Armstrong a Fraction of a Second Away from Tour De France Lead

Sports | Tue, Jul 7, 2009 at 2:15:23 pm PDT

Velonews has a good account of today’s team time trial at the Tour de France, in which Lance Armstrong and his Astana team won the stage and came within a fraction of a second of taking the yellow jersey. If anyone still doubted Lance could make a comeback, he ended all the speculation today.

Team Astana blazed through the team time trial to win stage 4. Astana came across the line 40 seconds ahead of the Saxo Bank squad of race leader Fabian Cancellara — the exact margin by which Cancellara led Lance Armstrong on general classification. After some careful math by race officials, Cancellara now holds the yellow jersey by a fraction of a second over Armstrong.

Garmin-Slipstream finished second on the day, 18 seconds down.

Astana came into the stage with four riders in the top 10 thanks to their time trialing ability, and that strength showed again on the 39km stage around Montpellier. Held largely on narrow roads, the technical course featured more than a few dicey corners that put riders from several teams on the ground.