Tour de France
Virenque wins first mountain stage

The Associated Press

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Virenque won on Bastille Day with a strong solo ride, moving a step closer to his goal for this tour: to become the first seven-time winner of the pink spotted jersey as best climber.

Virenque won the 147-mile stage, the longest of the Tour, in 6 hours, 24 seconds. It was his seventh victory in a long career marked both by outstanding performances and the lows of a doping scandal in 1998. His last stage win was in 2003, to Morzine in the Alps — also after a solo effort ahead of the chasing pack.

Armstrong was sixth in the stage, sprinting at the finish to come in just behind French champion and overall leader Thomas Voeckler.

Armstrong, Voeckler and Ullrich were 5 minutes, 19 seconds behind Virenque. The 32-year-old Texan is sixth overall, 9 minutes, 35 seconds behind Voeckler and 55 seconds ahead of Ullrich.

In a glimpse of their expected battles to come in the harder Pyrenees and Alps, Armstrong and Ullrich led the main pack up the hardest of nine climbs, a 31/2-mile ascent of Le Puy Mary, in the Massif Central region of central France.

The climb, the hardest so far, grew steeper as it went up and was where Virenque first surged into the lead.

Johan Bruyneel, sports manager for Armstrong's U.S. Postal Service team, said it was still too early in the three-week race to tell whether the five-time champ is stronger than his challengers.

Armstrong "looked good and sounded good on the radio," Bruyneel said. "It was a hard climb ... but still very far from the finish of the race, so we can't really know now who is good and bad."

Cheered on by hundreds of thousands of fans celebrating the holiday, Virenque became the 14th Frenchman since World War II to win on France's national holiday and the first since Laurent Jalabert in 2001.

A teary Virenque dedicated his win to a friend who died two days earlier and his grandmother who died in June. He said their memory drove him on through the pain of riding alone at the end.
 
"It's fabulous. I was at the end of my strength," he said. "I had cramps everywhere."

The Morocco-born Virenque rode ahead of the following pack for more than 125 miles.

Accompanied much of the way by Axel Merckx, the son of five-time Tour champion Eddy Merckx, the two built a lead of more than 10 minutes. But Virenque moved ahead of the Belgian rider on the steepest climb.

Virenque rode alone over the last 40 miles to the finish in Saint-Flour, thrusting his arms into the air as he crossed the line and pointing to the sky.

At 34, Virenque is approaching the end of a career that could see him credited as being the Tour's best-ever climber — if he again wins the spotted jersey at the finish in Paris on July 25. He currently is tied with Spanish rider Federico Bahamontes and Belgian Lucien Van Impe with six mountain titles.

Virenque was a member of the Festina team that was ejected from the 1998 Tour after customs officers found a large stash of banned drugs in a team car.

In a trial that followed, Virenque caused a furor with testimony on systematic drug abuse within his team and cycling.

His admission of doping led to a seven-month ban that kept him out of the 2001 Tour. At the time, he said he felt his career was over.