| | By George Hincapie
Special to ABC Sports Online
Greenville, S.C.'s George Hincapie rides for the United States Postal Service team, and played an integral part in Lance Armstrong's victory in the Tour de France in 1999. He is a two-time winner of the World Road Cycling Championship, and was ranked 50th in the world last year. Throughout the Tour de France, Hincapie will share his experience through the eyes of a key member of the defending championship team.
LOURDES-HAUTACAM, France -- We had some nasty weather on Monday. It basically rained the entire day. The conditions on top of the three really hard climbs made for a pretty hectic day.
Lance was just outstanding. I think he showed everyone that he's the strongest guy in the race. He really put it to all of the favorites.
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Lance Armstrong showed his strength in the mountains on Monday. |
The last climb was particularly unbelievable. There was a breakaway of two and a half minutes of a group of really strong riders. Lance just closed that gap all by himself and flew right past them. He put time on Marco Pantani, Alex Zülle; it was a pretty amazing day for him.
We didn't have the jersey today, so my role wasn't that different -- just to try and set some tempo early on and to keep Lance out of trouble. We went as hard as we could for as long as we could, but Lance was by himself through the back end of the race. When it's an uphill finish like that, that's OK, because at that point, most of the top riders are alone as well.
On the big, hard mountain days, Kevin Livingston and Tyler Hamilton are more equipped to stick with Lance than I am. On a day like today, especially before the pull, we just eat as much as we can and try and go 100 percent as far as we can.
There were a couple of real dangerous descents that we had to be real careful on. One of them was where Lance crashed last month in training. He said he didn't want to look at the wall he crashed into, so he kind of closed his eyes going past it. But he made it through and finished strong.
When I was going up the last climb with Kevin and Viatcheslav Ekimov, we were still within radio contact. All we heard was our guys telling Lance, "You're dropping Ullrich," and then, "You're dropping Pantani!" We were just blown away. While we know Lance is pretty amazing, it's still remarkable to see him perform.
Coming down off the mountains is a lot more dangerous with harsh conditions like we had Monday. Former teammate Jonathan Vaughters had a crash and is out of the race. While you have to take risks out here, you definitely have to be real careful as well.
It's an entirely different race now. It's ours to control. From the beginning of Tuesday's stage, there's going to be a ton of attacks, and we have to make sure we just keep it under control. Now, we can let a group get 10 or 15 minutes on us as long as they're not real contenders. We'll just keep the tempo in the back.
Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out that way. There's definitely going to be some of the favorites attacking that we'll probably have to chase down directly.
So, we're in for another tough day on Tuesday. | |
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