Five-time winner Lance Armstrong pulled on the Tour de France yellow jersey for the first time in the race after a blistering time trial performance by his United States Postal team over 64,5 km between Cambrai and Arras in France on Wednesday.
US Postal, the winners of the team event last year, defied the rainy conditions that played havoc with many of the 21 teams to stamp their authority on the race in a winning time of one hour, 12 minutes and three seconds.
Tyler Hamilton’s Phonak team claimed an admirable second place at one minute and seven seconds after finishing with five of their nine riders after a series of unfortunate setbacks.
Iles Baleares were third at 1,15 with Jan Ullrich’s T-Mobile team — who also experienced difficulties — finishing fourth, and glad of the new time-deficit format put in place by the race organisers.
The new format for the team time trial means that Germany’s 1997 winner, who started the day 15 seconds behind Armstrong, is now 55 seconds adrift in the general classification. His deficit would have been more under the former system.
Armstrong started the day thankful of having survived the treacherous cobblestones of northern France, which ended Spaniard Iban Mayo’s hopes of overall victory on Tuesday.
Twenty-four hours later he was again quick to praise George Hincapie and Viatcheslav Ekimov, throwing the spotlight on Hincapie, the only US Postal rider to be present on all of his five Tour victories.
”Today those guys again were super, especially George. He’s the only one who’s been there for all five [victories],” said Armstrong after the race, noting the importance of having a team with musketeer qualities.
”It takes an incredibly good relationship between the guys [to be successful]. George is just a damn good friend, and you need that in a team.
”You don’t see that in all teams. You go to dinner with some teams and nobody’s smiling. Fortunately, we have good morale in the team.”
Armstrong, who was a professional triathlete before joining the Motorola professional team in the early 1990s, admitted he had gone out with yellow-jersey designs on his mind in an event that is dear to his heart.
”I knew that if we won the team time trial I would be in yellow, so last night and during the race I thought about that.
”We were always close [to winning the team time trial] with Motorola, but we never won. It was great to win it last year and one of my aims was to win it again.
”I was just smiling on the bike, it was like a dream,” added Armstrong, who admitted he had been careful not to end up like some of the peloton.
”I was nervous all day long, I didn’t want to take any risks. I’d seen crashes during the day and I wanted to avoid that.”
The new team time-trial format meant the maximum loss for the last team to finish would only be two minutes and 30 seconds. Alongside, the deficit for second place was 20 seconds, then descending in units of 10 seconds for every subsequent place.
US Postal now dominate the top places in the general classification.
Phonak rider Jose Enrique Gutierrez of Spain is in sixth position at 27 seconds overall behind Armstrong. His teammate Hamilton is eighth at 36 just behind Ekimov.
Ullrich, who is also a five-time runner-up, could easily empathise with Armstrong’s concern about the rain.
The German crashed in the rain during last year’s final individual time trial in Nantes, thus virtually handing Armstrong his fifth consecutive win.
T-Mobile were held back at the start of their ride after having to wait for veteran Rolf Aldag who punctured near the 15km mark.
However despite seeing a 15-second deficit from Tuesday increase to 55 seconds, the 30-year-old was mostly content with their day’s work.
”It was a bad start for us, after just 15km Rolf had a breakdown and we decided to wait for him — if we didn’t we might have lost 30 seconds at the end.
”But we actually benefit from the new system,” said Ullrich, who despite losing more time on Armstrong is convinced the race is far from over, citing his one-second victory in the Tour of Switzerland.
”I think it will still be close in the end. Look what happened on the Tour of Switzerland, it was a matter of seconds. In any case, I’m happy with the new rule.”
He added: ”The bad weather reminded me of last year at Nantes. I won’t forget that. That’s why I wasn’t too keen to go all out for the win.”
Thursday’s fifth stage, Armstrong’s first this year wearing the yellow jersey, is a 200,5km ride over mainly flat terrain from Amiens to Chartres. — Sapa-AFP