Rival’s Spill Gives Lead to Armstrong

With his head down and legs pumping, David Zabriskie sped through the curving streets of this town of 50,000 on the Loire River on Tuesday, seemingly on his way to retaining the yellow jersey and placing a bump in the path of his renowned American countryman, Lance Armstrong.

But with the finish line less than a mile ahead, disaster struck: Zabriskie crashed at more than 30 mph. And although he managed to complete the race, the damage was done.

Zabriskie had lost his overall lead, and Armstrong’s Discovery Channel team won the fourth stage of the 92nd Tour de France by two seconds over Zabriskie’s CSC team. That gave Armstrong the yellow jersey for the first time in this year’s Tour, as he seeks an unprecedented seventh consecutive victory before retiring.

The dramatic outcome gave Armstrong a 55-second overall lead over his teammate George Hincapie. German Jens Voight of CSC is third, and American Bobby Julich, also of CSC, is fourth.

Armstrong won the yellow jersey six times during last year’s Tour, the first time in stage four -- the team time trial, in which each nine-man team rides as a single-file unit, with members taking turns in the lead to ensure fresh legs and lungs.

The time for each team’s fifth-best finisher is recognized as its official result, and is added to the individuals’ overall totals.

It is the only team time trial in the 21-stage, 2,242-mile Tour.

“It’s always nice to be in yellow,” said Armstrong, 33. “But there are three or four flat stages coming, so it will not be easy to defend the jersey.”

Zabriskie, an unassuming 26-year-old from Salt Lake City, had worn the coveted leader’s jersey since Saturday’s opening stage. Going into Tuesday’s team time trial, he led Armstrong by two seconds, but then came the crash.

“He may have been elbowed by a spectator,” said Bryan Nygaard, a spokesman for the CSC team. The Outdoor Life Network’s video seemed to show that Zabriskie’s front wheel touched the wheel of another bike.

He staggered up, his left arm and leg bloody and raw. Using a replacement bike, Zabriskie wobbled as he tried to get started, then got a push and managed to finish the race.

Zabriskie, who dropped to ninth place, was taken by ambulance to a hospital for X-rays of his left knee, elbow and rib cage. There were no fractures, and Nygaard said Zabriskie would ride today’s 113.7-mile stage between the chateau town Chambord and Montargis, an industrial center south of Paris.

The other pre-race favorites are now dangerously far behind the Tour’s grandest rider.

Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan, a member of the T-Mobile team, is seventh. Five-time runner-up Jan Ullrich of Germany, also of T-Mobile, is 14th. Floyd Landis, Armstrong’s teammate last year, had bragged that his Phonak squad would dethrone Discovery Channel. Phonak is fifth, and Landis is 20th.

Armstrong called this time trial “stressful.” Though he gained fewer seconds than he might in the mountains, the team victory was seen as a psychological boost.

There were whispers that Discovery -- missing Viatcheslav Ekimov, who hurt his back this spring, and Landis, who abandoned Armstrong’s team last fall to become leader of Phonak -- was vulnerable this year.

But the two new members, Ukrainian Yaroslav Popovych and Italian Paolo Savoldelli, have stepped up. “Popo was unbelievable. That kid is a gamer. He was flying. I think he performed his role with a bit of Eki’s spirit,” Armstrong said, referring to Ekimov.

CSC had led Discovery Channel at both of the timing checkpoints along 41.85 miles from Tours to Blois, and seemed to be in a strong position before Zabriskie’s spill.

CSC sports director Bjarn Riis, a former Tour winner, called it “tragic” for his team.

“It was completely bad luck,” he said. “We are the most unlucky team. We were so close to winning this stage that we wanted more than anything. I thought that it was luck for Discovery Channel to win. And Dave Zabriskie is a devastated young man. He said all of a sudden someone elbowed him. We don’t know.”

Discovery Channel finished the stage in 1 hour, 10 minutes, 39 seconds, setting a team time trial speed record with an average of 35.54 mph, surpassing the 34.06 mph set by Gewiss, a Swiss team, in 1995.

“The team time trial is a very passionate event, a very hard event,” Armstrong said. “At the end, everybody is on the limit, everybody is a little bit cross-eyed. You come into the city, there are lots of turns, and you get the whipping wind and it’s easy to make a mistake. So I can clearly see how it happened for Dave, but it’s also clearly a bad one for him.”

The first question asked of Armstrong and team director Johan Bruyneel was whether Discovery would fight hard to keep Armstrong in yellow from now until the final stage July 24.

Bruyneel said that winning the team time trial offered him more options now. “The advantage is, we have a lot of guys in good position,” he said. “We may try to keep the jersey, but it may not be Lance in it every day.”

Such an effort would be tremendously energy-sapping, given that the Tour’s outcome will probably be determined in the mountain stages beginning next week in the Alps.

“We’ll think about it,” Armstrong said. “But there’s no point in wearing everybody out before the mountains.”

He will pull on the yellow jersey today for the 66th time in his career. He cautioned that there is much racing ahead, with plenty of opportunity for things to go wrong.

“Anything can happen. Crashes here, crashes there,” he said. “Especially the stages in the next few days, which can be tricky. We saw what happened today. It’s still nerve-racking.”

Armstrong said the only time he felt confident was two years ago when he ultimately won by only 61 seconds over Ullrich. “I’m nervous, I’m insecure,” he said. “That means I’m hungry.”

That 2003 victory came, in large part, because his team had carved a working margin in the time trial. The precious seconds earned Tuesday could carry similar weight.