Cycling

Lance has last chance to win a 2005 stage

LE PUY-EN-VELAY, France - This is no time for Lance Armstrong to take chances, push harder, let it all hang out.

Unless, that is, he wants to check off the one accomplishment he's lacked on his final Tour de France: a stage win to call his own.

Today's final time trial gives him one last chance to put that right.

The rolling 34.5-mile route at Saint-Etienne in central France should suit a fast roller and climber like Armstrong. But it will also severely test legs worn out by the 2,108 miles covered in the past three weeks by the 155 riders left.

"It's a tough course because it's never flat," Armstrong said Friday after protecting his lead of 2 minutes, 46 seconds over Italy's Ivan Basso through stage 19. "It starts climbing almost immediately and there's a lot of technical and tricky downhill sections. There's a little bit of flat road near the end but it's almost never flat."

Armstrong has won 10 individual clock races in his Tour career. The last was the final time trial in 2004, on a rolling course similar to today's.

In contrast to his six previous winning Tours, Armstrong's only victory this year was as a member of the Discovery Channel team, which won the team time trial.

"Big day," Armstrong said. "I'm going to ride as hard as I can. I hope to win but there's no guarantees in cycling."

His priority, as it has been since he emerged from the Pyrenees with his comfortable lead intact, is to make sure that he finishes.

The ultimate goal is Sunday, when Armstrong expects to ride up the crowd-lined Champs-Elysees in Paris for the last time to collect his seventh win. There, at age 33, he will retire.

That final ride is largely ceremonial, with sprinters battling at the end for the honor of winning the stage on France's most famous boulevard. Armstrong prefers to sip champagne in the saddle as Paris approaches and then safely negotiate the cobblestones of the city.

Italian Giuseppe Guerini won Friday's 19th stage, a hilly 95.4-mile route from Issoire to Le Puy-en-Velay in the Massif Central mountains of central France.

Guerini, who rides for Ullrich's German T-Mobile squad, finished in 3 hours, 33 minutes and 4 seconds. Armstrong and the main pack finished 4:31 behind - happy to have let Guerini and other low-placed riders break away in front.

Armstrong calculated Friday that with time trial and the last ride into Paris, he has just "five more hours in my career as a cyclist."

But he is ready to move on.

"I'm not terribly sad about that," he said.

[Last modified July 23, 2005, 00:53:16]