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Armstrong within a second of yellow jersey at Tour

(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-07-08 09:28

MONTPELLIER, France: Lance Armstrong stormed to within milliseconds of the Tour de France lead on Tuesday after his Astana squad won the team time trial in a tension-filled finish.

Astana rider Lance Armstrong of the US (R) cycles with team mates during the 39 km team time-trial for the fourth stage of the 96th Tour de France cycling race between Montpellier and Montpellier, July 7, 2009. [Agencies]

The seven-time Tour winner surged from third place to second overall, and more importantly erased all but a sliver of a 40-second deficit to race leader Fabian Cancellara in the fourth stage.

"Boo-YA!!!" Armstrong wrote on Twitter. "Well, what can I say? The team was simply awesome today. Consistent, fluid, mistake-free. We love this event (TTT) and are stoked to win."

It was reminiscent of Armstrong's dominance in the team time trial for the last three years of his string of victories from 1999 to 2005.

For Armstrong, Tuesday's stage was about allying with his Astana teammate Alberto Contador, the top pre-race favorite, to weed out their potential rivals.

Astana clocked 46 minutes, 29 seconds for the 39-kilometer (24.2-mile) ride in and around Montpellier - 18 seconds better than Garmin, in second, and Saxo Bank in third, 40 seconds back.

Because Armstrong came into the day just 40 seconds back of Saxo Bank rider Cancellara, the winner of Saturday's first stage, it came down to split seconds about who got the coveted yellow jersey.

At the last intermediate time check at the 30.5-kilometer (19-mile) mark, Astana was 41 seconds faster than Saxo, putting Armstrong in the lead at that point - and setting up the tense finale.

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In the end, the Swiss rider was judged to be a fraction of a second ahead overall, after organizers went back to look over the time from Saturday's individual time trial in Monaco, when results were calculated to thousandths of a second.

"That's Swiss timing," Cancellara said, laughing. "Time is on my side."

After first expressing "a bit of disappointment" on French TV about not capturing the shirt that he knows so well, Armstrong put his performance into perspective.

"That's the way it is. We did our best," he said. "At one point, we thought we had it, but if I look back on our performance ... we were as sound as we could be."

"I have no regrets. I don't look at that and lose sleep or get disappointed," he said at a post-race news conference. "This is a long race, maybe there's one (yellow jersey) in my future."

The potential rivalry between Armstrong and Contador, the Spaniard who won the 2007 Tour, has become a major subtext to the race.

They shelved any such rivalry on Tuesday. Armstrong said he appealed to Contador before the race to work together to distance other contenders.

"My point was to Alberto, 'Look, let's ride perfect, and make this race almost impossible to win for others,"' he said. "And I think we can say that we accomplished that."

Astana dealt a blow to several title hopefuls. Defending champion Carlos Sastre of Spain is 2:44 back; two-time runner-up Cadel Evans of Australia is 2:59 behind; and Giro d'Italian champ Denis Menchov is 3:52 back.

"I think today, the Tour de France is finished for some riders - and we won't go into names - but that's the way that the TTT works now," Armstrong said of the team time trial.

"With no disrespect, it's difficult to make up that time," he said.