Armstrong and Ullrich set for time-trial duel

JAN ULLRICH fired a warning shot at Tour de France leader Lance Armstrong yesterday in an 18th stage won by Pablo Lastras of Spain in a sprint finish.

Lastras, of the Banesto team, timed his run to perfection to win the day after featuring in a 16-man breakaway on the 203.5km run from Bordeaux.

The main peloton, including Armstrong and Ullrich, finished more than 24 minutes behind the winners with both men finishing in the same time, the German 24th and the American 45th.

However, Ullrich trimmed the Texan’s lead from 67 seconds to 65 ahead of today’s individual time-trial that is likely to decide the winner of the centenary running of the race. Ullrich picked up two bonus seconds on the 31-year-old American after coming in second behind Australia’s Rob McEwen in an intermediary sprint after 50.5km while Armstrong came third.

However, it is today’s time-trial that should determine whether Armstrong wins a record-equalling fifth Tour or 29-year-old Ullrich clinches his second. The German demolished the Texan by 1min 36secs in a time-trial last Friday and if he repeats that performance he will take the yellow jersey going into tomorrow’s finale.

However, Armstrong has won the final Tour time-trial in each of his four victory years since he won his first in 1999 and is confident he can do so again.

“Now the time-trial is all important,” the Texan said. “In the last few years I have always done well in the final time-trial and I think I can pull it off again.”

Both Armstrong’s US Postal team, clad in dark blue apart from their leader in the yellow jersey, and Ullrich’s sky-blue clad Team Bianchi shadowed each other all day. It was the third consecutive day when the race leaders chose not to take each other on, barring that intermediate sprint.

The peloton will race in reverse order today, with Ullrich second last to start and Armstrong the last. Throughout Armstrong will be informed by his team chiefs in the car that will shadow him as to whether he is losing ground on his rival as he passes the intermediate checkpoints.

The Texan, stricken with cancer when Ullrich won Le Tour in 1997, would probably settle for retaining a decent portion of that lead. Whatever the situation, the man who wears the yellow jersey tonight should win the race overall unless the margin is only a handful of seconds.

The last time the race went to the wire was in 1989 when Armstrong’s compatriot and boyhood idol Greg LeMond overturned a small deficit at the start of the final day to beat Laurent Fignon by eight seconds.

France’s Richard Virenque, a leading figure in the 1998 Tour doping scandal, only has to finish to be crowned Tour King of the Mountains for the sixth time while Russia’s Denis Menchov appears to have clinched the white jersey for best young rider.

Denmark’s CSC team, managed by 1996 Tour winner Bjarne Riis and featuring American Tyler Hamilton, should win the team prize.

But McEwen is the new leader in the tight race for the green jersey for points winner ahead of compatriot Baden Cooke and Germany’s Erik Zabel.