchmen Bernard Hinault and Jacques Anquetil. Yet this one was more about mastery than any of them, about leaving on his own terms.
Because of the way he has crushed not just opponents, but much of the romance and most of the suspense associated with the 102-year-old race, a cartoonist for television network France-2 frequently draws Armstrong as an anvil.
And this time around, he didn’t wait long to begin throwing his weight around.
The opening stage, an 11.8-mile time trial that ran past marshes from Fromentine to the island of Noirmoutier-en-l’Ile, was barely long enough to make a symbolic point, let alone a substantial one. Taking off last among the 189 riders at one-minute intervals, Armstrong caught his main rival, German Jan Ullrich, finished second overall, and put enough time between himself and the rest to all but clinch the 2,242-mile, three-week-long race on the first day.
On Saturday, he bookended that with a stage win, an exclamation point reminding everyone that for all the dangers lurking around him for three weeks – the steep ascents, rain-slicked pavement and hairpin turns strewn in his path – this journey was destined to unfold according to the schedule in his head.
And no one else’s.
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