Re-Cycle: Fear and fury - Lance Armstrong’s Tour-saving ascent of Luz Ardiden in 2003
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Updated 09/09/2021 at 14:06 GMT
Few Tour de France stages have caught the imagination quite like the day Lance Armstrong crashed on Luz Ardiden before fighting back for victory. Felix Lowe rewinds the clock to 2003 for Re-Cycle, and the extraordinary centenary Tour tussle between Armstrong and Jan Ullrich.
Lance Armstrong pursues Jan Ullrich
Image credit: Getty Images
The Yellow Jersey of Lance Armstrong, the Euskaltel orange of Iban Mayo, the celeste Bianchi blue of Jan Ullrich, the electric pink of Alexandre Vinokourov's Team Telekom: even the vibrant colours of the 2003 Tour de France, the 100th anniversary edition played out during a fierce European heatwave, set the race apart.
Before it became a mere asterisk, the American's record-equalling fifth Tour triumph was a race for the ages. The hardest fought of Armstrong's GC wins, and one equally filled with intrigue and controversy. Stage 15 to Luz Ardiden was, in particular, according to author Richard Moore, "arguably the most dramatic and important single stage in his seven Tours".
Even before the peloton rolled out of Bagnères-de-Bigorre that morning for the third successive day in the Pyrenees, the champion elect had been racked by tensions and doubt. Armstrong, then 31, had bounced back from illness, overcome numerous mechanical glitches, and even dodged a tumbling rival on a sinuous descent – narrowly avoiding a ditch, and disaster, he briefly turned the Tour into a cyclocross event when he was forced to scythe through a field before rejoining the race.
With the mercury rising above the 30-degree mark yet again, Armstrong entered the Queen Stage of the race with a sense of precariousness unknown to him since his first comeback win in 1999. Just 18 seconds separated the top three in the General Classification – the closest margin ever at this point in a Tour.
When his Yellow Jersey rivals Vinokourov and Ullrich put in early attacks on the Tourmalet, Armstrong had to dig deeper than ever. Back in control, and with Mayo clinging to his wheel, he attacked on the final climb – only to collapse to the floor after snaring his handlebars on a young spectator's bag.
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Tour de France 2003, Luz-Ardiden: Lance Armstrong, Iban Mayo, Jan Ullrich
Image credit: Getty Images
As yellow brought down orange, celeste blue rode clear, uncertain of his calling on the final climb to Luz Ardiden. What happened next was one of Armstrong's most stirring performances – and the most exciting at the Tour since another American, Greg LeMond, defeated Laurent Fignon by just eight seconds in 1989.
Setting the scene: no Mayo with Armstrong's chips
The background behind the tangle of bikes that sent Armstrong and the Basque climber Iban Mayo sprawling on Luz Ardiden can be traced back to the Critérium du Dauphiné earlier that summer.
The Dauphiné was Armstrong's pre-Tour rendez vous of choice and he led the race that year after winning the Stage 3 time trial. His biggest threat came from the unpredictable and erratic Mayo, a rider whom Armstrong disliked, famously describing him as a "little punk".
In Richard Moore's book Étape, written well after Armstrong's empire had come crumbling down, the American told the British journalist that: "We were all sort of… dirty, but I viewed [Mayo] as being a lot dirtier than us."
Armstrong always knew where he stood with Ullrich, a cargo ship of a rider who relied on buckets of coal, brute force, and those trademark metronomic surges in the big ring. But Mayo was different. Lithe and enigmatic, the Spaniard was a jack-in-the-box. Persistent as a fly yet prone to implosion, Mayo revelled in explosive attacks and the element of surprise. Like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates, you never knew what you were going to get.
While in yellow in the Dauphiné, Armstrong crashed badly but refused to give up because Mayo was breathing down his neck in second place. His dislike of the Euskaltel rider was so intense that he couldn't bear gifting him the overall victory by pulling out.
"So I stayed in," Armstrong told Moore during a round of golf. "And he kept attacking me, attacking me hard on the Galibier. And it just f***ing killed me to stay with him… but I wasn't going to let this little punk win."
When Armstrong caught Mayo on the Galibier on the penultimate stage, he gave him ‘The Look’ which he'd famously used to intimidate Ullrich on Alpe d'Huez in the 2001 Tour.
A day later, on the final stage, Armstrong couldn't resist riding up to Mayo and saying: "Iban, can't you go a bit harder than that?" It was a question he repeated after closing down every attack his rival put in; a question that, a month later at the Tour, he'd probably regret asking.
Armstrong ended up winning the Dauphiné, but at a huge mental and physical cost. "It took too much out of me," he told Moore. "I had two weeks between the Dauphiné and the Tour. And I just didn't recover. I came into the Tour behind, and tired and depleted."
The Texan arrived in Paris for the Grand Départ still pretty bashed up from his crash and off the back of a week grappling with gastroenteritis.
Ahead of the team presentation, a bird flew into the US Postal team bus and left a deposit on sporting director Johan Bruyneel's suit. Armstrong recalled how his Czech teammate Pavel Padrnos immediately said it was a bad omen. He was not wrong, with numerous technical glitches dogging the team over the opening week, including brake rims rubbing on tyres and front wheels coming loose.
More pressing at the time, however, was Armstrong's inability to walk. Owing to new shoes and a problem with his cleats, his hip was giving him additional gip and his leg totally seized up ahead of the prologue. He still managed a solid seventh place, but he could barely walk without a limp and his bid for a fifth Tour win had got off to a stuttering start.
The American found his feet during the early flat stages, however, and in the monster 69km team time trial on Stage 4, with a resounding victory by more than 30 seconds over their nearest rivals, ONCE-Eroski. It moved Armstrong up to second place and saw US Postal riders occupying the top eight places on GC, with Colombia's Victor Hugo Peña in yellow. It all seemed like business as usual for Bruyneel's boys.
A splendid solo win for Richard Virenque at Morzine in the first stage in the Alps saw the Frenchman take the race lead as the favourites marked each other out. Then came Stage 8 and Alpe d'Huez, where that man Mayo came into his own, soloing to victory by more than two minutes on Armstrong, who made do with the Yellow Jersey.
The sweltering switchbacks took their toll on Ullrich, however, the German juggernaut wilting in the heat and coming in nearly a minute-and-a-half down on the American. In hindsight, Armstrong would regret not putting Ullrich to the sword while he had the chance: the German might have been 2'10" down on GC, but he was still in the race.
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Iban Mayo, Alpe d'Huez 2003.
Image credit: Imago
Armstrong’s evasive action
Stage 9 to Gap gave us the moment that Armstrong's dreams could have ended up in a ditch. Shadowing Josepa Beloki on the treacherous final descent of the Côte de la Rochette, Armstrong was forced off the road on a tight hairpin after the Spaniard hit the deck at top speed, his front tyre exploding in the melted tarmac.
Armstrong somehow managed to pick a gap between a lingering gendarme and a roadside ditch before cutting across a parched field with a bit of impromptu cyclo-cross in order to rejoin the road after the bend. As Moore says in Étape:
"It was an incident that encapsulated Armstrong's good fortune and skill: an extraordinary near-miss and an equally extraordinary demonstration of improvisation, not to mention bike-handling ability."
Beloki, however, was not so lucky. Third in 2001 and second in 2002, the ONCE rider looked even stronger in 2003. But the horrific crash saw him fracture his femur in two places and break both his elbow and wrist. He left the Tour in tears in the back of an ambulance. He would never be the same rider again.
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CYCLING 2003 Tour de France 2003 Armstrong Beloki
Image credit: Reuters
The incident took place just four kilometres from the finish, with the pair in hot pursuit of the Kazakh livewire Vinokourov, who held on for a victory that put him into second place in the standings, 21 seconds down on the Texan.
It was Armstrong's third near miss of the race. "I was very afraid, and I was very lucky," he admitted. He even avoided a penalty, despite breaking Article 18 of the Tour's rules, which forbids taking shortcuts from the official course.
The next GC showdown was not until the 47km individual time trial from Gaillac to Cap Découverte, where Ullrich came roaring back into contention. Having survived Alpe d'Huez, the German pulverised the field across the Tarn landscape and under a scorching sun.
Speaking after the 2003 Tour, Armstrong described this off-day as "a moment of intense suffering, the likes of which I've experienced very rarely in my career. I was at the bottom of a deep hole."
Usually so adept against the clock, the frazzled Texan conceded a whopping 1'36" to his rival as Ullrich rode himself to within 34 seconds of the race lead.
"When I heard Ullrich's time, I said to myself, 'The Tour's over.' At that moment, I was in crisis, a deep crisis, almost giving up."
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Jan Ullrich 2003
Image credit: Getty Images
It got worse. The next day, at the ski resort of Ax 3 Domaines on the first stage in the Pyrenees, Armstrong lost another seven seconds – and 12 bonus seconds – to Ullrich, who now trailed the Yellow Jersey by just 15 seconds. Armstrong told reporters that "something is not clicking".
The same could be said of the following day’s Stage 14 to Loudenvielle, where Armstrong conceded more time to both Mayo and Vinokourov, who was now 18 seconds down on GC. With Ullrich still at 15 seconds, it was the tightest virtual podium the Tour has ever seen entering the final week.
It looked like everything would come down to the final day in the Pyrenees – the race’s 159.5km-long Queen Stage, which featured the Col d'Aspin and the mighty Tourmalet ahead of the final slog to Luz Ardiden. In an unprecedented scenario for the American, he entered the final week with both Ullrich and Vinokourov within touching distance of his crown.
Then something happened ahead of the Stage 15 start in Bagnères-de-Bigorre that made Armstrong's blood boil. As he recalled shortly after the Tour:
"The morning of Luz Ardiden, one of the boys who works for us at the Tour told me a story. He told me that a year ago, Rudy Pevenage [Ullrich's directeur sportif] asked him for one of my Yellow Jerseys, and that he'd asked again at Paris. And then, he said that the morning before Ax 3 Domaines, Pevenage went to see him and said: 'Oh, you can forget that Yellow Jersey. We'll have our own pretty soon.'
"When I heard that, I told him: 'The Tour's finished! He'll never have it.' It really, really, really motivated me. I went crazy – completely crazy. It was really a profound moment for me, because I felt personally hurt. So it became a challenge."
Stage 15: Chavanel’s early break
And, so, to the fateful day. The remaining 151 riders rolled out of Bagnères-de-Bigorre after a minute's silence to commemorate Lauri Aus, the Ag2R rider who had been killed by a drunk driver the day before while out training near his home in Estonia.
An early move of 15 riders – including four Ag2R riders – went clear after 15km, but they were reeled in soon after Sylvain Chavanel (La Boulangère) and Santiago Botero (Telekom) edged clear on the succession of leg-stretching fourth-category climbs that preceded the high mountains.
The leading duo crested the summit of the Col d'Aspin with almost six minutes on a single chasing rider and slightly more than nine minutes on the main pack, led over the top by Virenque to consolidate his grip on the Polka-Dot Jersey.
Riding his third Tour, Chavanel had finished third in Morzine the day Virenque had gone into yellow with his swashbuckling solo attack. The 24-year-old was one of the rising stars of French cycling and he had the courage – or foolhardiness – to shed his Colombian colleague at the base of the Col du Tourmalet.
Thousands of lively Basque fans – most kitted out in orange and flying the red-and-green Basque flag – had flocked to the legendary peak to support their main man, Mayo. The mercurial climber had already won on Dutch Mountain and was up to fifth place on GC – albeit 4'37" down on the American rider who couldn't stand him.
If Chavanel was able to fight through these crazed fans to secure the Souvenir Jacques Goddet for being the first over the Tourmalet, the real battle had kicked off further down the mountain – and what they saw pleased those Basque fans plenty.
The vultures gather
It was Vinokourov who made the first move on the Tourmalet, dancing clear with an early attack that was quickly closed down by Armstrong. But then a dig from Mayo and series of grinding accelerations from Ullrich put Armstrong under the cosh.
Measuring his efforts, Armstrong allowed Ullrich to go clear, doing enough to keep the gap at around 50m in the heat and haze of the Pyrenean cauldron.
Speaking to Moore, Mayo recalled the flurry of activity: "I attacked, then Ullrich came across and went for it, then there was [Haimar] Zubeldia and Armstrong behind. At one point Ullrich was ahead, then Armstrong was 50m back, then me another 50m back, then Zubeldia. I remember thinking, Ullrich should stop. Finally he did, and the four of us joined together."
For his part, Armstrong felt Ullrich had gone way too early, what with there being more than 40km remaining, including the long descent and final climb. So, he kept his rival dangling, revelling in the idea that Ullrich might be digging his own grave. As he told Moore:
He was going fast, he was going hard, it was hard for me to keep him at a stable distance, but it was better that I let him burn some matches on the Tourmalet so that he didn't have 'em on Luz Ardiden.
Armstrong would later explain just how much he felt Ullrich was shooting himself in the foot in a brutal assessment that highlighted the lingering antipathy towards Pevenage, the Bianchi directeur sportive, as much as it did his own pride.
"I said to myself: 'Big mistake – huge mistake.' But that was the responsibility of his directeur sportif in the car. If Johan [Bruyneel] had seen me go like that, he'd have shouted: 'What do you think you're doing? Where are you going? Are you nuts?' It's not a village criterium, it's the Tour de France. Their arrogance made them lose, because they were sure I wouldn't be able to follow. But I'm not just anyone – I'm not some sh**ty rider."
Ullrich was caught by Armstrong as well as the Euskaltel duo Mayo and Zubeldia before the summit. The quartet broke through the clouds and into the sun in the next valley before Armstrong and Ullrich eased up, much to the annoyance of Mayo, opening the door to the other chasers – the likes of Vinokourov, Ivan Basso, Tyler Hamilton, Carlos Sastre and Christophe Moreau.
The crash
After the long descent, the chase came back together as the race passed through Luz-Saint-Sauveur on the pre-amble to the final climb. Lone ranger Chavanel hit the final 15km climb with a gap of 4'49" on the Armstrong group, which was being driven by the American's teammate Manuel Beltran.
Under the old regulations, riders were allowed to discard their helmets for the final climb – so viewers at home and on the side of the road could identify the protagonists more easily. They could also see, up close, the awesome effort and range of emotions etched across the riders’ faces.
Shortly after the climb to Luz Ardiden started Mayo hit the front and put in a series of attacks. Armstrong looked to have recovered from his slight wobble on the Tourmalet. He chased down his bete noir, caught him – "Is that all you've got, Iban?" – then zipped on as Ullrich struggled behind. A gap was opening and the American sensed this could be the pivotal moment.
Hugging the right-hand side of the road, Armstrong darted clear out of the saddle, driving down hard on the pedals as Mayo dug deep to hold his wheel and Ullrich, driving a big gear, grimaced as he slowly closed in.
"I was too close to the side, which I had a tendency to do," Armstrong later told Moore. "A lot of times in time trials, Johan would say over the radio: 'Watch the f***ing side of the road. There's debris over there; there are people there.' I was always trying to get as close to the side as I could because any kind of protection from the wind is good. But who knows, some lunatic… This was no different to normal. I just got too close."
One of the many fans lining the road of the final climb was no lunatic, but a young boy whose parents had bought a yellow commemorative musette from a stand at the top of the climb. The boy was waving this bag like a flag as the world's most famous bike racer surged past chomping at the bit.
Bam! Down Armstrong went. He collapsed in a heap, taking down Mayo with him in an orange-and-yellow tangle. Replays showed that he caught the hood of his right handlebar on the boy's musette, which catapulted the then four-time Tour winner to the tarmac.
Ullrich's eyes widened. A few metres further back, he just had enough time to veer dramatically to his left, avoiding his sprawling rivals by a whisker – showing the same dexterous reactions as Armstrong had a week earlier to avoid Beloki. The German rode on, confused as much as the commentators, looking behind him to see what had happened.
Speaking after the Tour, Armstrong recalled his reaction to the fall: "I said to myself: 'S**t! This can't be happening! Not now!' At the time, I didn't think about the time loss; I thought about the state of my bike, if I needed to change it or if I could carry on with it. I tried to get up as quickly as I could, saw I wasn't hurt, apart from a cut on my elbow, checked the bike over, put the chain back on and set off. At times like that, instinct takes over."
As Armstrong and Mayo got to their feet and inspected their bikes, a wave of riders passed by – including Zubeldia, Hamilton, Basso and Moreau. Mayo was quicker to get going again, while Armstrong sorted out an issue with his chain before issuing a stern rebuke towards his mechanic who had stopped to give him a push start.
Commentating on the stage, the late Paul Sherwen explained the situation: "Ullrich is now in first place. I can't believe he will take advantage of this. He's looking over his shoulders. He knows there's a possibility of winning the Tour de France right now, but he's not sure what's happening."
Ullrich's indecisiveness on the front was given a helping hand by Hamilton. A former teammate of Armstrong, the American CSC rider, who was competing with a broken collarbone after a nasty fall in the opening week, gestured for the German and the Italian Basso to slow down. It was Hamilton, too, who had slowed during the earlier descent to Gap to check his compatriot was alright after he rejoined the road following Beloki's crash.
If it was widely held that Hamilton's actions were inspired by a sense of fair play, to honour cycling's unwritten rules, Mayo had another theory. Speaking to Moore, the climber later said: "I was up the quickest and rejoined the group ahead of Armstrong, and Hamilton was there, saying we should wait for Armstrong. Hamilton wasn't on a good day, that is my impression."
After the stage, Ullrich claimed he had been correct not to attack following the incident. Armstrong, at least initially, was appreciative of his rival's reaction, saying it was "the gesture of a gentleman".
"I'm really grateful for Jan for remembering my gesture of two years ago," he said, referring to the time he had slowed down for Ullrich when he crashed on the descent of the Col de Peyresourde in the 2001 Tour. "What goes around, comes around," Armstrong added.
But after studying the footage of the crash much later on, Armstrong could not resist criticising Ullrich for his indecision and the fact that it took Hamilton's intervention for the German to take his foot off the gas. Moore elaborates: "Armstrong believed most if not all of his rivals were doping. That was okay. Taking advantage of a rival's misfortune on the road was not. There was, after all, honour among thieves."
Armstrong’s adrenaline surge
Meanwhile, the drama was far from over. "It's complete and utter chaos as the back end of the bike race," said Sherwen for the American and UK audiences.
As Armstrong battled to return to the fold, dancing on the pedals to close the gap, Phil Liggett chipped in: "The adrenaline will be pumping now like you will not believe. He's got to control it, otherwise he will take himself over the top."
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Lance Armstrong of the USA
Image credit: Eurosport
Then he did just that – taking himself over the top, and almost onto the ground again. Pushing the pedals with such ferocity as he surged past Mayo, the American was caught short when his chain jumped and his pedals unclipped, forcing him to slump onto his top tube and over the handlebars like a drunk man making a getaway on a stolen bike.
Somehow, he managed to keep his balance – and somehow, Mayo avoided being brought down by the Yellow Jersey for a second time in as many minutes. "Oh, what is going on?!" cried an incredulous Liggett.
What exactly was going on Armstrong would not learn until after the stage, when he inspected his Trek more closely. It turned out that the chainstay area was cracked and bottom bracket compromised; his bike was a ticking time bomb; what happened might have never been.
At the time, however, Armstrong had no option other than battle on with what he had. Changing bikes was inconceivable. He couldn't give Ullrich any more time ahead of the final time trial, especially given how the German had destroyed him at Cap Découverte. So, despite his crash and subsequent near-miss, Armstrong continued going deep into the red to salvage his race.
By now, Mayo had caught up with the leaders just around the time Hamilton was urging the dual diesel engines of Ullrich and Basso to drop down a gear. Having twice been compromised by the American, Mayo had no appetite to wait up. Could you blame him?
Behind, Armstrong had been joined by teammate Chechu Rubiera, who helped pace his leader back into the fold. Speaking into his earpiece, Bruyneel urged Armstrong to ride with the others, to recover and find a rhythm. But the adrenaline was pumping, and Armstrong was riding on pure fury.
When That Little Punk Mayo put in another attack, Armstrong reeled him in and gave him the famous look as he passed. Sherwen again:
And he's going again, Phil. He's accelerated again – this is amazing. The man has been on the ground, he almost lost his manhood on the crossbars a few moments ago, and he's decided he wants to go! This is fabulous, it's unbelievable… the man was on the ground, he's had problems with his pedals. And he's now decided to go out on the attack and put Ullrich on the offensive.
With Mayo dropping back, Armstrong continued in pursuit of the only man left up the road – Sylvain Chavanel. He pushed his glasses onto the top of his head, revealing a crazed glare. His Yellow Jersey scuffed and his bloody elbow grazed, the Texan's face was a picture of angry determination.
"My attack was made in desperation," Armstrong said looking back at that Tour. "I felt a huge rush of adrenaline. I said to myself: 'Lance, if you want to win the Tour, you better attack.'"
Unable to keep up, Mayo was swallowed up by the Ullrich group. As the German trailed Armstrong by just 15 seconds on GC, it was left to Ullrich to do all the work. With his helmet off, his weather-beaten brow, pained face and the hoop earring in his left ear were all the more visible. He was compelled to do all the chasing, sandbagged by the likes of Hamilton, Basso and the Basques.
The last man standing from the break, Chavanel's four-minute gap had vanished over the course of the climb. Having spent 120km on the front, the Frenchman was caught with 4.5km remaining – the turbo-charged Armstrong tapping his colleague on his flank as he blew past.
That evening, Chavanel, after finishing 10th in the stage, would tell French TV: "It's true that I believed I could win at one point. But when I heard that it was Armstrong leading the chase behind, well, four minutes disappears fast. I turned and could see him coming. He gave me a tap as he passed which I thought was nice. He didn't say anything – he didn't have the time, given the fury he was in."
No rest for the wicked. Armstrong continued to bury himself all the way to the line, which was met with the kind of lunge you'd expect in a sprint finish, and no celebration whatsoever. Having contributed little to the chase, Mayo, despite being minutes down on GC, pointedly outkicked Ullrich for second place, 40 seconds in arrears.
Zubeldia was fourth ahead of Moreau, Basso and Hamilton, with Vinokourov two minutes back and Rubiera completing the top 10 with the gutsy Chavanel.
Victory, plucked from the jaws of catastrophe, increased Armstrong's lead to 1'07" over Ullrich, giving him a vital cushion ahead of the deciding time trial. And if the American looked like a man possessed on the bike, then his frenzy continued long after the stage was over.
That evening, instead of taking a private car to the team hotel, a jubilant Armstrong boarded the bus with his US Postal teammates. "It was the most euphoric day for Lance since I've known him," his teammate Victor Hugo Peña told Moore.
I've seen him happy before, but never like this. He stormed up and down the aisle, punching seats and shouting, 'No one trains like me. No one rides like me. This jersey's mine. I live for this jersey. It's my life. No one's taking it away from me while I'm around. This f***ing jersey's mine.'
Speaking to reporters that night, Armstrong enigmatically said: "This has been a Tour of too many problems; too many close calls, too many near misses… I just wish the problems would stop. Many of the problems I haven't discussed, but there have been a lot of strange things that happened that I need to stop having. Some of them were evident like the stage to Gap; other things were not talked about. It's been a very odd, crisis-filled Tour. But it was a good day today."
What happened next
After Tuesday's rest day, Hamilton's sense of fair play was rewarded in Stage 16 when the crocked American won the first Tour stage of his career at Bayonne after a barnstorming 146km solo breakaway. He fought back after being dropped early on to bridge over to the break, then ride clear. This was followed by two transitional stages ahead of the 49km time trial from Pornic to Nantes.
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Tyler Hamilton Tour 2003
Image credit: Getty Images
After three weeks of stifling heat, the heavens opened for the race against the clock. That didn't stop Ullrich gaining six seconds on Armstrong over the first two kilometres. If that put the German on course to seize the Yellow Jersey from his rival's shoulders, his continued risk-taking in slippery conditions finally caught up with him when Ullrich skidded on a roundabout and slid into a hay bale barrier.
Ullrich dropped to fourth, 11 seconds down on Armstrong, as Britain's David Millar took the spoils by nine seconds on the resurgent Hamilton. A Tour that ahead of that fateful stage to Luz Ardiden was the closest ever ended with Armstrong celebrating in the streets of Paris with a gap of 1'01" over his nearest adversary.
Kazakhstan's Vinokourov completed the final podium more than four minutes down while Hamilton finished a career-high fourth. Mayo's inability to race against the clock saw the Euskaltel rider miss out on a top-five finish. He came in sixth, behind his teammate and compatriot Zubeldia.
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Tour de France 2003, 20. Etappe; Ville d'Avray - Paris; Siegerehrung; 2. Jan ULLRICH/GER - Team Bianchi -, Lance ARMSTRONG/USA - US Postal -, 3. Alexander VINOKOUROV/KAZ - Team Telekom
Image credit: Getty Images
Armstrong's hardest victory in the world's biggest bike race saw him join Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Induràin in the exclusive five-time Tour winners club. But the 31-year-old never disguised how much the 100th anniversary edition of the race had taken out of him, openly admitting to being vulnerable and pushed all the way by Ullrich.
"No one likes stress," he said. "I don't ever want to go through another Tour like this. If it ever happens, at least I'll have the experience of this one. But I hope it doesn't. I had a fright this year because nothing went according to plan."
Armstrong came back in 2006 and demolished the field to take a record sixth Tour win. His closest challenger was T-Mobile’s Andreas Klöden, who came home six minutes down, while Ullrich could manage only fourth. A seventh victory, this time over Basso and by almost five minutes, came a year later – promptly followed by the American's retirement. We all know what happened next.
-- Written by Felix Lowe. You also can subscribe to the Re-Cycle Podcast by Eurosport for audio episodes of the most compelling stories from cycling history
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