53.71 kph

The "Blue Train" delivers!

--ryan

Guardian Unlimited Sport: Postmen deliver yellow for Armstrong

William Fotheringham in Arras
Thursday July 8, 2004

If Lance Armstrong eventually loses out to Tyler Hamilton or Jan Ullrich, and the margin is a handful of seconds, he will have every reason to look back at yesterday's team time-trial and roundly curse the Tour de France's rulebook. For it may be that, because of that inoffensive-looking volume, Armstrong or someone else will finish the 2,000-mile race in the fastest time but not actually win it.

Yesterday the Texan's US Postal Service team were dominant, earning him the yellow jersey and gaining their second successive win in this test of collective strength, yet a complex change in the rules to prevent weaker squads from being disadvantaged meant they were unable to ram that winning margin home.

"There is no point in discussing it because that is the rules," said Armstrong, although his team manager Johan Bruyneel had called the change "ridiculous".

"I can't change the rules," Armstrong added. "The only consolation I can take is that when I see we put 1min 7sec on the next team I know my team is the strongest and the best team in the race." Indeed, the Postmen put in the ride of their lives to leave Hamilton's green-clad Phonak team trailing.

The average speed of 33.5mph in a stiff breeze and on roads which varied from flooded to merely soaking meant they were travelling for much of the 40 miles at 40-45mph, allowing for taking each bend at walking speed.

"Last year winning this stage was the highlight of my Tour de France," said Armstrong, adding that he had fallen in love with the team time-trial as a junior. "This event is something unique in cycling, because you can be four guys who are not so strong but if you work out properly how to take the pulls you can win." It was a masterly, disciplined performance, and its planning and execution sum up why the Texan has made the Tour his own in the past five years. He covered the course twice in a car as an aide-memoire to go with his previous reconnoissances.Each rider had a pre-set place in the line so that his strength could be used to the full. The blue train sped with the precision of a skein of geese in flight.

Armstrong was lucky, as, by and large, he has also been in the past five Tours. Hamilton's men suffered four punctures in the first 15 miles, destroying their rhythm, and for a few miles there was patent indecision among them whether to wait or continue. Phonak is a hearing-aid manufacturer but communication was sadly lacking in the team it sponsors. Among the also-rans - that is all the 20 other teams, for none was on the level of USP - there were flat tyres and crashes galore.

On a course from Cambrai to Arras via Bapaume, the historical resonances ran deep - the start in the old fortress at the heart of the Hindenburg line, the finish where the Somme offensive began, the straight wind- and rain-lashed roads through towns with hardly a single building more than 80 years old, among cornfields where each hillock seems to have its cemetery of white crosses.

The Tour's first week has often been described as trench warfare, in that great effort is expended but not much ground gained, and in these surroundings it was perhaps appropriate that yesterday there was, if not stalemate, then no decisive breakthrough.

In past years, team time- trials have been decided on actual time taken for the first five riders in each squad to cross the line. That time is added to each man's overall time. This year a bonus system was introduced, with a table of sliding time penalties according to a team's finishing position.

It is a system which could have been devised only by the same beancounting minds that invented France's labyrinthine employment laws, and once the slide rules had been put away it was decreed that Amstrong's team had finished 1min 7sec ahead of Hamilton's - but their gain was limited to 20sec. They were 1:19 faster than Ullrich's T-Mobile men but the German's deficit for the day was cut to 40sec. The New Englander and Ullrich are now eighth and 16th - 36 and 55sec behind - and can thank their lucky stars.

No one, however, would begrudge the Basque climber Ibán Mayo a bit of good fortune after his black Tuesday in Wasquehal, and his Euskaltel team managed a surprisingly coherent eighth place, disrupted only when a bike fell off one of their team cars dangerously close to a group of spectators. Their actual deficit of 2:35 was adjusted to 1:20.

Today's flat run from one great cathedral city to another should see the fourth new race leader in as many days Armstrong made it plain that he would not ask his team to expend valuable energy in an attempt to cling on to the maillot jaune 2 weeks from the finish.

"We need to conserve their strength for the second half of the race," he said. "I'm not going to sacrifice the team to defend the lead in the north of France." With the yellow jersey up for grabs, the racing should be intense. There will be more wind and rain to numb the legs, but the riders' nerves will again be jangling.