CYCLING: There was a glitch in Lance Armstrong's serene progress towards his fourth Tour de France win yesterday, but it was not something to give his rivals the slightest encouragement. All that went wrong for Armstrong as he rode to the 14th Tour stage win of his career was that he was unable to offer the stage win to his team-mate Roberto Heras.
Having set up his leader's winning attack four miles from this sunbaked mountain top, in the same emphatic style in which he launched Armstrong's stage win on Thursday, Heras sprang away from the only other rider still in contention, his fellow Spaniard Joseba Beloki, and for a few minutes, as he rode through the corridor of fans waving Basque flags, it seemed that if he might catch up with his boss.
Armstrong did not exactly slow down, but he looked back repeatedly before it became clear that Heras was not going fast enough, and so on he went, spinning his legs with the rapid cadence which the French media have nicknamed "the coffee grinder". Yesterday, everyone was again grist to his mill.
The episode merely underlines Armstrong's dominance in the mountains, which is now of the kind that the Tour has not seen since the days of Eddy Merckx, 30 years ago.
Armstrong is at pains to point out that there are nine days to come. "It takes one bad day in the mountains and you can lose everything. If you have a bad day on the Ventoux, for example, when it's very steep and hot, you can lose a lot of time."
The Ventoux is tackled tomorrow, but it is hard to see Beloki, now two minutes 28 seconds behind, achieving much without the intervention of fate.
While Armstrong bided his time until the final climb to the Plateau, the rest of yesterday's six-hour run over a series of little mountain passes in the rustic glory of the Ariege was taken up with Laurent Jalabert and Richard Virenque's battle for the hearts and minds of the French public.
Until Jalabert's surprise announcement on Tuesday that this will be his last Tour, roadside opinion - if the mood of the signs waved by the public was correctly interpreted - was divided.
Jalabert's imminent departure has struck a sentimental chord, however, and the verges of the Tour's roads have been a forest of placards with one message variously expressed: don't go Laurent.
Virenque responded yesterday, but Jalabert also had his plans for the stage. The pair both escaped early, but it was "Jaja" who ended up in front. His plan was to ride in front over the four mountains before the finish and win the measled vest which Virenque has always considered his personal property. "Jaja en pois" as one placard put it: "Jalabert in peas", a reference to the maillot a pois, as the red-spotted jersey is known.
So Jalabert raced away on the first hill, the Col de Mente, and Virenque was left chasing impotently behind for much of the stage. On the climb to the finish, Armstrong and company swept past like a TGV passing a local train, but "Jaja" is now "in peas".
The air in these valleys is supposed to have stress-reducing properties, but that did not stop a rare episode of two-wheeled road rage, when France's Christophe Moreau and Jalabert's Spanish team-mate Carlos Sastre came to blows after bumping into each other in the bunch and spent the next few seconds swapping punches. This was mere playground stuff compared to the day's killer punch, delivered by Armstrong.
