Armstrong's Second Best Chance for Yellow?

Today's stage number seven of the Tour de France has been heavily scrutinized - and the majority of the flap surrounds whether or not Lance Armstrong will be in the Yellow Jersey at the conclusion of the day - a 139 mile day in the Pyrenees which finishes atop the Arcalis mountain. While I would be thrilled for Lance to win both this stage and the overall Tour, here are the reasons why I don't think it's likely.

Let's roll back the calendar a few days to stage three when Lance was the only general classification contender to infiltrate the split in the cross winds which occurred with just under 20 miles to go while Columbia-HTC drove the peloton. Making that split, and gaining 41 "free" seconds over all the major GC contenders showed that Lance has been paying attention to the sketchy and unpredictable world of the professional peloton-he was caught behind splits during the closing kilometers during some stages in the Giro d'Italia, and though he wasn't racing there as an overall contender, he hasn't forgotten the importance of every detail in being atop the leader board in this incredibly physically and mentally demanding sport.

Unfortunately for Lance, he missed his best chance to slip into yellow during the following day's team time trial, by a scant fraction of a second. His Astana team had an incredible ride to beat Fabian Cancellara's Saxo Bank team by 40 seconds in the short but very technical TTT-which put Lance in a virtual deadlock with stage one winner Cancellara - Cancellara beat Lance in the opening time trial in Monaco by 40 seconds. So, as is always the case in cycling, the tie-breaker then comes down to fractions of a second from that TT, with Cancellara enjoying a razor-thin two-tenths-of-a-second lead. Had Astana gone one second faster in the TTT, Lance would have been in yellow, and would have changed history once again.

Today, Lance has what will most likely be his second best opportunity to take the Yellow Jersey-but it's NOT likely that Cancellara will be his greatest obstacle. Instead, with the final 6.5 miles of the 139 mile race being up to the summit of Arcalis, this will be the first chance for the climbers to show their form. Luckily for Lance, he is immediately trailed in the GC by three of his team mates-here are the top 10 in the overall battle going into today:

• 1. Fabian Cancellara Team Saxo Bank in 19:29:22
• 2. Lance Armstrong Astana in 19:29:22
• 3. Alberto Contador Astana in 19:29:41 at 00:19
• 4. Andréas KlÖden Astana in 19:29:45 at 00:23
• 5. Levi Leipheimer Astana in 19:29:53 at 00:31
• 6. Bradley Wiggins Garmin - Slipstream in 19:30:00 at 00:38
• 7. Tony Martin Team Columbia - Htc in 19:30:14 at 00:52
• 8. Christian Vande Velde Garmin - Slipstream in 19:30:38 at 01:16
• 9. Gustav Larsson Team Saxo Bank in 19:30:44 at 01:22
• 10. Maxime Monfort Team Columbia - Htc in 19:30:51 at 01:29

It is pretty much expected that someone from the Astana camp will be the race leader after the conclusion of today's stage (though Cancellara says he thinks he can defend the jersey today) -the big question is whom? My prediction is that it will go to Contador, and these are just some of the reasons why:

1. Lance hasn't gone to battle on a mountain top finish in the Tour since 2005, and for three of those years he was in retirement. Though he did spend some time "training" during those years, there simply weren't the goals, focus or intensity one has when racing professionally.

2. Lance started training in earnest last fall, when he shocked the world by announcing he was going to come out of retirement. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, has ever come out of three and a half years of retirement and been able to win the Tour de France six months later. The Tour is a three week race, averaging over 100 miles a day, competing against the best riders in the world. Just to be competitive in the race would be unprecedented - to win the overall, a miracle. Winning today wouldn't get him the win when he arrives in Paris, but it's still highly unlikely that he will be in the jersey at the conclusion of today's stage.

3. Lance has never raced two Grand Tours in one season - and this year he already competed in, and placed 12th overall, in the three week long Giro d'Italia in May. Lance did get better as the Italian Grand Tour progressed, which bodes well for him at the Tour de France, but it's still an incredible workload and stress to his body to race, recover from, then ramp up his training again before the Tour, recover and be in winning form physically and mentally to win the Tour. Lance has shown that he is an incredible talent with an iron will to succeed, but after all the human body/mind do eventually reach their limits!

4. Once a person reaches their early 30's there begins a physiological slide. Muscle mass starts to go south, as does one's cardiovascular system - and hence one's ability to process oxygen. This decline can be largely mitigated by heavy and consistent training, but still affects a guy who, by his own admission told me during the Giro d'Italia, "It wasn't far from the truth when I said I spent the last 3 1/2 years drinking beer on the beach." Though this is a bit of an exaggeration, there's a big difference between training full time like all of your competitors and being retired and training to stay fit.

5. Alberto Contador. He has won every Grand Tour he's competed in over the last two years -Tour de France 2007, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a Espana 2008. He is still in the prime of his career, and he will be hungry to win the race which his team was excluded from competing in last year. He is a punchy climber who has shown that he can accelerate repeatedly on climbs which will be to his advantage on summit finishes. Armstrong will have a very difficult time matching accelerations, and will have to "ride within himself" if he has any hope of being with the leaders at the top - he will need to let others beat each other up by attacking, and he'll have to ride steady so as not to blow up.

What I expect today, is that there will be attacks on the final climb - after all, there are only three summit finishes during the entire 21 days of racing and if you want to win the world's biggest bike race you will have to test on each one of them. Lance and Contador will both have to follow the attacks, and if Lance can stay with Contador he certainly will - but Contador should be the better climber today, and he will have to follow the attacks by the other competitors, even if Lance cannot follow. Contador will not help others get away from Lance, he will just follow wheels, and he will go for bonus seconds by out-sprinting them at the finish line, or dropping them late if he sees an opportunity.

Lance's only chance for yellow today will be if his Astana team can control the race well into the final ascent by keeping a stranglehold tempo on the front of the peloton, and if the race isn't aggressive and the attacks come too few and too late to crack him. With the likes of his team mates Leipheimer, Kloden, Popovich and Zubeldia, there is a lot of horsepower which can stifle breakaway attempts - but Armstrong will have to be quite good to be able to be there with them if the attacks come fast and furious from the bottom of the climb. The good thing for Lance is that the climb is relatively short at 6.5 miles (though it does trend uphill for some time to get to the base of the climb), and not as steep as the hardest climbs in the Pyranees. That means it's just a little easier to control, and Astana just might be able to do it!

They're on the road now, so let's see how it plays out. One thing's for sure, all eyes are on the battle for yellow.