Lance Armstrong’s most-feared rival has been quiet so far at the Tour de France, but the five-time champion is expecting a roar by the mountain stages.
Jan Ullrich, a 30-year-old German who won the 1997 Tour, rode largely in the Texan’s shadows in an uncommonly nervy and crash-marred first week across flat swaths of Belgium and northern France.
”That’s OK to be quiet so far,” Armstrong said after he and other riders arrived by plane on Sunday in Limoges. ”He’s been safe, conservative and out of the way.”
Unlike Armstrong and many other riders, Ullrich didn’t crash in a week riddled with spills, skids and collisions. Armstrong briefly fell on Friday, but quickly recovered with only bumps and bruises.
Still, doubts about the German remain.
”Where’s Ullrich?” read a headline in the French sports newspaper L’Equipe on Sunday, speculating that a cold he had in the week before the tour could have taken some air out of him.
Ullrich’s team insists that all is well and that the rider is happy with his tour so far.
Armstrong rejected suggestions that Ullrich has lost his drive.
The German could tie a record for second-place finishes — six — if he finishes runner-up to Armstrong for a fourth time this year.
”He’s hungry, he’s hungry,” Armstrong said.
After a rest day on Monday, the tour heads for three days into the Massif Central, a mountainous, agricultural plateau offering an indication of how the riders will fare in tougher climbs in the Pyrenees and the Alps later in the three-week race.
In Massif Central, ”we’ll start to see the start of the real race”, Armstrong said.
Speedsters such as Norway’s Thor Hushovd, who won Sunday’s hilly but fast stage through Brittany in western France, will give way in the mountains to more nimble climbers and all-rounders such as Ullrich and Armstrong.
France’s Thomas Voeckler retained the overall leader’s yellow jersey, with Armstrong in sixth place, 9,35 behind. Ullrich is in 20th position — 55 seconds behind the American.
More than half of the 188 riders who started the tour last Saturday have been involved in crashes — the latest in the 168km stage from Lamballe to Quimper in Brittany.
A dog scampering into the pack of riders near the end of the stage felled French rider Samuel Dumoulin, who trailed nearly 11 minutes behind Hushovd’s winning time of three hours, 54 minutes and 22 seconds.
The crashes are largely due to rain that slickened roads, early nerves and the high speeds of sprints at the end of almost every stage last week. Teams looking to shepherd their leaders toward the front of the pack, out of trouble, fuelled jitters by boxing for position.
Armstrong and other top contenders, including American Tyler Hamilton and Italy’s Ivan Basso, are likely to make moves to wrest the yellow jersey from Voeckler before the tour finishes in Paris on July 25.
The order of the day for riders on Monday was rest, a few hours of riding to keep their legs from seizing up, massages, meals, meeting reporters and patching up wounds.
Ullrich said he was looking forward to ”some unwinding”. Armstrong was largely content to have made it through the harrowing debut week intact — fearful that a crash could have ended his hopes for a record sixth crown.
”It’s been a crazy first week,” he said. ”I don’t ever remember doing one like that.” — Sapa-AP