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Despite losing more time to Alexander Vinokorouv, Stage 14 was a better day for Lance Armstrong. Armstrong and I talked prior to the start of today’s stage, and he was upbeat and happy with the way his legs felt. He confirmed that gut feeling with a strong ride alongside Jan Ullrich throughout today’s tough climbs. He looked comfortable with the pace, even when Ullrich cranked up the tempo on the Col de Peyresourde. Armstrong and Jan Ullrich can afford to let the Kazahk gain time on them because they know they can both finish well ahead of him in the final time trial. Even with a lackluster

ONE OF THE great metaphors inspired by the Tour de France is that of the race as a road to Calvary. Le calvaire has been routinely used throughout the 100 years since the great race was born to describe the process of a cyclist continuing in the face of great affliction, be it injury, or illness, or the mental agony that follows the death of a close relative. Tyler Hamilton has put all the past century of two-wheeled battles against pain into a new perspective over the past two weeks. He has ridden on in spite of a broken collarbone, holding a high place overall as the race entered the

We had just cleared the 1069-meter summit of the Col de Portet d’Aspet when the memories of July 18, 1995 came flooding back. They were of Italian Olympic road champion Fabio Casartelli and his fatal crash on the Pyrénéan mountain’s descent in the Tour de France. Since then, the Tour has frequently returned to the forested mountainside where, incredibly, the concrete bollards that Casartelli hit his head on still menacingly line the sinewy descent. But today seemed different. Maybe it was because Samuel Abt of the New York Times was sitting beside me in the back seat. The last time he did

Tactics, timing and tenacity should all come into play on Monday at what should be the most gripping stage yet of this astonishing Tour de France. For the past two days in the Pyrénées, Lance Armstrong’s U.S. Postal-Berry Floor team and Jan Ullrich’s Bianchi team have played a delicate tactical battle in addition to the overt one between the two stars. Each day, Postal has sent a rider off in the stage’s long break (José Luis Rubiera Saturday, Manuel Beltran Sunday), which has allowed Armstrong’s team to follow rather than lead the peloton; on Sunday, Bianchi led for much of the last 100km.

The final day of the weeklong Whistler Gravity Festival came to close Sunday with the crowning of Canada’s last pair of 2003 national mountain bike champions. Roland Green and Marie-Helen Premont each took convincing cross-country wins on a tough, technical track that wound its way through Whistler, British Columbia. In the men’s race Green (Trek-Volkswagen), Ryder Hesjedal (Subaru-Gary Fisher) and Seamus McGrath (Haro-Lee Dungarees) cracked open a small gap during the first of five laps around the 7.6km course, then steadily pulled away from a group of chasers that included Mathieu Toulouse

It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every 12 minutes one is interrupted by 12 dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper. – Rod Serling Wouldn’t you know, this would be the year I decide to do without TV for the Tour. It seemed like a good idea at the time, when we left Westcliffe for Colorado Springs. We’d had satellite TV on Mount Dog – HBO, OLN, the works – but the signal-to-noise ratio got way out of balance in late 2001, and we thought that we could spend the $50 a month on something that offered a little more return on the

Simoni edges Dufaux and Virenque for the win

Simoni gets a win, Virenque adds to his KOM lead

Armstrong was not impressed with Simoni's talk earlier in the Tour

Simoni joined the right move

Cioni's 2003 Pinarello Dogma

Zabel and the Pinarello crew are just as Dogmatic as the Fassas

Dufaux, Simoni, and Virenque

Simoni's spider theme

Sacchi gets his own custom job

Deda's Alanera - no flashy graphics, but...

Armstrong still in yellow, but it is close

Pyrenees Picnic

Hotel Auberge Catalane

Fasso car

Cows and cyclists on backroad

Col de la Core river

The final three switchbacks, jammed with fans, on Col de Peysourde

The ascent to Col de Mente

The descent from Col de la Core

Village of Castillon en Couserans

The bull wants his side of the road

Vinokourov will not give up...

... and neither will Ullrich.

Lauri Aus at Paris-Nice in 2000

Hamilton attacks on l'Alpe d'Huez

Green drops out of the 'Heart of Darkness.'

Premont smooth and in control

Green and Hesjedal cross Fitzsimmons Creek.

Redden ended up second.

The men's race was full tilt from the start.

It's good ... but it's just not OLN

Lance Armstrong made it through an epic day in the Pyrénées Saturday, but he only just kept the race leader's yellow jersey on his back after a frantic finale to the 197.5km stage 13 of the 2003 Tour de France. The four-time Tour champion was attacked from all sides on the grinding, 9.1km climb to the Ax-3 Domaines ski area high in the French Pyrénées, but hung on to finish fourth and retain the maillot jaune by a scant 15 seconds over Bianchi’s Jan Ullrich. Armstrong admitted that he was fatigued from the efforts in Friday's individual time trial and tried to limit his losses when Ullrich

Sprinter Robbie McEwen's bid to win a second successive Tour de France green jersey was not going quite to plan, the Australian admitted on Saturday. McEwen won the jersey last year with victory on the Champs-Elysees on the race's final day. This year, he led the points competition from stage one to five, but dropped to third behind Italian Alessandro Petacchi (Fassa Bortolo) and Australia's Baden Cooke (fdjeux.com) after crashing on the sixth stage. Petacchi abandoned the race on the seventh stage to leave McEwen second in the standings, eight points behind Cooke. Speaking before the

Stage 13 Individual Results1. Carlos Sastre (Sp), CSC, 5:16:082. Jan Ullrich (G), Bianchi, 01:013. Haimar Zubeldia (Sp), Euskaltel-Euskadi, 01:034. Lance Armstrong (USA), U.S. Postal Service, 01:085. Alexandre Vinokourov (Kaz), Telekom, 01:186. Ivan Basso (I), Fassa Bortolo, 01:207. Mercado Juan Miguel (Sp), iBanesto.com, 01:248. Iban Mayo (Sp), Euskaltel-Euskadi, 01:599. Christophe Moreau (F), Credit Agricole, 02:3210. Tyler Hamilton (USA), CSC, 02:3411. Laurent Dufaux (Swi), Alessio, 03:0612. Francisco Mancebo (Sp), iBanesto.com, 03:0913. Richard Virenque (F), Quick Step-Davitamon, 03:4614.

Lance Armstrong has not yet won his fifth Tour de France, but Saturday marked his 52nd day in the race leader's yellow jersey – beating the total of five-times Tour champion Jacques Anquetil. Frenchman Anquetil sported the yellow jersey for 51 days between 1957 and 1964 as he became the first rider to win the Tour five times. Armstrong, winner of the last four Tours, is still a long way behind Belgian Eddy Merckx, who led the Tour for 96 days, while France's Bernard Hinault was the race leader for 78 days and Spaniard Miguel Indurain for 60 days.

To see how Stage 13 of the Tour unfolded live, just go to our Live Update window and follow the action all the way to the finish.

Pacific Northwest riders turned in solid performances Friday as the Alpenrose Velodrome Challenge kicked off in Portland, Oregon. In its fifth year, the AVC – the sixth race in the American Velodrome Challenge Series – featured temperatures in the mid-90s baking the 268-meter concrete oval with its steep, 43-degree banks. And the racing was equally hot. Portland’s Larssyn Staley (Hot Tubes), just back from winning gold in the pursuit and points race at junior nationals, opened the morning session by taking a hard-fought victory in the women’s 3000-meter pursuit with a 4:05:47. Heather

The Tour de France of Danish team CSC looked to be over before it had even begun when leader Tyler Hamilton crashed and broke his collarbone on the very first stage. But two weeks later, the brave American is still in the race, lying fifth, four minutes and 25 seconds behind overall leader Lance Armstrong, and his teammates have now won two stages. Spaniard Carlos Sastre, 10th in the Tour last year, nearly became the team's leader when it was at first thought that Hamilton would be forced out. But he resumed his team duties until Saturday, when the Spaniard asked Hamilton permission to try

It was a big day in the Tour de France today. And there are still more to come, with the race hanging on the thread of 15 seconds between Lance Armstrong and Jan Ullrich. With one of four days in the Pyrénées down, all I am really thinking about now is making it to the finish in Paris – and making the best of next Saturday’s time trial along the way. If you were in the bus – the laughing group – like I was today, there was one thing very funny about today’s 13th stage: hearing the Italians crying as we tackled the major climbs. You could hear them. Crying. Why? They just thought we were

It wasn’t only in the top overall placings of the Tour de France that important changes came about in Saturday’s first Pyrenean stage. If you cast your finger down to the end of the right column of the second page of the results sheet — or dragged your cursor to the last place — you’d notice a change that will have gone largely unnoticed. For the first time since stage 9, Belgian rider Hans De Clercq (Lotto-Domo) is no longer the Tour’s lanterne rouge — officially, the last placed rider on overall standings. De Clercq will most probably have taken his move up from last place to 161st at 2

Despite again losing time to Jan Ullrich on Saturday’s stage, Lance Armstrong is still in the yellow jersey and seems confident of winning his fifth Tour. Before stage 13 started in Toulouse, he happily signed a number of yellow jerseys as souvenirs for local VIPs and then shook hands with a line of local teenage cyclists who waited for him on the presentation stage. He signed more yellow jerseys after the finish, and happily answered questions in French for the France 2 network, which covers the Tour live. Then, after being held up during the chaos of finishing another stage in a small ski

You may have noticed Armstrong’s flat carbon handlebar in the team time trial on his new superlight Trek time-trial bike. According to Trek, one of Lance's goals going into this year's Tour was to lighten his entire time-trial setup. His frame has been stiffened and lightened with a composite honeycomb inside the carbon in the areas around the bottom bracket and head tube, technology that was premiered on the Trek OCLV mountain-bike frames a number of years ago. The aero’ bars Armstrong had previously used weighed anywhere from 800 to 1000 grams for the bar/stem combo, according to Trek.

At the highest levels of competition, there isn’t that much separating a great day from a bad one. We’re not talking about a huge change in power output or overall performance. At this level, being better or worse by a few percentage points can lead to either minutes gained or minutes lost. Lance Armstrong lost about 6 kilograms of fluid weight between yesterday morning and the end of the stage-12 time trial, and also lost 1:36 to Jan Ullrich during that same time period. Losing 2 percent of your body weight due to dehydration leads to a 10-15 percent drop in performance, and Lance lost 8

For the first time in four years, Lance Armstrong is not the favorite to win the Tour de France, the London bookmakers William Hill said on Saturday. They now make Germany's Jan Ullrich the 4-6 favorite with Armstrong at 11-10 and Kazakh Alexander Vinokourov at 14-1.

Fair or unfair — a topic that’s been debated extensively — the 2003 women’s Canadian national downhill champion is Vancouver’s Michelle Dumaresq. The reason for the deliberation: Six years ago Dumaresq was a man. But after living “two many years in the wrong body” Dumaresq underwent sexual reassignment surgery, and with the blessing of the UCI, she’s been racing as a female pro downhiller for the last two years. Saturday she grabbed the biggest win of her career. “I’ve trained a long time for this and this is what I was always pointing to,” said Dumaresq, after besting Claire Buchar by 2.62

The Slopestlye Expression Session capped off festivities on Saturday at the Whistler Gravity Festival where riders were judged in five categories during their runs down a jump/trick park at the base of Whistler Mountain. Canadian Darren Berrecloth emerged the winner, taking home $2000 and pricey Oakley watch. Second place went to Eric Porter, with Richie Schley in third. The only major casualty of the day was Gareth Dyer, who came up short on a back-flip attempt, and was taken off the mountain on a backboard with what was initially reported to be a broken arm. With digi-cam in hand,

Ullrich makes his move

Sastre honors his family with a win

Traffic jam from hell in Ax-Les-Thermes. The team buses were stuck as well.

Tour supplies for a day on the mountain. No wonder they are so excited when the race comes through

Lance's bike is buckled into the car for the start.

Very French father and daughter at the start.

Euskatel fans push a struggling rider.

Mavic car, but going straight.

TV camera and fans stakeout the Postal Bus, hoping for a glimpse of Lance.

Lone straggler

Replenishment motos on the front of the race.

Brochard leads the early break

Sastre and Mercado off on the chase

The last survivor: Rubiera was the last one of the original 10 to be caught.

Some difficulty for Hamilton

A war of seconds

First Vino' went... then Ullrich charged