Reclaiming Yellow
JULY 11
The first real test for the overall contenders was the Stage 8 individual time trial in the town of Metz. At 35 miles, it would bring the strongest racers to the front before the Tour hit the mountains. The riders started at two-minute intervals, and Armstrong caught the three who'd started immediately before him, including the world time-trial champion, Colombian Abraham Olano. He ended the day back in yellow.

HINCAPIE: Yeah, he crushed that time trial. He passed Olano! He caught me, and I'd started four minutes ahead of him.

OCHOWICZ: He was showing them—them being the other sport directors and riders—how to do it for the first time, and they were watching. The first day I got to the race—oh, man, all those directors who I tried to talk into signing Lance the year before were kicking themselves.

SHERWEN: His win at Metz confirmed that the prologue was a solid ride, but it didn't confirm that he would get out of the mountains. His weakest times in the Vuelta had been in the climbing stages.

BRUYNEEL: What I saw from Lance on a few of our training rides impressed me so much, because I know how fast it goes in the mountains. I remember saying to the mechanic in the car, Julien, "If that's the way he's going to ride in July, then we've got the winner of the Tour."

KNAGGS: They didn't think Lance was going to go up hills. But he knew. He'd been doing all this work in the mountains, and he was just waiting for the first day.

Sestrière
JULY 13
Stage 9 marked the first day in the mountains, with a route that included the monstrous Col du Galibier and finished with a harsh climb to the Italian ski resort of Sestrière. It was here, most observers still believed, that Armstrong would finally crack.

LIGGETT: He blew everyone on the road away: Zülle, Escartin. He tacks onto the climbers partway into the day, and then he jumps every one of them and rides alone to the finish. And all of those guys were already very far behind him in the overall. He could have ridden to the top alongside them and still had a huge lead. But he goes and hammers all shades of shit out of them. The look on Zülle's face: "Where the hell am I? This guy is a robot." The same with Escartin, a great climber. Lance just rode him away.

ARMSTRONG: My nature was always, and probably still is, to attack, to be aggressive and open up the race. Not always the smartest thing to do; there have been times when I've paid for that. But I felt like I was having a good day, and you might as well give yourself a cushion for future days.

THOM WEISEL (financier who backed the U.S. Postal Team and gave Armstrong his first pro contract after cancer): I was in the main car with Johan, right behind Lance, and we were just going nuts. We were hysterical. Lance is yelling in his earpiece, "How do you like them apples?" It was the best moment I ever had at any Tour.

SHERWEN: Once someone dominates a time trial like that and dominates a mountaintop finish, everybody starts to go, Uh-oh, we made a mistake here.

The Team
July 14
Though Armstrong now held a lead of more than six minutes, the Tour was not yet halfway over. With several more mountain stages to come, his teammates would have to ride better than anyone thought they could to defend the yellow jersey all the way to Paris.

HINCAPIE: It was up to us. Once the others saw that Lance was riding so well, they thought that their only chance was that he had a weak team, so they'd try and attack us. Nobody was confident in the team. We were criticized from all over the place. They all said, "They're just a bunch of Americans, they've never been there before. How are they going to protect the lead?"

SHERWEN: When you have absolutely no responsibility to yourself, you can push yourself harder. These guys all rode above themselves...because they felt that the man they were defending was invincible.

LIGGETT: [Teammate] Frankie Andreu was always a strongman; Tyler Hamilton was good in those days. Two of their riders never got to the finish: Jonathan Vaughters and the Danish rider Peter Meinert Neilsen. Christian Vande Velde was not a big player at that time, because he was too young. But George Hincapie will die for the master. He's such a fantastic guy.

WEISEL: Kevin Livingston was a big key. Hamilton was a talented climber, but Kevin was definitely the main guy that was able to stay with Lance in the mountains.

ARMSTRONG: All those guys were damn good bike riders. It's just that nobody had heard of them yet. We were the Bad News Bears. We didn't even have a team bus back then, just a camper. We were kind of crammed in there. But we didn't know any better. And the pressure—sometimes the best way to cut it is to burp and fart and laugh. We tried to keep it light.