What will Leipheimer's departure mean for Astana — and Armstrong?
Astana won’t have its ace in the hole as it confronts the decisive final week of the 2009 Tour de France.
With Levi Leipheimer’s early departure, the team will have to decide to go all in with either Lance Armstrong or Alberto Contador. There’s no more full house.
The American was fourth overall at 39 seconds back, poised for a run at the Tour podium – and more – when he crashed out Thursday in a fluke late-race spill when he came in too hot into a left-hander and crashed, breaking a bone in his right wrist.
By Friday, with Leipheimer in a French hospital undergoing surgery, the rest of the Astana team was trying to come to terms with the fallout of what the Tour will hold without one of its key members.
“It’s a serious blow to our team. We had a nice, four-headed approach, and 25 percent of it’s gone now,” said Lance Armstrong. “Now one’s gone and not only does it hurt us, I think it helps the others in terms of their morale in thinking that the team has been weakened.”
Leipheimer will be missed on several fronts on the Astana team, clearly in the driver’s seat heading into the Tour’s third week.
First, he was a legitimate threat for victory. With all eyes on Lance Armstrong and Alberto Contador, Leipheimer was floating just off the radar screen, in a comfortable zone with all the pressure on the growing tension between the Texan and the Spaniard.
It’s easy to imagine a scenario when Leipheimer could have gone up the road with an attacking rider like Cadel Evans or Carlos Sastre to protect the team’s interest and pedal straight into the yellow jersey.
Leipheimer was also one of the team’s steadiest riders in the mountains. A consistent climber, the Montanan can help set the deadly tempo that makes Astana so formidable in the late moments of the summit finishes before the race-making attacks come.
He will also be missed within the team. Leipheimer is a loyal teammate, both willing to work for a leader (ie – helping Contador win last year’s Vuelta a España and Giro d’Italia) as well as a reliable guarantee in crunch time.
Even if Armstrong and Contador duke it out all the way to Mont Ventoux, Leipheimer would have been a legitimate podium hope, especially with his proven time trial abilities that would have come in handy at Annecy.
With Leipheimer’s early exit, everything is different for Astana and there’s a much lower chance of pulling off the first-ever full-team podium sweep.
Armstrong will be without one his most faithful and reliable teammates. The pair trained together in Aspen for several weeks before the Tour began and their bond was iron-clad.
Team manager Johan Bruyneel admitted that rivals will try to exploit the opening.
“It’s not a good thing. For us, it changes a lot as he’s in fourth place and I think he’s one of the guys who can potentially win the Tour,” Bruyneel said. “We lost one important option today. It makes us weaker and will obviously motivate other teams to attack. That’s the situation where other teams will take advantage of.”
Without Leipheimer, Astana becomes a two-man show.
Andreas Kloden remains in contention, but it appears he’s content to assume a support role within the team and avoid the spotlight that comes with Tour success.
Contador has revealed shown he’s not going to race the Tour passively and shows every intention of living up to his promise to fight all the way to Paris for the yellow jersey.
Armstrong is looking stronger every day, but there remains the question of who will Astana support come crunch time.
Despite his pedigree as a seven-time winner, Armstrong must still prove he can hang with the attacks in the highest mountains when the big attacks come. So far, he hasn’t had to show his true colors because the only major surge came from Contador at Arcalis.
The world is waiting to see what Armstrong can do.
Leipheimer’s exit forces Astana to make a decision: will they back Armstrong or Contador?
Bruyneel remains publicly ambivalent, saying the team will support the strongest rider. Armstrong and Contador are separated by two seconds on GC, so everything will be decided in the Alps.
If Contador makes a strong demonstration at Verbier on Sunday and claims the yellow jersey, Armstrong might be painted into a corner that has no exit.
Leipheimer might have been Armstrong’s and Astana’s ace in the hole.
Unfortunately, he’ll be watching on TV when the chips are down.
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