Armstrong unrivalled

CYCLING: On Friday, to welcome the Tour de France, the inhabitants of a small village between the Rhone and the Alps erected a series of life-size chipboard cut-out cyclists on the verge approaching the hamlet's cluster of houses and a church. Each bore a Tour winner's name and the year or years in which he won the Tour. The 2002 cut-out had a question mark instead of a name, writes William Fotheringham

In fact that question mark had been superfluous for more than a week, since Lance Armstrong won the first of the Tour's two Pyrenean stages at La Mongie.

Armstrong's fourth Tour victory had the same feeling of inevitability which accompanied those of Miguel Indurain. Just as the great Basque made a tradition of taking an unassailable lead on the first long time-trial stage, so Armstrong has taken the psychological whip hand in the first mountain stage of each of his four Tour triumphs.

Since he began winning the Tour, only two men have caused Armstrong any difficulty: the Italian Marco Pantani in 2000, and Jan Ullrich, who remained in touch last year and tried to put the American under pressure. Neither was present this year, and it remains doubtful whether either will race the Tour again.

No rival of stature appeared this year: the Basque Joseba Beloki's two attempts to attack Armstrong, on Mont Ventoux and at Les Deux Alpes, were brushed aside. A handlebar in Armstrong's back wheel at Avranches a week in, which cost him 27 seconds, was probably a greater worry.

Armstrong admits he is more conservative now, and some say his style recalls that of Jacques Anquetil, as he hoards the seconds and minutes like a shopper with vouchers for a penny off this and that but never attempts a killer punch such as Indurain, Eddy Merckx or Hinault might.

For all that, each of his Tours has been won in the mountains. Even Armstrong's biggest fan in the pantheon, Merckx, says his strategy of leaving everything to the final climb to the finish is not that of one of the great climbers, a Charly Gaul or a Pantani, who would gamble on an all-or-nothing attack several passes from the finish.

In 2003, to celebrate its centenary year, the Tour will start in Paris, with the opening time-trial around the Stade de France and the first stage start outside the Reveil Matin cafe in the suburb of Montgeron, where the first Tour started in 1903. This grand commemorative route will visit the same stage towns as the first Tour: Lyon, Marseille, Toulouse, Bordeaux and Nantes, and cross all the most legendary mountain passes: the Izoard and Galibier in the Alps, the Tourmalet in the Pyrenees.

In that historic year, Armstrong will be bidding for his fifth consecutive win to equal Indurain, Merckx, Hinault and Anquetil. As far as Merckx is concerned, he feels the American could take five or perhaps even six.

Not all those in the cycling world feel Armstrong will eventually be awarded a place on the same iconic level as that famous four. The most experienced and successful team manager in the sport, Giancarlo Ferretti, raced Anquetil and Merckx and has run teams for a quarter of century, through the Indurain and Hinault years. He is not an Armstrong fan.

"In 10 or 15 years, even if he wins it five times, Armstrong will be remembered as a rider who only won the Tour de France," he says. "Merckx and Hinault won everything, one-day classics and other tours, and Indurain won the Giro d'Italia and Tour double twice."

Ferretti believes Armstrong's exclusive focus on the Tour is bad for cycling as it distorts the sport's entire calendar. Merckx, on the other hand, feels Armstrong has no commercial need to ride in other races, so why should he?

If Armstrong's Tour win last year was blighted by the revelation of his collaboration with the controversial trainer Michele Ferrari, this year saw another unprecedented subtext: the Texan's persistent verbal attacks on spectators accusing him of doping. In one interview, Armstrong estimated their number at "about 20 per cent" - a sizeable minority given the masses that line the route.

This seems a bizarre claim to make seriously, because in the 2,000 miles Tour there have been just two mild roadside displays of what could be construed as anti-Armstrong sentiment: a sign on Mont Ventoux reading "Lance = Ferrari" - which could be taken either of two ways - and an arrow on the road near Bourg-en-Bresse on Friday implying he should go straight on while his fellow competitors went left.

All that hardly rates as overt hostility, and in Saturday's time-trial in the Beaujolais region the bulk of the stars and stripes being waved along the course belonged to French spectators. He returned to the topic again on Saturday, linking the roadside comments to the reports in the press of his links with Dr Ferrari.

Armstrong said: "Mont Ventoux was the worst day, but it wasn't 100 per cent of people, and after that it changed - not that it stopped, but people were different in the Alps. Guys (in the press) say 'He came back from cancer, he never did this before, he never did that before, he's doped' (and) it's the same mentality, a sick mentality."

Guardian Service