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| July 8, 2002 | Monday | Rabi-us-Sani 26,1423 |
Armstrong good for 4th Tour title: coach
LUXEMBOURG, July 7: Lance Armstrong’s long-standing coach Chris Carmichael is confident the American rider will win his fourth consecutive title in this year’s Tour de France.
“Lance is in good shape. I think he’s in the same condition he was last year at the start of the Tour,” Carmichael told Reuters on Sunday, a day after Armstrong win the Tour’s opening prologue in Luxembourg.
“If we’re at that level, then he’ll be very difficult to beat.”
Carmichael has coached Armstrong for the last 12 years, helping him to develop from a raw amateur talent into a successful professional rider.
He also helped Armstrong return to cycling after his testicular cancer in 1997.
Carmichael believes that Armstrong has constantly improved as a rider since winning his first Tour in 1999.
“He’s got better and better but it’s getting harder to see it,” Carmichael said.
“He’s made improvements but they’re smaller. For example, this year he’s done more core body work to strengthen his back and abdomen.
“That’ll help him hold an aerodynamic position on his time-trial bike on the climbs and false flats. It means he can stay aero, stay sitting in the saddle, and so gain time on the climbs.
“Perhaps that only makes a tiny difference during the whole of the Tour, but the important thing is that it does make a difference — it’s an improvement.
“Lance is always looking to improve, he’s a perfectionist,” Carmichael added.
Meanwhile, German sprint star Erik Zabel is likely to attempt his first major coup of the Tour de France when the 181km second stage heads for the German border town of Saarbrucken for the first time on Monday.
Zabel, a six-time winner of the green jersey for points on the Tour, will be carrying the German flag in the absence of teammate, 1997 Tour winner Jan Ullrich who pulled out in May due to knee surgery.
After three days of racing the Tour de France will still not have arrived in France - but with bonus points up for grabs on the flattest of the Tour’s 20 stages, geographic location will mean little to those wishing to put themselves in the limelight.
Having spent the prologue in the city of Luxembourg and the first stage racing 192.5km around the Duchy, the peloton will finally arrive in France on Tuesday for the Metz to Reims stage.
Before then Germany will get a brief taste of the Tour, and most people will be rooting for Zabel, a four-time Milan-San Remo winner, to bring home victory.
Zabel is usually strongest at the finish line, where his no-nonsense sprinting style is enough to put many a rider off trying to physically budge him off line.
However the 32-year-old German could face a challenge from a number of riders wishing to steal his thunder.
Australian Baden Cooke, who has caused something of a sensation on his first full season in France as part of the FDJeux. com team, has what it takes to shake up the peloton, according to Britain’s David Millar.
Monday’s stage features three intermediate sprints at the 45, 95 and 155.5 kilometre marks. The only climbing difficulties, two fourth category climbs, are found at the 60 and 132.5km marks.
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