Armstrong rules

last updated 8 January 2015

Paris

American road racer Lance Armstrong won his fifth straight Tour de France last week, finishing 61 seconds ahead of his nearest rival. That was a much smaller margin of victory than in his previous wins in the 23-day, 2,125-mile bicycle race, and the 31-year-old cancer survivor pronounced himself disappointed. “This year was not acceptable,” Armstrong told NBC’s Today show. As the days went by, he said, he grew increasingly afraid that he might let down his U.S. Postal Service team. “For me to have to walk down to the dinner table when the gap was 2 minutes, and then went to 30 seconds, then was down to 15 seconds—it was a sad sight,” he said. Armstrong joined Spaniard Miguel Indurain as the only riders to win cycling’s most prestigious race five consecutive times—a record Armstrong plans to break in 2004.