Climb to the top proves arduous
These are the little things easily forgotten during a three-year absence from bike racing: the moment when you’ve reached the top of a high climb and you have to do that climb three more times, the feel of the sun as if it were a molten hammer head knocking on your skull, the sweat running deep and your gummy hand losing its grip on the handlebar.
“Oh,” said the crowd, even the ones who had climbed trees and used a trash truck as a springboard to scamper atop the roof of a real estate building. And it was as if the entire peloton rose at once from their seats when Lance Armstrong lost control of himself for just an instant.
Armstrong didn’t fall. He didn’t win today’s second stage of the Tour Down Under either. After all the hard work of riding four loops around Stirling, up and down, up and down, up and down, and finally up to the finish, Australian Allan Davis of the Belgian Quick Step team won the 97-mile stage from Hahndorf to Stirling. Armstrong finished safely tucked into the peloton, in 45th place and feeling relaxed enough to give an unexpected 20-minute news conference afterward.
Speaking almost as if he were a head of state, Armstrong said of new United States President Barack Obama, “He brings a ton of hope and optimism, not just to the U.S. but to everybody around the world.”
And speaking as just another guy in the peloton, even one who was still working to loosen up his legs and regain his racing rhythm after 1,274 days away from racing, Armstrong said, “I feel pretty good.”
“It’s going to take awhile to adapt to race speed and today proved that,” he said. “Those long drags uphill were never my strong suit but having been out of competition, to get in this race, it’s fast, guys are strong. It’s a suffer-fest and it’s going to take me a little time.”
The top American finisher was Team Columbia’s George Hincapie, who was part of the sprint finish and came in fifth. Davis also holds the leader’s ochre jersey after two stages, by three seconds over Germany’s Andre Greipel of Team Columbia.
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