Armstrong's last Tour de France turns into a nightmare (Feature)

By Siegfried Mortkowitz Jul 12, 2010, 12:06 GMT

Paris - 'The Tour is finished for me,' a discouraged and bloodied Lance Armstrong said after the running of Sunday's eighth stage of the 2010 Tour de France.

For those who have long admired the 38-year-old American for his indomitable will and the boldness of his riding, the sight of the seven-time Tour champion pedaling up the final ascent at Morzine-Avoriaz like an ordinary rider must have been heart-breaking.

'It was a very bad day,' Armstrong said after finishing the stage in 61st position, 11 minutes 45 seconds behind the winner, Andy Schleck of Luxembourg.

'He just gave up,' said the man who guided him to his seven Tour titles 1999-2005, Johan Bruyneel.

What was supposed to have been a triumphant ending to Armstrong's story-book Tour de France career has turned into a nightmare of crashes, mechanical breakdowns and - most uncharacteristically - resignation.

On Sunday, just 8 km after the start of the stage, Armstrong was forced to ride into as ditch to avoid a mass spill. Then, 50 km before the end of the stage, his pedal clipped the sidewalk on a roundabout and he hit the pavement, injuring an elbow and a hip.

Finally, on the first big climb of the Tour de France, several riders fell in front of him and he was forced to stop and extricate himself from the pileup.

'Just bad luck, at a bad time,' he said. 'Not much I could do.'

But Armstrong's problems began earlier in the Tour, when like dozens of other riders he crashed on the rain-slick road during the running of Monday's second stage, bruising his thigh and elbow.

The next day, in stage 3, he got caught up behind another crash, then suffered a flat tyre on a stretch of cobblestone road. He ended the stage in 18th place, having lost valuable time to his main rivals, such as Schleck, Cadel Evans and race favourite Alberto Contador.

That should have been a warning that things would not go his way this year, for at the peak of his career he seemed invulnerable to the mishaps that plagued lesser riders.

Perhaps it was this sense of invincibility that inspired him to return to the Tour last year, after a 'retirement' of more than three years, and which led him to believe that he could win the most grueling road race in the world at age 38.

No man over the age of 36 has ever won the Tour, and that was Firmin Lambot back in 1922, when the competition was hardly as fierce as it is today.

Perhaps Armstrong simply believed that, after surviving a battle with cancer in which he was given up for dead, he was capable of anything, even turning back the hands of time.

Certainly Armstrong's excellent third-place finish in last year's Tour made believers of everyone. And he had vowed to come back even stronger this year.

But he came down with a virus in the spring and crashed badly during the Tour of California, dropping out of that race.

In addition, the US Food and Drug Administration is investigating Armstrong and his former US Postal team for doping and fraud. Several former teammates have already said they would cooperate with investigators.

So he did not begin the Tour under the best circumstances. But for Bruyneel, Armstrong's meltdown was a matter of misfortune, not fitness or age.

'He was beaten by bad luck,' the manager of the Radio Shack team said. 'We knew winning the Tour was possible, we had ambitions.'

In the two remaining weeks of the Tour, which Armstrong has said he would try to enjoy, he will certainly strive to win one of the prestige mountain stages. And Bruyneel said he would help teammate Levi Leipheimer win the race.

But regardless of how he performs or who wins, the lingering image of this Tour de France will be that of Armstrong, his jersey torn, limping up a mountain on a hot Sunday in July.

In the daily L'Equipe, cycling expert Philippe Brunel wrote, 'An era came to an end, before the very same cameras that celebrated his regency.'