Armstrong eyes fourth Tour triumph

Bad luck and poor form look the only serious obstacles on Lance Armstrong's road to a fourth successive victory in the Tour de France.

With the world's biggest cycling race starting from Luxembourg on Saturday, the question on everybody's mind is -- who can beat him?

That was the main headline of Friday's sports daily L'Equipe , who also organise the race -- and the answer was nobody.

The two riders who have threatened the 31-year-old Texan in the past are not even in the race.

German Jan Ullrich, still recovering from a knee injury, failed a dope test for amphetamine in June and faces the sack from his Telekom team should the doping be found to have been intentional.

The 1997 Tour champion also had his driving licence withdrawn earlier in the season for drink driving.

Meanwhile, Italian Marco Pantani, the 1998 winner, has been banned for eight months in the last of a long series of doping cases dating back to the 2001 Giro d'Italia.

Nicknamed "The Pirate", Pantani would not have been able to race anyway, after his Mercatone Uno team failed to be selected for the event.

Veteran Swiss Alex Zuelle, who was runner-up to Armstrong in 1999 when both Ullrich and Pantani missed the race, was also in a team whose ranking was too low to be selected.

The Team Coast rider showed great form last month by winning the Tour of Switzerland.

SECOND PLACE

As a result, the three-week long Tour looks like being a very open race -- for second place.

Frenchman Richard Virenque, runner-up in 1997 and a key figure in the 1998 Festina doping scandal, summed up the general state of mind.

"I'm unlucky I started racing in the Tour in the Indurain era and I will finish my career in the Armstrong era," he said.

Miguel Indurain won five successive Tours between 1991 and 1995.

With Italians Gilberto Simoni and Stefano Garzelli, two former Giro winners, also out with doping suspensions, the Spanish should be Armstrong's leading rivals.

The ONCE squad look especially strong with Joseba Beloki, third in 2000 and last year, Igor Gonzalez de Galdeano, fifth last year, and seven other riders with real chances to do well.

But Beloki has played down his ambitions, saying: "If Armstrong is as strong as he was last year, then it'll be impossible."

The Kelme team, winner of the teams' classification two years in succession, also looks very solid with Colombian Santiago Botero and versatile Spaniard Oscar Sevilla, while the Ibanesto.com have young but gifted riders.

"These three teams are scary," said Armstrong.

But some, like Kazakh Andrei Kivilev who was fourth last year, are refusing to dismiss their chances.

"I'm not starting to finish second. I'm starting to beat him otherwise it's useless coming here," he said without even naming Armstrong.

CONTINUOUS DANGER

Some team directors, in search of signs that the Texan can be defeated, said Armstrong was a little less impressive in climbs and time trials in the recent Midi Libre and Dauphine Libere stage races -- both of which the American won.

But Belgian Johan Bruyneel, Armstrong's team director at U.S. Postal, was the only one able to name a serious rival.

"The Tour itself is a big rival," he said.

"It's three weeks of continuous danger which is as much of a threat as any of Lance's rivals.

"The rain, the wind and crashes can all cause major problems and they are difficult to foresee."

But with the shortest course in the race's history at 3,277.5 kilometres, two long individual time trials that will favour Armstrong and most of the mountain stages near the finish, the favourite looks safe enough.

"The Tour is always the same. You have two time trials, the Alps, the Pyrenees and hopefully the strongest man wins in Paris," Armstrong said.

That is precisely what his rivals fear will happen.