Lances "The Look" to Ullrich

Lance Armstrong is a controversial topic, whether you're a cyclist or not you are aware of his career long doping confession and that he was the best Tour de France rider of all time. As mentioned in my previous blog when he passed Jan Ullrich, Lance was THE rider that got ME hooked on cycling, and all of the riders from his era were doping. In saying all of this I find it difficult to ignore his presence in the peloton during this time (even though he has been disqualified), and still find many of his moments exciting at the times of these events, which is the focus of these blog entries. 

The year was 2001 and it was the queen stage, stage 10 of the tour finishing atop the famous Alpe D'huez. Lance had been sitting at the back of the peloton all day and seemed to be having an enormous amount of difficulty keeping up with the main bunch, he had his whole team around him helping him get through the stage. This was unlike Lance, and had never been seen before in this state since his return as a GC contender. There had also been a mid race interview with US Postal's team director, Johaan Bruyneel who had told the camera crew Lance wasn't feeling great and his radio wasn't working properly. Jan's team, Team Telekom were taking advantage of this rare occurrence and went to the front to drive the pace in the hope of dropping Lance and moving Jan in front of Lance overall. 

Team Telekom pressed the pace right until the climb of the day, Alpe Dhuez. Jose Luis Rubiera, AKA Chechu, rode to the front with Armstrong on his wheel and now it was US Postal's turn to push the pace. At this point the commentators were working out that Lance had been faking all day. The comments they were making "I don't believe I am seeing this Armstrong has been at the back all day and Ullrich is in difficulty now". Up until the base of this climb I think Jan would have thought he truly had a shot at putting some serious time into Lance, and now it has been completely switched and was going to be a massive mental blow to Jan to have Lance now at the front controlling the pace.

 Straight away there was a gap between the wheels of Lance and Jan, but he slowly clawed him back to be in his draft once more, as Chechu pushed on with his relentless pace. Chechu's job was to push the pace as hard and as long as he could, once that was done, Armstrong did one of his most famous moves in his history books. He turned around, and gave Jan the final mental blow needed to put the Alpe D'huez nail in his coffin by staring him straight in the eye and sprinting off.

"The look" was such a mental blow to Jan as he watched Lance ride away, having gone from would be hero to zero in a matter of seconds from the start of Alpe D'huez. Lance powered on, spending a big chunk of his time riding out of the saddle as his gap grew more and more for the remaining 13km. Jan kept riding the glorious mountain with fellow contender Joseba Beloki, but it was to no avail as he continued extending his advantage. 13km later, Lance crossed the line with his arms raised and fist pumping, clearly happy with his performance.

Jan Ullrich still put in a notable performance coming in second place, 10 seconds ahead of his chasing companion Joseba, however Lance had managed to knock nearly 2 minutes into him in the overall standings, which would be difficult to bring back even for Jan. Lance went on to win the tour in 2001 by nearly 7 mintues over the second placed Ullrich, so there were futher stages where Lance put further time into him, but I feel the mental blow this stage and moment did to Jan provided a big mental boost for Lance helping him to achieve this big win.

As always, watch the video below and you'll see for yourself what happened!