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Lance Armstrong: The Painful End of an Era
This was the stage where the Tour de France was truly going to start. Stage 8 offered up two category 1 climbs–guaranteed to shake up the general classification. Little did we know that this stage was now going to be forever known as the place where Lance Armstrong’s Tour de France career came to an end.
Coming out of a roundabout, the seven-time Tour champion clipped a pedal and went down. The footage shown on television doesn’t do Armstrong’s crash justice. Across the street, and from the sound of it a couple of bottles of wine into their spectating day, a fan caught the moment on video: Armstrong sliding on his back at about 60 kilometers an hour (I’ve included the YouTube video at the bottom of this post). As we all know, Armstrong remounted and finished over 11 minutes behind stage winner Andy Schleck–effectively ending his last chance of winning the Tour de France.
With an 8th Tour win out of reach, will Armstrong now be embraced by the French? Johan Bruyneel said, “the French love the loser more than a winner.” Looking back at cycling history we can see that is a fairly accurate statement. Five-time Tour de France winner Jacques Anquetil was never as popular with his countrymen as Raymound Poulidor, who was known as the eternal second. Here in the States, we put winners on pedestals, which is where Armstrong has resided for the past ten years. The struggle of an also-ran strikes a chord with the French.
Read the full post at Versus.com.
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