Lance Armstrong surrendered the overall lead in the Tour de France on Sunday to Jens Voigt of Germany, shedding the pressure of being in front as the race prepared to scale the Alps.
Danish racer Mickael Rasmussen won the ninth stage with a gutsy solo ride. Sunday's 171km route from Gerardmer to Mulhouse in eastern France took the riders over six climbs -- and Rasmussen was first over them all.
Voigt crossed the finish line 3 minutes, 4 seconds later, just behind French rider Christophe Moreau and good enough to take the overall race lead off Armstrong, who had worn the leader's yellow jersey for five days.
The six-time Tour champion finished in 28th place, crossing the line comfortably in a pack with his main rivals three minutes behind Voigt and Moreau.
Armstrong does not regard Team CSC's Voigt as a main contender in the Tour.
"Voigt is not their guy for the high mountains," Armstrong said.
Letting the German take the yellow jersey allowed Armstrong to head into the Alps, which start on Tuesday after a rest day on Monday, without the pressure of having to defend the lead.
But the American, who is trying to win the race for the seventh straight year, will be looking to take the jersey back before the finish in Paris on July 24, when he plans to retire.
"We don't need the yellow jersey, we don't need to keep it in the Alps, we need to have it at the end," Armstrong said at the start of the stage.
After the race, he added: "I felt like today might be the day when the jersey would be given away and it turned out it was."
The good news for Armstrong was that his teammates rode strongly -- recovering from a disappointing ride Saturday when all eight of them abandoned him in the final climb, unable to keep up with the quick uphill pace. That left Armstrong alone to fend off his rivals' attacks.
"We were better," Armstrong said. "That's good going into the rest day: regroup and get ready for the big climbs."
Armstrong's Discovery Channel squad did not chase when Rasmussen sprinted off on the day's first climb, building up a lead that he never gave up.
Nor did Discovery seek to prevent Voigt from taking the overall lead, although the team still pedaled hard to make sure that he did not get too far ahead -- and to show that it remains strong after the disappointment of the previous day.
"Today was my very last chance to take the jersey," Voigt said.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier