Every Second Counts by Lance Armstrong

almost two weeks of racing, and could afford to finish second.
    Such a concession is unheard of in other sports, but it wasn’t at the Tour. In fact, there could be a strange honor in it. For me, as the overall leader, to win stages I didn’t need was an affront to other riders, and potentially harmful to their careers and incomes; they all had incentive clauses, and stage wins were prestigious in and of themselves. Sometimes it was the role of the leader to be a
grand seigneur
—that is, generous. This was something I learned from Indurain, winner of five straight Tours from 1991 to 1995: it wasn’t good to win every day. There were 200 riders in the field, all working hard, and each deserved recognition for his efforts, and there were no losers at the end of a day when you had climbed the 10 percent grade up Mont Ventoux at the top of Provence, where a rider had once died making the ascent.
    But Pantani misinterpreted me. He thought I said, “
Vitesse
,” meaning, “hurry up.” It was a matter of interpretation: “
vitesse
” was an insult, as if I was telling him he was riding too slowly, and to get out of my way. He thought I was antagonizing him.
    We pedaled side by side toward the finish line, in the fierce wind. I had a choice: I could sprint to try to beat him to the line, or I could choose not to contest the stage, since my overall lead was safe. I didn’t contest. A pedal-stroke from the finish, I let up.
    All that mattered was that I had widened my lead over my real competition, Jan Ullrich, by another 31 seconds.
    But in giving the stage to Pantani, I was doing something that didn’t come natural to me. Indurain could give it and people could accept it. But when I did it on the Ventoux, it infuriated Pantani. He felt I’d patronized him.
    “When Armstrong told me to speed up I think he was trying to provoke me,” he said afterward. “If he thinks it’s over, he’s wrong.”
    I was offended in turn—and I answered back. “Unfortunately, he’s showing his true colors,” I snapped. I also publicly called him Elefantino, a nickname he hated. It referred to the way his prominent ears stuck out from under his bandanna.
    That set off a feud that lasted for a week. The next day Pantani bolted to the front and won a mountain stage without my help, and afterward made it plain that he hadn’t appreciated my sense of etiquette. “It’s much more satisfying to finish alone,” he said, pointedly. “There’s a different taste of victory when you leave everyone behind. A taste of triumph.”
    Now I regretted Mont Ventoux, and it ate at me. My friend Eddy Merckx, the great Belgian five-time Tour winner, scolded me. “That was a big mistake,” he said. “The strongest rider must always win Ventoux. You
never
make a gift of Ventoux. Who knows if you’ll ever have another chance to win it?” I felt I was the strongest rider, but I’d let sentiment get in the way. If I was ever in a position to give Pantani a gift again, I thought,
he ain’t getting it
.
    Over the next few days I was angry and distracted. Anger, however, is not sustaining; you can’t ride on it for long, and in this case, it cost me my good judgment. First, I gave in to sentiment, and then I let a quarrel distract me, and neither served me especially well.
    We arrived at the final mountain stage, the last dangerous part of the Tour. It was a comparatively short but difficult ride of 122 miles, to the top of a mountain called Joux-Plane. It was the kind that could lull you; because it wasn’t an especially long stage, it was tempting to think the ride wouldn’t be as difficult. Wrong. Shorter stages are faster, and therefore sometimes harder.
    Pantani went out hard, specifically to bait me—and lured me into one of the worst mistakes of my career. “I wanted to explode the Tour without worrying about the consequences,” he admitted later.
    The attack put our U.S. Postal Team under pressure, and Johan and I talked back and forth