Allessandro Petacchi wins another stage at Tour de France

Reporting from Reims, France — It was almost an OK day for Lance Armstrong.

He had no flat tires, no falls, nothing unexpected during Wednesday’s Stage 4 of the Tour de France. The route was flat and simple and contested mostly at the finish line when 36-year-old Italian Alessandro Petacchi outsprinted everyone and won the 95.3-mile ride that had begun in Cambrai, France, and finished here in the capital of the Champagne region.

Then came the unexpected. A heckler.

After the race, Armstrong stood near the RadioShack team bus and explained to reporters what his simple plan had been for Wednesday. “I didn’t want to have a third day in a row of bad luck,” he said.

Then he was asked about his bad luck, most notably a flat tire Tuesday on the rough cobblestones that caused him to drop time.

“You just deal with it, make it happen,” the seven-time champion said. “There are always crashes; days like yesterday are so extreme there’s nothing you can do.”

Suddenly, a fan began screaming insults at him in French, calling him a cheater and a doper.

The Tour de France, as with all cycling races, allows fans to crowd the team buses. Usually, they are scrambling for autographs and photos of the riders. But when this man yelled his insults, Armstrong stopped talking and quickly climbed aboard the bus.

It was a different scene at the beginning of Stage 4, when he received a loud ovation from the fans.

Armstrong has been dogged by allegations of doping almost from the time he won his first championship in Paris in 1999. Then in May, former teammate Floyd Landis, who was stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title for doping, accused him of participating in doping programs when Armstrong was riding for the U.S. Postal Service team. Armstrong has dismissed the charges as having no merit.

On Wednesday, with Armstrong and the overall leaders taking a collective deep breath and settling for safety rather than sprinting, Petacchi finished with his head down and his bike inches ahead of everyone else’s.

Everyone else included Columbia- HTC’s Mark Cavendish, who is known as an excellent sprinter and won six stages at last year’s tour but is empty-handed so far this year. After he finished 12th, Cavendish went to the Columbia team bus and threw his bike on the ground and stomped into the trailer, red-faced and angry.

The overall leader’s yellow jersey was kept by Switzerland’s Fabian Cancellara, and no shifting took place among the contenders for the ultimate prize.

Armstrong remained in 18th place overall, 2 minutes 30 seconds behind Cancellara, who rides for Saxo Bank. Cadel Evans, the 2007 runner-up, is third overall, 39 seconds out of the lead, riding for the new BMC Racing team that is coached by former Armstrong mentor Jim Ochowicz.

Last year’s runner-up, Andy Schleck, remains in sixth place overall, 1:09 behind teammate Cancellara, with defending champion Alberto Contador of Astana still ninth, 1:40 out of the lead.

Second in Wednesday’s stage was Julian Dean of the American Garmin-Transitions team. Dean was in the hospital after Monday’s crash-filled racing, which cost the team its most prominent overall contender, Christian Vande Velde, who had to quit because of broken ribs. The team’s top sprinter, Tyler Farrar, is still in the race but with a broken wrist.

“I’m over the moon to achieve this, but I wish I had been 100%,” a still bruised and sore Dean said. “I feel like maybe I could have won.”

Thursday’s 116.5-mile stage, from Epernay to Montargis in France, will be much like Wednesday’s, mostly flat and offering opportunities for sprinters. From the looks of things, Cavendish is going to need a new bike if he’s going to get his first stage win this year.

diane.pucin@latimes.com

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