Armstrong confirms potential

The traditional Tour de France winner's lap of honour came early for Lance Armstrong, and it lasted far longer than the usual brief trip up and down the Champs Elysees. Yesterday, after the short journey from Troyes amid the period splendour of the Orient Express and the sumptuous start beneath the Eiffel Tower, the Texan proudly led the peloton at a cycle-tourist's pace for much of the first loop of the city, taking in the Seine bridges, the Louvre, and the brutally imposing Bastille Opera House.

Armstrong and the other 127 survivors of the Tour were not the only two-wheeled lycra-clad tourists here yesterday. Early in the morning 10,000 had their chance to ride the same circuit as the Tourmen, as the race's way of marking the new century. At Troyes - in the heart of champagne country - Armstrong said rather po-facedly he is not a big bubbly drinker, but yesterday he sipped a glass of fizz as he rolled along. It is fully merited.

Winning two Tours in a row is the point at which a cyclist begins to turn into one of the greats. Only seven other men have managed it since the war; they include the unmatchables such as Eddy Merckx, Miguel Indurain, Jacques Anquetil and Bernard Hinault.

Armstrong is particularly close to Merckx and Merckx is said to see his successor in the American.

The Texan has no interest in comparing himself to these men - and indeed he is not on their level - but his recovery from testicular cancer to reach these heights will always give whatever he achieves a different dimension.

Others, however, are happy to draw the comparisons Armstrong shrinks from making. "He has a calm inner strength which is reminiscent of Indurain, and external anger which is like Hinault's," says one of Big Mig's former managers, Francis Lafargue. "But after his illness, his pain threshold is higher than anyone else's."

"Bulimic in his appetite, anorexic in appearance", was the assessment of the French newspaper L'Equipe at one point, referring to Armstrong's almost skeletal thinness, but the latter is the product of the former: the process of winning this Tour began seven months ago, since when Armstrong has been on a strict programme of weight loss.

Mental force is what drives the American. "I think there are riders that are more talented physically than I am," he says. "But there are two things: talent and potential. Talent is what you are born with, potential is what you make of that talent. Maybe I have less talent and more potential. I'm willing to work hard and be a cycling fanatic." The American's manager, the Belgian Johan Bruyneel, describes Armstrong as a man who can put up with any weather. It is in part born of his cancer treatment - he has famously said that nothing the road can throw up can match the agony of chemotherapy - and perhaps, of his early years as a triathlete, forced to make the sudden transition from the heat of the run to the cold water of the swim.

It was a vital factor in this Tour: at the Hautacam finish in the Pyrenees Jan Ullrich and Marco Pantani were frozen and sodden when Armstrong launched the attack which effectively won him the race, establishing a mental stranglehold as well as gaining him the yellow jersey. It was a knockout punch and reflects the assessment of one of his team-mates, the Frenchman Cedric Vasseur: "His mental powers are almost supernatural; he has a tiger's killing eye."

All things being equal, no one, except perhaps Pantani or Ullrich, would bet against Armstrong next year joining the extremely select club of four - Merckx, Indurain, Anquetil and the Frenchman Louison Bobet - who have managed a hattrick of Tour wins. Tellingly, Armstrong began this Tour in even better physical form than in 1999, and, without the drug innuendoes of last year, he says he has ended the race without the need to recharge his mental batteries.

Sydney, where he will go for gold in the individual time trial, is already on his mind. He is the overwhelming favourite after his victory in Friday's time-trial stage win in Ullrich's back-yard, where pride demanded that Armstrong win to avoid being one of the handful of riders to take the Tour without winning a stage along the way.

In essence, this has been the fate of the German Erik Zabel, who yesterday took a record fifth successive win in the contest for the green jersey awarded for daily consistency, but spent three years without a stage win until his victory in Saturday's bunch gallop in Troyes. He was runner-up 10 times in that period, and he made it 11 yesterday as the Champs Elysees sprint went to the Italian Stefano Zanini. Paris is the finish most coveted by the fastmen, but the Dutchman Jeroen Blijlevens let his emotions get the better of him and was expelled from the race for throwing punches at the American Bobby Julich as the line approached.