By Siegfried Mortkowitz Jul 29, 2007, 17:13 GMT
Paris - His Discovery Team team director, Johan Bruyneel, certainly meant it as a compliment when he called the 2007 Tour de France winner Alberto Contador 'the new Lance Armstrong.'
But in the current atmosphere, the name of the seven-time Tour champion is more likely to stir up suspicions of doping, rather than the riding intelligence, strength and tenacity that characterized Armstrong's racing.
Certainly, the two men have much in common: both rode for Bruyneel's Discovery Channel team, both came back from near death to become champions - and, yes, both are suspected of doping.
Armstrong's recovery from cancer is already legend. Less well known is Contador's battle with death. In 2004, a few days after crashing in the Tour of Asturias, he collapsed at home and was diagnosed as suffering from a brain aneurysm.
He was immediately operated on and returned to competition six months later. On Saturday, after clinching the Tour victory in a time trial, the 24-year-old Spaniard said that Armstrong's story had served him as motivation.
'When I was in hospital, I read his book (It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life) and it helped me recover,' he said.
Both riders also share being implicated in doping affairs by the French daily Le Monde.
On Saturday, the newspaper published a story that suggested Spanish police were in possession of evidence that linked Contador to a Spanish doctor that ran a blood-doping laboratory, and that he had been 'miraculously lucky' to have escaped punishment for the affair which forced him miss the Tour last year.
Contador claimed his innocence, as Armstrong did and does - but the Spaniard's victory has already been tainted by the suspicions.
One big difference between the two riders is the style of their victories. Armstrong was always the incontestable boss of the race, strong in the mountains and almost unbeatable in time trials.
On the other hand, Contador was handed his victory by the exclusion of former race leader Michael Rasmussen, after the Dane was accused of lying to avoid doping tests. And his margin of victory, 23 seconds over Cadel Evans, is hardly overwhelming.
That did not prevent Spanish papers from glorifying him. 'He possesses a unique gift. Some call it class, others genius,' the daily El Pais wrote after he won his first Tour stage victory, in the Pyrenees Mountains.
Contador first owned his own bicycle at the relatively advanced age of 15. 'I received it for Christmas,' he recalled. 'It was a mountain bike.'
Only nine years later the man from the Madrid suburb of Pinto has reached the top of the cycling world. That is an ascencion that even Lance Armstrong can not match.
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