Return with us now to the thrilling days of yesteryear, the 2001 Tour de France to be exact.
It looks like Lance Armstrong is gassed out on the climbs, but he's been bluffing. Jan Ullrich's Team Telekom works feverishly to drop him, but Armstrong can't be dropped.
Then Armstrong cycles a few yards ahead of Ullrich on L'Alpe d'Huez, slows down for a few seconds to give a challenging look over his shoulder to his rival, then powers ahead to gain 2 minutes on him.
Nice story, but that ain't the way it happened, Armstrong explained to Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen in a post-Tour de France 2005 interview on OLN.
Here's an excerpt from the Armstrong interview that was transcribed over at The Paceline, the official fan club for the Discovery Channel Pro Cycling Team (there's a photo of “The Look” in their post):
Phil Liggett: And you went straight to the front, you looked around over your left shoulder, and you started straight at Jan and I said, “He took a look straight into the eyes there of Jan Ullrich and said “Well, here I go, are coming or not?!” and the answer is: Not!”
LA: I am going to be completely honest. There’s been a lot of thought and discussion about “The Look.” And the absolute truth is that I was not looking at Jan Ullrich.
Liggett: You just ruined my whole life!
LA: I’m sorry, but I wasn’t… I was looking back down the road, first and foremost for my teammates. If I was going to attack – which I wanted to do – if I got into trouble, how close were they going to be come and help or sort of settle things down again from a team perspective? But also not only where is Jan, but where is Beloki? Where is Kivilev? Where’s everybody else? And I will swear on my health – which I never do – it wasn’t a look at Jan, but the way the angle played it was. It looked like I looked right at him and “are you coming, or what?” But it wasn’t a taunt, it wasn’t a finger in the face, – or a look…
“The Look” had been judged the top moment of Armstrong's Tour de France career by OLN viewers, and an article by USA Today in 2003 said that look, replayed hundreds of time of TV, helped put the Tour de France, and Armstrong, on the front burner for many Americans.
Liggett and Sherwen also question Armstrong about other moments in previous Tours in the OLN interview. The Paceline plans to transcribe a third and final installment of the interview soon.
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