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In the buildup to Spyns 2010 Tour de France tours, a growing number of rivals may thwart Lance Armstrong's quest for an 8th yellow jersey in Paris. The perfect example is British rider and Team Sky rider Bradley Wiggins.
Twelve months ago Wiggins and Armstrong were barely on nodding terms. Now, as the season gathers pace, the pair regard each other as rivals for victory in this summer’s Tour de France.This afternoon they go head to head in a 22-kilometre individual time-trial on stage four of the five-day Tour of Murcia in southeast Spain.Wiggins, leading Team Sky, and Armstrong are five seconds off the pace in the general classification after yesterday’s third stage, from Las Torres de Cotillas to Alhama de Murcia, which was won by Luke Roberts, of Australia.
Last night Armstrong, on his Twitter feed, looked forward to the time-trial and said: “I hope I’m within a minute of Wiggins.” It will be today’s pan-flat race against the clock that, with four months to go before the Tour rolls out of Rotterdam, gives the clearest indication of where Wiggins and Armstrong stand in the build-up to the race in July. However, neither would contest the belief that Alberto Contador, Armstrong’s former team-mate who won in Paris last summer, is in pole position at present. Although Sky and Wiggins have made their mark with wins this spring, Contador has laid down the gauntlet in emphatic style. The Spaniard won last month’s Tour of the Algarve in such dominant fashion that even Armstrong offered grudging praise.
While the Londoner and the Texan spar in Spain, tomorrow Contador will start Paris-Nice, the week-long stage race to the Côte d’Azur. Armstrong, who has yet to record a significant European win since making his comeback, is believed to be in far better form than 12 months ago, but even his closest allies believe that Contador remains the man to beat.“Lance is better than last year but we don’t know if it will be enough to beat Alberto,” Johan Bruyneel, the Team RadioShack team manager, said. “This year is different for Armstrong. He is starting off his season and last year he was still finding out what it meant to be a [professional] rider again. His body was not used to long, hard workouts and he had lost the usual benchmarks after being retired for three years.”
Wiggins, meanwhile, buoyed by Sky’s earlier successes in Australia, Qatar and Belgium, looks in form. “It’s good for Brad to race against Lance and see where he is,” Rod Ellingworth, the Team Sky directeur sportif, said. “They probably both saw that Contador was very good in the Algarve but Brad’s got nothing to worry about.” Unlike Contador, Wiggins gets on well with the seven-time Tour de France champion, who has also been generous in his praise of the double Olympic individual pursuit gold medal-winner and Team Sky. This may be heartfelt, but it may also be fuelled by the prospect of an alliance between Sky and RadioShack in July, as both riders try to prevent what, on a very mountainous route, is already seen by some as an inevitable success for Contador.
Spyns is an active travel company based in Whister, BC (Canada) and Beaujolais France. Spyns offers active holidays to Europe including trips to the 2010 Tour de France. For more information about Spyns 2010 Tour de France tours, please visit http://www.tdf-tours.com/, http://www.spyns.com/, or call 1.888.825.4720.
