Armstrong moves into contention at Tour de France

LA GRANDE-MOTTE, France — Lance Armstrong showed that experience still counts at the Tour de France.

The 37-year old American rider surged to the front to take the right breakaway during Monday’s third stage while Alberto Contador and the other favorites were trapped in the peloton.

Armstrong’s astute move earned him valuable time and moved to third place overall while Contador dropped to fourth, 19 seconds behind the Texan. Contador is the 2007 Tour winner and a favorite this year.

Armstrong could take the yellow leader’s jersey from Fabian Cancellara on Tuesday when a 24.23-mile team time trial is scheduled in Montpellier.

“Never say never,” Armstrong said when asked about the possibility of putting on the coveted jersey for the 84th time in his career, four years after his record seventh Tour victory.

Overall, he trails Cancellara by 40 seconds — a tough deficit to erase in the team time trial. The Swiss rider’s Saxo Bank team is one of the best in the discipline, along with Armstrong’s Astana, Garmin and Columbia.

Among other Tour favorites, two-time runner up Cadel Evans slipped to eighth place overall, 1 minute, 4 seconds behind Cancellara. Andy Schleck is 24th at 1:41, and defending champion Carlos Sastre of Spain is 26th, 1:47 back.

Armstrong has got time to move up now that he leads Contador, who had a 22 second-cushion over Armstrong before Monday’s stage won by Mark Cavendish. Armstrong has already said the third week, featuring a long time trial, three mountain stages, and a finish up the daunting Mont Ventoux, will be very hard.

Cavendish earned his second consecutive Tour stage victory and his sixth overall, ahead of Norway’s Thor Hushovd and Cyril Lemoine of France after completing the 122.1-mile trek between Marseille and La Grande-Motte in 5 hours, 1 minute, 24 seconds.

Only 29 riders including Armstrong, Cancellara and two other Astana teammates — Yaroslav Popovych and Haimar Zubeldia — handled the tricky conditions.

“Whenever you see a team lined up at the front like that, you have to pay attention,” Armstrong said. “You know what the wind’s doing, and you see that a turn’s coming up, so it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know that you have to go to the front.”

Contador was at the wrong place at the wrong time when the breakaway happened. “I was climbing with a teammate and we ended up in no man’s land,” he said.

Asked about his reaction when he saw that Contador was not with him in front, Armstrong said that he didn’t try to gain time over the Spaniard.

“That’s not my objective but I turned around and was surprised that there was a split,” he said. “On days like this — for good or bad — you can make a difference.”

After realizing that Armstrong was the only title contender in the breakaway, Astana riders in it decided to collaborate with the Columbia riders.

“Apart from Lance, there was nobody from all the other favorites,” Astana manager Johan Bruyneel said. “At first, we let the Columbia riders do the work. At a moment, I was convinced the peloton was going to come back. But the gap came up again and at that moment, about 15 kilometers from the finish, we decided that Popovych and Zubeldia will help in the front.”

Bruyneel, a close friend of Armstrong behind his seven victories on the Tour, said his strategy was to deliver a blow to the favorites and their teams by forcing them to work to reduce the gap.

“And I thought it would be a good situation if after the team time trial Cancellara could stay in the yellow jersey,” Bruyneel said. “Because it will definitely help us a lot in the days after the team time trial.”

The 26-year old Contador, one of only five men to have won the three Grand Tours of France, Italy, and Spain, went directly to the anti-doping control after the stage.

“I’m not going to evaluate the team strategy because everyone will draw their own conclusions anyway,” he said. “In any case, the Tour won’t be decided by what happened today.”

But he will find it difficult to find support inside his own team, where Armstrong can stamp his authority without being accused of disrespecting the hierarchy drawn by the race itself.

“I have tried to stay out a little bit of the debate about, ‘who is the leader?’ I have won the Tour seven times, so I think I deserve a bit of credit,” Armstrong said, hinting that he was back in command.

Contador, whose legs are 11 years fresher than Armstrong and is expected to be strong when the race reaches the mountains, tried to play down his time loss.

“The differences are insignificant and may give me more margin for maneuver,” he said.