He’s run them ragged for six straight years and injected American star power into the Tour de France. Many rivals of Lance Armstrong, cowed by his unparalleled success, are eagerly waiting for his flame to burn out.
The Texan made history on Sunday when he rode across the finish line wearing the tour leader’s yellow jersey on the Champs-Elysées in Paris for a record sixth time.
Doubts remain about when he will try for number seven, but for some, the retirement party could not come soon enough.
”In the last few years, we’ve been working a bit for the future — post-Armstrong — because he’s simply unbeatable,” said Eusebio Unzue, sporting director for Spanish team Illes Balears-B Santander.
The biggest buzz this year about possible Armstrong successors was over 26-year-old Italian Ivan Basso. He finished third, after coming 11th in 2002 and seventh a year ago.
Illes Balears features young Russian stars Vladimir Karpets and Denis Menchov — respectively the best young tour riders this year and last. Team leader Francisco Mancebo was sixth overall in 2004.
”Mancebo is just waiting for him [Armstrong] to leave — as we all are,” Unzue said.
Since Armstrong’s reign began in 1999, rivals have pursued the scraps he left behind, collecting impressive — albeit lesser — laurels as the race’s best climber, sprinter or young rider.
A cartoon on Monday in sports daily L’Equipe showed a wanted poster with a half-dozen pictures of Armstrong and the caption: ”It’s been six years we’ve been chasing after him!”
Rivals can take heart. At 32, Armstrong is much closer to the end of his career than the beginning. On Sunday, he vowed to race again in his favourite competition, but not necessarily next year.
The next generation will inherit Armstrong’s mark on the tour’s culture. He has helped remold the race into a highly professional, rigorous affair.
Riders now reconnoitre course routes much more than before.
Meticulous training regimens, top-dollar sponsorships and technological advances such as rider radios and earphones are hallmarks of his era.
Even after three victories by fellow American Greg Lemond in 1986, 1989 and 1990, the tour was still largely a parochial, though celebrated, European affair — until Armstrong came along.
He dragged the three-week marathon into prime time.
His remarkable comeback after a near-deadly bout of testicular cancer to win cycling’s showcase race created millions more fans worldwide.
Armstrong brought laser-like focus — and largely ignored other major races such as the Italian Giro or Spanish Vuelta.
Armstrong’s US Postal Service team has set a new bar for performance by concentrating all their firepower on the goal of him winning, said Bobby Julich, a CSC teammate of Basso.
”US Postal does the most preparation, and we are starting to prepare like that also,” Julich said. ”I think we have a future tour winner with Ivan Basso — so I’m sure we’re going to be committing a lot more effort to doing the sort of things that Postal has done.”
”He’s made it more clinical. He’s a surgeon, man, and he goes to work,” Julich said of Armstrong.
Critics complain he has brought an American mind set to the race, making it more methodical and calculated — and yanking the competition away from its European roots.
Before his day, ”an American in cycling was comparable to a French baseball team in the World Series”, Armstrong wrote in his book It’s Not about the Bike.
”There was a big difference between the discreet jockeying of European cycling and the swaggering, trash-talking American idea of competition I was reared with,” he wrote.
United States fans are just as brash. A roadside banner on the mythical L’Alpe d’Huez featured a map of France in US stars and stripes with the words: ”American owned and operated since 1999.”
The marathon race has entranced Armstrong, conjuring his near-obsession about winning. Since 1999, he has shown a killer instinct that few have been able to match.
Like Michael Jordan, who would psych out rivals with his skill at scoring a buzzer-beater, Armstrong has mastered a sort of mind control over adversaries.
Germany’s Andreas Kloden, the tour runner-up, got a dose of the mind game in the hardest Alpine stage, when an unbending Armstrong sped past him to win a sprint finish in the last few metres.
”No gifts this year,” Armstrong said after the stage.
During a ceremonial lap on the Champs-Elysées, Kloden, when asked whether he would be able to dethrone Armstrong at a future tour, chuckled sheepishly and said: ”I’ll try.”
Unzue is eager to see the American go.
”Of course. Why? For the cycling ambiance, the sporting aspect, to see a more open and spectacular tour,” Unzue said.
But others say they’ll respect Armstrong’s decision about his future — whatever it is — and have been content to enjoy the slipstream of the Texan’s history-making moments.
”I like to see Lance just because he’s amazing to watch,” said Christian Vandevelde, an American with Liberty Seguros. ”It has been cool to be a part of it.” — Sapa-AP