Armstrong Avoids Crash and Keeps Tour Lead

They raced, full-out and within a few feet of each other, muscles taut and legs churning as the road literally melted in the searing heat under the weight of their efforts.

Reigning four-time champion Lance Armstrong and Joseba Beloki, one of his toughest competitors, were within five miles of the finish in the 116-mile ninth stage of the Tour de France on Monday as their bicycles sprinted a long descent in hot pursuit of stage leader Alexandre Vinokourov.

Beloki, second behind Armstrong in last year’s Tour and second in the overall standings entering the day’s race, had previously been criticized for not attacking Armstrong hard enough.

But he was now -- until he hit his brakes and his back tire shredded, throwing his bicycle into a twisted skid and catapulting him, sliding and bouncing and screaming in agony and despair, across the bubbling hot pavement.

Given next to no time to react, Armstrong, who was just behind Beloki, managed to turn hard to the left, missing his fallen competitor but leaving the road, barely avoiding a policeman and bumping across a field of sunburnt grass and hard dirt as he struggled to hold his ride upright.

“I was scared like never before,” Armstrong said later, still wearing the yellow jersey as the Tour’s overall leader. “It was a real panic. In a moment like that, it’s a survival instinct.”

Spectacular chain-reaction crashes are not unusual in high-level races, but Monday’s nearly shuffled the leader board entirely.

Any slower a reaction and Armstrong’s historic quest to become only the second rider to win the world’s most famous road race five consecutive times might have ended on Bastille Day, France’s biggest holiday. Beloki, a 29-year-old Spaniard, is out of the race after being hospitalized with a broken right wrist, right elbow and right leg.

Even the stage winner, Vinokourov, a 29-year-old from Kazakhstan who moved into second place overall, 21 seconds behind Armstrong, was affected. Unaware of the drama taking place behind him, his face turned ashen when he was told.

In March, during the Paris-Nice race, countryman Andre Kivilev, Vinokourov’s best friend, had been killed in a crash. Vinokourov had been a pallbearer in Kivilev’s funeral and has dedicated this race to his memory.

The accident also hit close to home for another top rider, Tyler Hamilton, an American who had broken his collarbone in a crash during an earlier stage of this year’s Tour.

After Armstrong cut across the field, jumped off his bike, carried it across a ditch and rejoined the main pack, Hamilton rode up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder -- his way of welcoming Armstrong back to the chase and also consoling him.

“You can’t train for that,” Armstrong said after the race. “When you see something like that happening, the first thing you think is, ‘Where am I going to go?’ I couldn’t go right, I could only go left. It was dangerous. All the corners were melting. There was asphalt, but it was bubbling.”

Observers said Armstrong’s reaction to the crash was testimony to his skills as a racer.

“What you saw, in that one move from Lance, was everything that makes Lance so great,” said Dan Osipow, an official with Armstrong’s U.S. Postal Service team. “He’s so self-assured. He never questions his moves or decisions....

“He had to have the wherewithal to know where the road went, where the pack was going, to ride to that spot, to get off his bike, get back on the road and just start riding again.”

Steve Madden, editor of Bicycling magazine, compared Armstrong’s reflexes to that of a race car driver. “And he was able to do that at the end of a stage when he’s tired,” Madden said. “Riders in a race like this aren’t looking for melting pavement. That’s not expected.”

Armstrong, 31, has already crashed once.

On July 6, at the end of the first stage, there was a 35-rider pileup.

Levi Leipheimer, another American hopeful who had finished eighth last year, broke his pelvis and was out of the race.

That’s when Hamilton, 32, who had raced with USPS until 2001, fell and was injured.

Early reports had Hamilton out of the race also. Instead he is now in fifth place, only 1:52 behind Armstrong.

“What Tyler is doing is totally amazing, Madden said. “It’s the story of the race so far in my mind. Going through those mountains, when you can’t stand up on the bike because of the pain for more than 15 or 20 seconds, when you have to stand to increase your power output, what Tyler is doing, what a testament to him and to this sport.”

After three days in the Alps, the race, which ends July 27 in Paris, heads into a relatively flat 136-mile stage today from Gap to Marseille and then into a rest day Wednesday.

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At a Glance

Highlights from Stage 9:

* Stage: Bourg d’Oisans to Gap, a 114.4-mile mountain route featuring two climbs exceeding 6,600 feet.

* Winner: Kazakhstan’s Alexandre Vinokourov, in 5 hours 2 minutes.

* How Others Fared: Four-time Tour champion Lance Armstrong placed fourth; Jan Ullrich, a Tour winner in 1997, finished fifth; Tyler Hamilton, the Team CSC rider riding with a broken collarbone, crossed in 10th. Spain’s Joseba Beloki, last year’s runner-up, crashed and did not finish the race.

* Yellow Jersey: Armstrong retains the overall lead in a time of 40 hours 15 minutes 26 seconds.

* Quote of the Day: “I was scared like never before. It was a real panic. In a moment like that, it’s a survival instinct.” -- Armstrong, recalling how he narrowly avoided a crash when Beloki fell.

* Next Stage: Gap to Marseille, a 136.1-mile, relatively flat route ending in the southern seaport city of Marseille.

* 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.