Is Lance Armstrong destined to win the Tour de France?

On paper, it seems ridiculous to suggest that Lance Armstrong can win the Tour de France at the ripe old age of 37. After all, it’s hard to argue he is even the best rider in his own team. The arguments are manifold: too old, preparation disrupted by injury, form not good enough, common agreement that Astana teammate Alberto Contador is too strong all round – I could go on and on.

But then again, the race isn't always necessarily won by the best rider, and the Texan has always proven remarkably adept at both beating the odds and playing the political and psychological games which are part and parcel of professional road race cycling.

On the face of it, over the past two days he has been the beneficiary of two gigantic slices of good fortune. But I am also reminded of the old Gary Player quote about how the more he practised, the luckier he seemed to get.

And so it was that Armstrong was in the right place – near the front of the peloton, rather than hiding in its middle – at the right time on Monday’s stage from Marseille to La Grande Motte, as Team Columbia HTC engineered a sudden and brutal breakaway just over 30km from the finish, with all nine men accelerating off the front of the pack as the road turned into a cross-wind. Armstrong and yellow jersey Fabian Cancellara were among only a dozen or so riders who were well-positioned enough to jump on to the back of the break, while behind them other leading riders such as Contador, Cadel Evans and Andy Schleck were caught with their lycra pants down (so to speak), unable to respond quickly enough to prevent a decisive gap opening up.

Mark Cavendish won his second stage in consecutive days, and Armstrong gained a useful 41 seconds on all the other main contenders, at one stroke catapulting himself from fourth to first in the Astana rankings, 19 seconds ahead of Contador.

Was Armstrong in the right place at the right time because his experience told him that a breakaway was likely given the shifting winds? Had someone in the Columbia squad – Lance’s old US Postal/Discovery Channel lieutenant George Hincapie, say – quietly tipped him off, maybe in return for a favour later in the race? Or was it just plain luck? It could be either of the first two; I very much doubt it was pure serendipity.

In yesterday’s team time trial (TTT), Astana came out on top but Cancellara held onto the yellow jersey by the slimmest of margins, just two-tenths of a second ahead of Armstrong overall. Again, this has worked very much in Armstrong’s favour, as the onus of defending the maillot jaune over the next few days remains squarely on the shoulders of Cancellara’s Saxo Bank squad. Meanwhile, Astana can hide in the background, conserving energy for the big mountain stages, which start on Friday.

Interestingly, in the TTT the team’s time is taken as the fifth rider crosses the finish line which, in Astana’s case, just happened to be Lance Armstrong. Video replays clearly showed him easing off slightly in the final metres rather than driving hard all the way to the line. Was this part of a calculated effort to avoid the yellow jersey, as a number of conspiracy theorists were pondering in the aftermath of the stage? In this case, probably not. The margins were too fine, and coasting across the line in all likelihood only cost him a couple of hundredths rather than two-tenths.

But that’s not really the point. The fact is – good fortune or not – without the 41 seconds lost to Armstrong in Monday’s breakaway, Contador would not only be in yellow this morning, but more importantly he would have a much greater claim to outright team leadership of Astana.

It may only be 41 seconds – but it might as well be 41 minutes for the psychological and tactical impact it has. At the very least, it has postponed any potential day of reckoning where Armstrong has to set aside his own ambitions and work for Contador for the good of the team.

There is certainly no mistaking the change in Armstrong’s tenor over the past two days. Whereas before he has talked about his key aims being promoting his cancer campaigns and just being there to enjoy the ride, over the past two days he has started talking openly about there being “two team leaders” at Astana and that “Alberto came to win, and quite honestly so did I”. He has also obliquely referred to the critical role of Astana directeur sportif Johan Bruyneel in determining the team’s ultimate strategy and avoiding any potentially destructive head-to-head battles, saying, “We don’t want a scrap. Johan will have to manage the situation.”

Make no mistake, Lance Armstrong is very much back in the game. Ultimately, he may not quite have the legs to beat Contador on the road, but off it he is running rings around his young teammate. And if winning the Tour this year requires a combination of form, mind games and political shenanigans in equal measure, then maybe – just maybe – Lance Armstrong can prove everyone wrong and claim the seemingly unthinkable: an eighth Tour de France title.

One thing you can be sure of: by the time the race arrives in Paris on the 26th, we may well find that Lance Armstrong was destined to win the 2009 Tour de France – but he certainly won’t be leaving it to chance.