Record 6th Tour Victory Within Armstrong’s Grasp

The Tour de France belongs to Lance Armstrong. Again.

Barring an extraordinary collapse, the 32-year-old Texan, who recovered from cancer to find a new focus and commitment to his sport, will get a record sixth-consecutive win in cycling’s most celebrated and grueling road race.

There are four stages to go, so officially Armstrong will have to wait until Sunday to ride down the Champs-Elysees, drinking champagne and savoring the history he has made. But it was amid a caldron of emotion that he all but won the race Wednesday during an eventful 9.6-mile trip up the L’Alpe d’Huez, the most famous mountain of the Tour, slaloming through tight quarters among the cheers and jeers of unruly fans lining the route.

Armstrong won the time trial in 39 minutes 41 seconds, increasing his lead over Ivan Basso, the 26-year-old Italian in second place, from 1:25 to 3:48 overall. More pointed, he dramatically passed Basso, who had started more than two minutes before him, about a mile before the finish line. Basso looked to his left and appeared shocked as Armstrong charged by.

“I wanted it bad because of the history around this mountain and the importance to the race,” Armstrong said. “All in all, it was a very important day. Lots of adrenaline, lots of emotion.”

For the first time, race organizers made the grueling climb, with its steep inclines and 21 dizzying switchbacks, an individual race against the clock. Riders knew they needed to cut substantially into Armstrong’s overall lead Wednesday if they had any chance of eventually catching him, and the crowd seemed to sense the urgency.

There were no barricades for the first three miles and fans had free access to the course. That left Armstrong riding through a sea of tumult, the crowd sometimes cheering him, sometimes spitting on him, sometimes touching his elbow or his back, sometimes waving a flag in his face or chasing alongside his bike.

A police motorcade tried to clear a path through a mass estimated at 1 million, but that was no more effective than trying to hold off a tidal wave with a hand.

“The crowds were animated,” Armstrong said. “Although I enjoyed my day, I still think it’s a bad idea to have a time trial on this mountain. It was a little scary, and a lot of German fans were just disgusting.”

In a time trial, the riders race by themselves. Without the usual large cluster of cycles taking up space in the road, fans were close enough to yell in a rider’s ear -- or shake a fist in his face.

In 1975, when Eddie Merckx was trying to become the first man to win a sixth Tour, a fan punched him in the stomach as he was climbing the Puy de Dome. That blow in effect ended Merckx’s challenge that year.

Armstrong has been extra cautious for a week, remembering what happened to him last year when the handlebars of his cycle snagged a fan’s bag and he was thrown to the ground during a Pyrenees climb.

Jose Luis Rubiera, one of Armstrong’s U.S. Postal Service teammates, said Wednesday’s 16th stage was a new experience -- for all the wrong reasons.

“I never saw this part of sport before,” Rubiera said. “Normally, everybody is supporting everybody else. On this climb, I saw a lot of people say not such good things. It’s probably because Lance is the strongest and maybe they want to see another cyclist win.

“Lance is the best there’s ever been and probably people are tired of that, and maybe angry.”

Besides Armstrong, four men have won five Tours -- Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault of France, Merckx of Belgium and Miguel Indurain of Spain. Only Armstrong and Indurain won theirs consecutively.

Indurain famously tried for No. 6 and failed suddenly and spectacularly when he hit the mountain stages and lost his legs. “I hit the wall,” Indurain said at the time.

Armstrong has reveled in the mountain portions, where he has won three stages, including the last two. He also was part of the U.S. Postal Service’s win in the team time trial.

Behind the second-place Basso is Andreas Kloden of Germany, 5:03 behind Armstrong, then another German, five-time runner-up Jan Ullrich, who finished the stage 61 seconds behind Armstrong and trails overall by 7:55.

Ullrich, 30, the 1997 Tour champion, made a breakaway attempt during Tuesday’s stage that was thwarted by the combined effort of the U.S. Postal Service and Basso’s Danish CSC teams.

That failure may have sparked bad behavior a day later from some German fans, and Armstrong wasn’t the only rider to complain.

Robbie McEwen, an Australian, said he had been frightened. Jens Voigt, a German riding for CSC, told several people that he also had been taunted and booed by German fans.

Frankie Andreu, a former competitor for a U.S.-based team, said he thought the fan behavior was because of disappointment about Ullrich’s faltering more than about Armstrong.

“I don’t think it was anti-Lance or anti-Postal,” Andreu said. “Voigt said he was spit on because his team had helped pull back Ullrich Tuesday.”

There were other trouble spots before Wednesday. Last weekend in the Pyrenees, where French and Spanish Basque fans climbed the hillsides, Armstrong was spit upon and booed on the podium Sunday when he won the Plateau de Beille stage. Also, riders on the U.S. Postal Service bus had been heckled as they entered Carcassonne for the start of that stage.

Although the road climbing to L’Alpe d’Huez summit was painted by fans from Holland, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Germany and France, mostly showing support for the cyclists, near the finish line someone had written “EPO LANCE” in large white letters, a reference to long-running suspicions that Armstrong must be using the blood-doping drug. At another place, someone had painted an obscene reference to Armstrong’s girlfriend, rock singer Sheryl Crow.

Armstrong has been tested for drugs more often than any cyclist in the Tour during the last four years and has never tested positive.

In 2000 and 2001, French fans yelled “doper” as Armstrong climbed mountains.

But now, most have come to respect Armstrong’s love of their race and his dedication to training to win it.

Armstrong seems more than willing to meet them halfway.

“France has made my career as a cyclist,” he said. “I love it for a lot of things -- the beauty, the history, the intelligence of its people. If somebody asks what is my favorite country, I say that besides Texas, the U.S., it’s France. I respect the people and I respect their views on life.”

There are two remaining stages in the Alps, including today’s ride with five hard climbs, plus a flat time trial Saturday. And then there will be what is almost always a ceremonial ride into Paris on Sunday.

While Basso was saying Armstrong was by far the strongest rider this year, and Ullrich was left to say he just hoped to make the podium -- the top three -- this time, Andreu summed up what would happen the rest of the way: “Lance will coast into Paris,” he said.