AX-LES-THERMES, France -- Little more than a week stands between Lance Armstrong and cycling immortality.
|  | | Lance Armstrong has one more mountain stage in which to build a lead that he hopes to take to Paris. |
That's if the 29-year-old Texan can churn through the big gears in the Tour's final time trial next Friday to don his third-straight yellow jersey when the race ends July 29 in Paris.
Only four men in the 98-year history of cycling's most important race have pulled off the feat. After Saturday's victory in Stage 13 -- his third stage win in the last four -- there is only one man between Armstrong and the most famous jersey in cycling.
"That's what you guys always say every year," an exasperated Armstrong said after he was mobbed at the end of Friday's climbing stage high in the Pyrenees. "The race isn't over. The race doesn't end until Paris."
This year's Tour is proving a little more complicated for Armstrong than his first two Tour victories. In his winning rides in 1999 and 2000, Armstrong sealed his victories in each year's first mountain stage. In 1999, he flew up Sestrieres and erased any doubts he could climb the Tour's highest mountains. Last year, he roared up Hautacam and held the jersey all way to the finish.
This year followed a similar script. Armstrong won back-to-back stages in the Alps, first taking Stage 10 in the Tour's most famous mountain segment at Alpe d'Huez on Tuesday, then claiming Wednesday's Stage 11, a climbing time trial up to Chamrousse.
Armstrong was comfortably ahead of rivals Jan Ullrich and Joseba Beloki, but he still was well off the lead because a funny thing had happened on the way to the Alps. In the Tour's 8th stage to Pontarlier, a 14-man breakaway finished more than 35 minutes ahead of Armstrong and the rest of the favorites.
Francois Simon, a hardworking French rider on the Bon Jour team, had shot into the yellow jersey, and Andrei Kivilev, a relatively unknown rider from Kazakhstan on the Cofidis team, had moved into second overall.
"We might have lost the Tour on Sunday," Armstrong said at the time. "We made a very big mistake to let them get so far ahead."
Entering the final two mountain stages this weekend, Simon and Kivilev still clung to a slim lead, but Armstrong and company had been grinding away, wearing them down.
"The yellow jersey gives me extra motivation. I will fight to keep it as long as I can," Simon said Friday.
Saturday, Armstrong finally put the hammer down, beating Simon by 13:20 to wipe out the remaining 9-plus minutes of the deficit. Armstrong's team knew it wouldn't be long before the Texan took over the lead.
"The time is significant, but our team is riding stronger," said Johan Bruyneel, director of Armstrong's U.S. Postal Service team after Friday's stage. "Lance was very comfortable (Friday). He was at a good rhythm. We took time on Ullrich and Beloki and the others, so we did what we had to do today."
Saturday's 116-mile 13th stage was called the hardest in this year's Tour. There were six climbs on a course that wound up the steep cols in the Pyrenees and plunged down harrowing descents. Sunday's 86-mile 14th stage is the final mountain stage of this year's Tour.
"It's going to be tricky in the Pyrenees," said Armstrong on Thursday's rest day. "We have to drop these guys that are in front of us, but I have to protect against the guys behind me. It's going to be interesting racing."
At the time, Ullrich and Beloki still were nipping at Armstrong's heels. Friday, however, Armstrong accomplished both feats, gaining time on the leaders while at the same time extending his lead over Ullrich and Beloki. And Saturday, he reeled in Simon and added still another minute to his advantage over Ullrich, who lost time to a crash on the descent of the Col de Peyresourde.
Stage wins are nice, but Armstrong is hunting for a bigger prize to add to a trophy case that includes already nine of them. If he wins the Tour again, however, he moves into the rarefied air of grand cycling champion and will eclipse Greg Lemond as America's premier bike racer.
Of the four racers have won three straight, one of them, Louison Bobet, never won another. The other three -- Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx and Miguel Indurain -- went on to win five Tours. Bernard Hinault also won five, but each failed to win a sixth Tour.
Armstrong doesn't like to look too far forward, but he's under contract to race through the 2004 season. Do the math: that puts him on line to win six Tours.
"We're seeing the evolution of a great champion," said Chris Carmichael, Armstrong's longtime coach and trainer. "I believe Lance can win six Tours, if he wants to. He works harder than anyone else, and he loves it more than ever. Lance is a fierce competitor. He got a second lease on life. He's beaten cancer, and that really separates him from the rest of the field. He really focuses in every training session. It's that next layer down. He just loves it more. He gives more back to it. He´s faced his own mortality."
It's often overlooked that Armstrong was laying in a hospital bed in 1996 with only a 50-percent chance to live. Now he's at the top of the world's hardest sport. From the looks of it, he wants to stay there awhile.
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