Lance Armstrong knows his bid for a record sixth Tour de France victory could all end in one crash. So he wasn’t pleased when dozens of riders went down in a pile in front of him.
The crash at the finish in Angers was the final straw for a five-time champion already bruised up in a tumble earlier on Friday in an otherwise smooth ride in balmy weather through western France.
Exasperated, he suggested that organisers of the three-week race should put safety first.
”You saw the big crash at the finish, this is stressful,” the 32-year-old said. ”Coming in, they’ve got the barriers really tight, and you’ve got 200 guys racing through there at 40 miles (65 kilometres) an hour.”
”I don’t know what … they’re thinking, but you’re going to have crashes.”
Belgium’s Tom Boonen, a former teammate of Armstrong riding in his first Tour, won the sixth stage in a sprint ahead of the spill that took out and held up dozens of riders, including the Texan.
Only the evening before, Armstrong had told reporters about the strain of knowing that his ambitions at the Tour — the race he works so hard to win — could all end in a bout of bad luck.
”In this race, I’m always scared, always nervous,” he said. ”The last two or three days for me, personally, have been really, really nerve-racking.”
Down but not defeated, Armstrong scraped himself up off the asphalt and resumed after his fall 20 minutes into the 196-kilometre ride from Bonneval to Angers.
In the rain-soaked first week, other riders haven’t been so lucky.
Italian sprinting specialists Alessandro Petacchi and Mario Cipollini withdrew from the race before Friday’s stage. Petacchi, who roared to four sprint-finish wins in the 2003 Tour, injured a shoulder in a crash on wet roads Thursday.
Former world champion Cipollini fell on Wednesday, aggravating a leg injury from the Giro d’Italia in May. That same day, Iban Mayo — once considered a threat to Armstrong — fell out of contention after he crashed and lost crucial minutes.
While he wasn’t hurt, the spill was Armstrong’s biggest scare in his bid for an indelible place in the annals of sporting history.
”It was a typical early race crash,” Armstrong said. ”There’s nothing you can do. You hit the brakes, but bikes don’t stop that fast, so I just went over.”
”It wasn’t bad, a little bit on the arm, a little bit on the hip,” he said, listing his bruises.
In another stroke of good fortune, the second spill that held him up almost within sight of the finish happened close enough to the line that he wasn’t docked valuable time.
Under the rules, competitors held up in a crash in the final kilometre of a stage are given the same time as Boonen, the winner: 4 hours, 33 minutes, 41 seconds.
That meant that while Armstrong finished 34th, German Jan Ullrich — his most feared rival — was 26th but didn’t make up time on the defending champ.
Frenchman Thomas Voeckler of Brioches La Boulangere maintained the overall lead. Armstrong remains 9 minutes, 35 seconds back in sixth place, and Ullrich trails him by 55 seconds.
Barring any mishaps, Armstrong is confident he can recover the leader’s yellow jersey by the end of the three-week race in Paris on July 25, expecting Voeckler to eventually buckle under the pressure of leading.
Taking the yellow jersey made the 25-year-old French champion a homegrown hero overnight, but he still shows deference to the leader of the pack.
Ensnared in Armstrong’s crash, he rolled over the champion’s feet — and was quick to apologise.
”I hope I didn’t twist his ankle,” Voeckler said.
Crashes are nothing new. Riders accustomed to grueling mountain climbs and punishing weather often take tumbles, and are competing here with bandaged chins, black eyes and stitched-up wounds.
This year, a mix of nervous, aggressive riding and narrow roads made slick by rain have caused several collisions and spills in the first six stages.
The daily medical statement issued by Tour organisers on Friday listed a dozen riders who had a variety of injuries, including broken ribs, injured knees, and cut wrists and necks.
Tyler Hamilton, a former teammate of Armstrong’s, hurt his shoulder. But it was of little worry for the thick-skinned American: He thrilled crowds a year ago by riding most of the Tour with a double-fractured collarbone — even winning a stage and
finishing fourth in Paris.
The Marblehead, Massachusetts native still has psychological scars.
”His morale is not so good because he’s thinking about last year,” Phonak team manager Urs Freuler said.
Several Armstrong teammates have also been entangled in crashes.
Spaniards Jose Luis Rubeira and Manuel Beltran are riding with stitches after falling.
Another Armstrong teammate, Viatceslav Ekimov of Russia, arrived back at the team bus Friday with a trickle of blood down his right knee.
Armstrong’s US Postal Service team has made no secret of its strategy of keeping to the relatively safe areas at the head of the main rider pack — and others are trying to mimic it.
The problem: Not everybody can do it.
”The US Postal’s habit of always trying to remain ahead to protect Lance Armstrong has been copied this year by other teams,” said Boonen, a Quickstep rider. ”The roads are sometimes narrow, so naturally there isn’t always enough space.” – Sapa-AP