Armstrong’s Team Has No Weak Links

It was the first real sign of emotion from Lance Armstrong. It may not be the last.

Armstrong flung his arms into the air and smiled for the world to see.

“It was a difficult stage because of the heat and the wind,” said Armstrong, trying to explain his joy. “And we’d never won this event before. So we’re pretty happy.”

After hanging back for the first three stages of the Tour de France, four-time defending champion Armstrong pumped his legs for all they were worth Wednesday and prodded his United States Postal Service team to its first-ever win of a team time trial in the world’s most famous bike race.

In a pack of choreographed red, white and blue speed, with its best five riders pedaling in mesmerizing harmony and moving from seventh place after the first time check to a chest-thumping 30-second victory, USPS, in the words of defeated Italian challenger Gilberto Simoni, “destroyed” the field.

And Armstrong moved from 12th into second place overall, one second behind teammate Victor Hugo Pena.

USPS covered the 69-kilometer (43-mile) course in 1 hour 18 minutes 27 seconds. That’s an average speed of nearly 33 mph. And it was done riding mostly into a headwind.

Pena, who turns 29 today, became the first man from Colombia to earn the precious yellow jersey that the Tour awards to its leading rider each day.

In the team time trial, an individual’s recorded finish can be no better than that of the fifth-best member of his nine-man team.

That’s why Tyler Hamilton, Armstrong’s former teammate and now the lead rider for Danish Team CSC, grits his teeth and keeps competing even after he fell hard Sunday in the big sprint finish of Stage 1 and broke his collarbone.

Competing with his shoulder taped and with each bump a bit of agony, Hamilton, of Marblehead, Mass., finished another stage and said he wouldn’t quit if the agony didn’t get worse.

Hamilton was in 39th place, 1:45 behind Pena after Wednesday’s stage.

It appears that Armstrong, who is aiming to become the second man along with Spain’s Miguel Indurain to win five consecutive Tours, will face his strongest challenges from another Spaniard, 2002 runner-up Joseba Beloki, and Germany’s Jan Ullrich, the 1997 Tour winner.

Beloki, whose ONCE team finished second Wednesday, is 32 seconds behind Armstrong while Ullrich, whose Bianchi team was third, is 38 seconds behind the 31-year-old from Austin, Texas.

Armstrong had said from the start of Saturday’s prologue that the first crucial mark in this 23-day event would be this race from Joinville, a town of gardens and the smell of spring, to Saint-Dizier, a bigger, grittier city, famous four centuries ago for its metal works and still an industrial place today.

These cycling-savvy fans understood the day’s importance. By 8:30 a.m. the winding road through Wassy, where the first time check was held, was filled on both sides with recreational vehicles and station wagons, convertibles and motorcycles. Cars were parked next to hay bales. A cow was sniffing the picnic setups and staring unhappily at the wire that separated her from the food and the road.

The USPS team was the last of the 22 teams to take off, a position earned because it had performed the best during the first three stages.

Team chief Johan Bruyneel made a detailed check of the course in May, and then the team went back over it Tuesday after the third stage also had ended in Saint-Dizier. “We made a very detailed road map with all the curves, all the tricky parts,” Bruyneel said.

The USPS strategy was to ride easy at the beginning and then put heads down and power through the final 20 kilometers.

“The plan worked to perfection,” Bruyneel said. “We had five riders -- Lance, Victor Hugo Pena, George Hincapie, Viatcheslav Ekimov and Floyd Landis -- as the team’s engines.

“The speed went up at an incredible pace. We were about 14 seconds behind at the first check and I think we took 35 seconds off ONCE in the last 20K.”

So dominant was USPS that its riders now hold first through eighth place in the overall standings.

“I’ll be the one wearing the yellow jersey,” Pena said. “But this is a victory for the team. It’s one of the best teams that ever existed in the world.”

Pena, who once was a member of Colombia’s national swimming team, might be exaggerating with that statement, but maybe not this one: “Lance proved he was the best teammate in the world,” Pena said.

Armstrong will need his team as the Tour starts to head uphill. After a relatively level Stage 5 today, 196.5 kilometers (121.52 miles) from Troyes to Nevers, the riders begin to head to the Alps on Friday with the critical climb to L’Alpe d’Huez on Sunday.

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At a Glance

Highlights from the fourth stage:

*--* * Stage: Joinville to Saint-Dizier, a 42.8-mile team time trial in eastern France * Winner: U.S. Postal team in 1 hour 18 minutes 27 seconds -- the first win by Lance Armstrong’s team in this stage * How others fared: Spanish outfit ONCE, last year’s winners, finished second; Jan Ullrich’s Team Bianchi was third, and Ibanesto.com came in fourth * Next stage: Troyes to Nevers, a 121.52-mile route toward the center of France * On the Web: For live updates of each day’s Tour de France stage, complete standings, cyclist profiles and course information, go to latimes.com/tour

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