CYCLING: Always a man in search of new battles to fight, Lance Armstrong appears to have found his enemy in this year's Tour. Yesterday, as the race rested in the Vaucluse region, it was still feeling the weight of his unprecedented tirade against fans who catcalled him and accused him of doping during the Mont Ventoux mountain top finish on Sunday. William Fotheringham reports fromn Vaison-la-Romaine
"If I had a dollar for every time somebody yelled, 'dope, dope,' I'd be a rich man," said Armstrong. "It's disappointing, to be honest with you. The people are not very sportsmanlike. Some of them . . . a boo is a lot louder than a cheer. If you have 10 people cheering and one person booing, all you hear is the booing.
"I don't particularly understand that mentality," he added. "I think it's an indication of their intelligence. But I'm not here to be friends with a bunch of people who stand on the side of the road, that have had too much to drink, and want to yell "dope!" I don't have to care.
"Nor will I care in three or four years when I'm sitting on the beach with my kids, having a cold beer. But don't come to the bike race in order to stand around and yell at cyclists. Stay at home."
Armstrong has drawn this kind of attention before. Last year, he was booed at the race start in Dunkirk by fans of the French rider Cedric Vasseur, who was left out of his US Postal Service squad for that Tour. He is the first Tour rider to bring a professional bodyguard with him, something which did not go down well with Tour organisers. In 2000 he was asked about his refusal to talk French, and said, in typically abrasive style, that the Tour "was not a beauty contest".
Armstrong is also sensitive to accusations that he is killing off the race's suspense, so complete is his dominance. His answer is "I can't really concern myself with 'is it bad for the event, is it bad for the sport?' I have to do my job and I have to fulfil my passion. Perhaps that's part of the reason that people are sometimes so angry on the climbs. They would rather have a new winner every year and a new winner every day, and a constant evolution."
Today is the hors d'oeuvre in a three-course menu of Alpine stages, a relatively light serving of small passes en route to the ski resort of Les Deux Alpes, just across the valley from the far harder and more celebrated Alpe d'Huez. The main course, tomorrow, includes three of the Tour's greatest climbs: the Cols du Galibier and Madeleine, and the finish at La Plagne.
Guardian Service
