Levi Leipheimer Takes Lance Armstrong’s Place
Lance Armstrong finished the 16th Stage of the 2010 Tour de France in 6th place, his best finish since the prologue. Though he was in the group with the stage winner, he is still 33:46 behind the race leader, Alberto Contador, and he can no longer contend with the best, which he proved with his miserable Stage 8 failure. Team RadioShack, co-owned and led by the seven-time Tour de France victor, was quick to restructure.
"We have the best team for the mountains and we need to show that," said Levi Leipheimer, the team’s new best hope. "We have a lot of guys who can climb and we have to take advantage of that."
Leipheimer stands in 7th place overall and has been in the top 10 since stage 8. RadioShack riders Chris Horner and Andreas Kloden stand in 14th and 16th respectively, ahead of Armstrong's 25th overall. These four riders have performed well enough to hold the lead in team classification, 4:27 against runner-up team Caisse d’Epargne.
Leipheimer is happy to take the former champion’s place, though he is not entirely pleased with how it has been going. Robert Gesink took his 6th place spot, dropping Leipheimer to 7th, and now has a 24 second lead on the RadioShack rider, who is 5:25 behind Contador, the race leader.
"I was just cross-eyed. I saw Alberto go and there was no way I could follow him," said Leipheimer of the 12th stage. "Unless you're the best guy, you always have to pace yourself. Even Andy Schleck was pacing himself today. It just comes down to getting to the top of the hills as fast as you can, whether that's by finding a wheel or making a jump at the end. I actually lost a couple of wheels and blew up a little bit."
Leipheimer, like most of the overall contenders, had used the days between the Alps and the Pyrenees to somewhat recover from the first mountains and prepare for the more difficult Pyrenees. However, he did not want to relax too much, lest he lets his guard down.
"The last two easy days haven't been good for me," he said. "It's weird to say but after two easy days, you don't have that punch anymore, you can't really open up. I kind of felt that today. I hope I can feel better."
Armstrong has admitted that he is unlikely to perform well in the Pyrenees and would rather focus on his new role as support for the best-ranked member of his team. The 38 year-old cyclist finished 31st in the 12th stage, after spending the day measuring up potential threats to Leipheimer’s current standing.
"I found myself in a position where, as we said earlier we're trying to get Levi up as much as we can, I was there with two guys that are threats for him for the podium -- (Jurgen) Van den Broeck and (Ivan) Basso,” said Armstrong. “He has the fortune of knowing that he has 50km at the end, it's a good course for him, it's flat and straightforward."
Armstrong took his final chance for a stage win in the 16th stage, the third of four Pyrenees stages, which included a long flat finish. He croseed the line in the leading group, but Pierrick Fedrigo took the stage win.
"It was harder than I expected," Armstrong told reporters at the finish line. "It's been awhile since I sprinted. Just not quick enough. I'm not the best guy in the race but I still have the spirit of a fighter."
Leipheimer, who finished third in his first ever Grand Tour, was the second-highest performing American in the 2002 and 2004 Tour, after Armstrong, and holds 6 overall tour victories, including three consecutive wins of the Tour of California. He has been a professional cyclist since 1997, won the U.S. National Time Trial Championships in 1999, and spent three years at the leader of Rabobank’s Tour de France team. Impressed with his performance when they rode in the Tour together, Armstrong invited him to join the brand new Team RadioShack in their Tour de France debut.
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