Armstrong back in familiar colours

Lance Armstrong laid an iron grip on the yellow jersey today after victory in the team time-trial delivered a substantial lead in the 2005 Tour de France.

The nearest rider to him in the general classification is his Discovery team-mate George Hincapie, 55 seconds behind the Texan, while Team CSC’s Jen Voight is next best nine seconds further back.

Armstrong is chasing a seventh Tour de France.

With CSC finishing two seconds behind Discovery, today meant an end to David Zabriskie’s time in yellow.

But what would have been a disappointing moment for the Utah-born rider was made extremely painful when he fell after seeming to clip the wheel of the rider ahead of him.

The 26-year-old was left behind by his team-mates, who had to drive on for fear of their other contenders losing too much time, although the ‘chute’ was enough of a distraction to cost them the two seconds between first and second place.

Zabriskie cut a very sad figure as he free-wheeled over the line, his yellow jersey bloodied and torn.

But, while it was not hard to feel sorry for Zabriskie, there were other riders for whom today represented another hard punch to roll with.

Having been passed on the road by Armstrong in Saturday’s individual time-trial, T-Mobile’s Jan Ullrich is now one minute, 36 seconds behind his great rival.

Two other contenders fared much worse. Roberto Heras is almost three minutes behind while Iban Mayo is over five minutes adrift.

It means CSC and T-Mobile remain the team most likely to provide a challenger for Armstrong.

CSC’s Bobby Julich is just over a minute slower than his fellow American and their highly-rated Italian Ivan Basso is 86 seconds off the pace.

As well as Ullrich, T-Mobile also have Alexandre Vinokourov as a possible contender but he is 81 seconds behind.