Armstrong claims stage win despite day of near disasters
Armstrong's first stage win of the race re-launched his bid for a fifth straight yellow jersey after it looked under serious threat from Germany's 1997 winner Jan Ullrich and Telekom's Alexandre Vinokourov in the past two days.
Four-time race winner Armstrong, who increased his lead of 15sec on the German before the stage to 1min 07sec, crashed around six kilometres before the summit finish in the Pyrenees after his handlebars got entangled with a spectator's bag.
Spanish rider Iban Mayo, who was riding just behind the American, also came down, while Armstrong's main rival for the yellow jersey, Ullrich, swerved to avoid the melee and carried on.
However Armstrong, who said he knew he needed to go out and attack on the 159.5km stage if he wanted to win this year, refused to blame anyone for the incident.
"It was also my fault for riding too much on the right of the road," said Armstrong.
"But after that I had a big adrenalin rush and just said to myself, 'Lance, if you want to win the Tour de France then it's time to attack'."
After Armstrong got back on his bike he soon caught Ullrich's group. They had applied the cyclists' unwritten rule that riders do not benefit from rivals' accidents or toilet stops, but Armstrong didn't return the courtesy.
Only a few metres further on Armstrong almost fell off the bike when his right foot jolted, apparently because of a problem with his gears, and he fell on to the frame of his bike.
"There was something wrong with my gears," added Armstrong, laughing.
"I don't know ... I've had a few problems today."
However, the shock had a largely positive effect on the 31-year-old US Postal rider, who went on to attack Ullrich and Mayo to go and spectacularly win the stage.
Ullrich failed to respond and finally came over the line in third place at 40secs behind second-placed Mayo.
Vinokourov, who a day earlier had reduced his deficit of a minute to only 18secs, is still third overall but is now at 2:45 behind Armstrong after finishing in eighth at 2:07.
Today is a rest day, while tomorrow is the last day in the Pyrenees before the race heads on to flatter ground.
However Armstrong, for one, doesn't want to wait until the penultimate day's time trial before having to secure his lead especially as Ullrich took over one and a half minutes off the American over 47km only a few days ago.
In the meantime, Italian rider Filippo Simeoni has sued Armstrong for libel after the four-time Tour de France champion was quoted in Le Monde in April calling him a compulsive liar, judicial sources said.
Simeoni claims he was defamed by Armstrong in the April 18 edition of Le Monde when the American said Simeoni wrongly claimed Michele Ferrari had given the Italian rider prohibited substances.
Ferrari, who used to work for the Italian Olympic committee, has been Armstrong's medical advisor since 1995.
Ferrari is being tried in Bologna, Italy, on a charge of supplying performance enhancing drugs and is suspected of giving many top riders the blood-doping endurance enhancer EPO (erythropoeitin).
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