Leipheimer wins, Armstrong 17th

May 04, 2010 |

Pinos Altos (New Mexico), May 3: Levi Leipheimer won the Tour of the Gila for the second straight year on Sunday as teammate Lance Armstrong finished 17th.
Leipheimer held a 59-second lead heading into the final 105.7-mile stage that began in Silver City and ended in Pinos Altos.

He finished the stage in 10th place with the same time as Tom Danielson, who was the overall runner-up.
While Leipheimer and seven-time Tour de France winner Armstrong were using the five-day race in the New Mexico mountains as preparation for the upcoming Tour of California and the Tour de France, Leipheimer was delighted to win again. “I came here from sea level, and for me to perform as good as I did shows me that I’m in great shape,” he said.
“Honestly, I felt fine the whole week, and I was never in trouble. So I’m pretty happy. ... I dont think it could have gone any better for us.”
Armstrong fell off the pace in the final five miles and finished 23rd in the final stage after he and teammate Jason McCartney worked to help Leipheimer keep his lead.
“The most difficult part of today was controlling the race with just three riders,” Armstrong’s coach and director of Team Radio-shack Johan Bruyneel said.
“We also knew that there were a lot of domestic teams that were going really fast, and we lost Jason pretty early because he had to do all the work in the beginning. After that it was up to Levi and Lance.”

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/10804" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-e4a40219833984e373beb09c51a7d280" value="form-e4a40219833984e373beb09c51a7d280" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="85616588" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>