CYCLING: If one phenomenon has followed this Tour from the prologue time-trial in Strasbourg to today's final, long time-trial on the baking plains of Burgundy, it has been the sight of seasoned race followers scratching their heads and trying to place events in some kind of context.
Take the last two days' racing. On Thursday the issue was what precedents there were in Tour history for an escape of the nature of Floyd Landis's Alpine epic. Today the question is whether there has ever been a Tour this finely poised going into the closing set-piece.
There have been several occasions when the Tour has gone down to the final time-trial but these have always tended to involve two men. Most recently, Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich had a chance of overall victory in the 2003 contre la montre at Nantes, and other notable duels involved Greg LeMond and Claudio Chiappucci in 1990 and Stephen Roche and Pedro Delgado in 1987.
The defining cliffhanger in Tour history, however, remains the 1989 head-to-head between LeMond and Laurent Fignon. Fignon started the final 25km time-trial to the Champs-Elysees with a 50-second lead on the American, who ran out the winner by eight seconds. Today's pleasant, rural setting cannot match the grandeur of central Paris, but the intrigue is far greater.
There were no bouleversements on yesterday's mainly downhill leg from the Alps to the flatlands, won by the Italian Matteo Tosatto, so Oscar Pereiro will start the stage in the yellow jersey. Behind him, Carlos Sastre is 12 seconds adrift, with Landis, thanks to his phenomenal and completely unexpected effort of Thursday, 30 seconds back. The Tour has never known a three-way finish this tight.
On past form the race is Landis's to lose, although similar was said before his spectacular collapse on Wednesday's stage to La Toussuire. Pereiro, wisely, recognised this: "We believed that Floyd was out of the running but he achieved a huge exploit (on Thursday). He has the Tour in his hands. He is the big favourite as it may not be easy for me."
Landis rode convincingly enough in both the prologue time-trial in Strasbourg and the other long contre la montre of this race in Rennes, suggesting that he can overcome Pereiro.
The other two major awards in the Tour look to have been resolved, however. The polka-dot mountains jersey will go to Denmark's Mickael Rasmussen following his lone escape through the Alps on Wednesday. The green points prize was effectively decided yesterday when the double stage winner Oscar Freire of Spain declined to start. Freire's departure gives the Australian Robbie McEwen the award on a plate.
Ullrich's future, on the other hand, looks much less certain. The Spanish blood-doping scandal linked to the Guardia Civil inquiry has dominated the agenda in this Tour, and yesterday T-Mobile confirmed they have sacked Ullrich for his alleged implication in the affair.
The 1997 Tour winner and 2000 Olympic road race champion said yesterday he would mount a legal challenge against his dismissal.
Ullrich's sacking followed the opening on Wednesday of a legal inquiry in Bonn concerning the 1997 winner, his T-Mobile team-mate Oscar Sevilla and Ullrich's mentor, Rudy Pevenage, on possible charges of fraud and infractions of German medical law.
Guardian Service
