Botero take time-trial victory

Santiago Botero reaped the harvest of months spent training in the Colombian mountains to beat Lance Armstrong into second place in today’s Tour de France time-trial.

After a mediocre 2001, the Kelme rider went back to his roots in the off-season, spending his days slogging up the mountains of his homeland in the company of local riders.

And he marked his return from temporary exile today with a powerful ride which swept him to fifth in the general classification, one minute, 29 seconds behind Armstrong.

"I’m thrilled to beat Lance Armstrong," he said.

"I’ve been preparing for this race for quite a long time. It’s a question of concentration and I still can’t believe it paid off," he told Eurosport.

Botero, King of the Mountains in 2000, will also be a danger to Armstrong when the race enters the Pyrenees at the end of the week.

But the Colombian gave little away today.

"We (Kelme) are not here just for the mountains although the mountains are where we have our strengths. We’ll see how we fare on the first mountain stage and take it from there," he said.

The Fassa Bortolo Ukrainian Sergei Honchar took third while race leader Igor Gonzalez de Galdeano of ONCE finished fourth to retain the yellow jersey.

The Spaniard kept his losses to Armstrong down to eight seconds while his Basque team-mate Joseba Beloki has the American in his sights, less than a minute down on the defending champion overall.

Today was a potential turning point for the whole race.

Armstrong has won the last five time-trials at the Tour (prologues excepted) and a similar outcome today would all but confer a fourth consecutive Tour title on the Texan.

That presented a mission to the rest of the field - to limit the impact made by Armstrong to a theoretically catchable minimum.

Although not quite a mission impossible it was still a tall order but Botero accepted the Tom Cruise role, setting a target which Armstrong missed by over 10 seconds.

Armstrong is still the man to beat but the race will not become a procession for another week at least.

Mapei Hungarian Lazlo Bodrogi was first to set a significant mark, leading the standings at 1hr, 2mins 43secs.

His tally was matched by the Lithuanian Raimondus Rumsas but they were both blown away by a superb ride from Botero.

The Colombian, impressive in the prologue, tore round the 52km course.

He caught Cedric Vasseur, who set off six minutes before him, around the 40km mark before streaking to the top of the standings, beating Bodrogi by 24 seconds.

The afternoon was nothing but frustrating for Laurent Jalabert.

The Frenchman, second in the prologue, punctured, then threw his bike to the ground as a mechanic attempted to change the wheel.

A replacement was found but the CSC-Tiscali man looked more than out-of-sorts, his helmet on squint, as he finished over three minutes down.

But there was bigger news out on the course as Armstrong lost time to Bortero after leading the Colombian at the half-way stage.

Armstrong failed to recover but had the consolation of moving up to second overall.

There is some suggestion that he is tactically avoiding the yellow jersey to duck the extra attention afforded the race leader but the result will nevertheless give enough succour to encourage the pretenders to his throne.