No matter what Lance Armstrong said about being a good teammate, if the opportunity presented itself, he wouldn’t hesitate to wring Alberto Contador’s neck and leave him for dead by the side of the road. He’s just going to run out of time and space first.

The only inviolable rule at the Tour de France is “The strongest always wins.” Not the luckiest, or most experienced, or even the one who someday will wind up running for higher office.
The first time I heard it expressed with real authority was at a small gathering Armstrong hosted in a Paris bar the Saturday night before the 2006 race ended. The Texan was nearing the first anniversary of his retirement and Floyd Landis, a fellow American and former lieutenant on Armstrong’s U.S. Postal Service teams from 2002-04, was already in bed a hundred miles away, likely dreaming about his own triumphant ride onto the Champs-ElysDees.
Landis would get nailed for doping days later and eventually be stripped of his title. But at that moment, all the talk at Armstrong’s table was about how Landis had snatched a victory from almost certain defeat earlier that week; how just a day after one of the most shocking collapses ever in a tour stage, Landis rebounded with an epic attack on the 125-mile stage to Morzine-Avoriaz and took back the yellow jersey.
“How crazy was that?” Armstrong asked, then turned to the man on his left for an answer.
Eddy Merckx put down his glass and began rolling up the sleeve of his polo shirt. The Belgian cyclist was a five-time tour champion himself, a competitor so fierce that he was nicknamed “The Cannibal,” and is still considered by many the greatest all-around rider ever.
Then Merckx shook his head and flexed his right biceps.
“Strong,” he said. “Just incredibly ... unbelievably ... strong.”
A moment later, he added, “And the strongest always wins.”
There was no discussion about how one became the strongest, only certainty all around that at some point in the race, that rider always reveals himself.
Armstrong nodded in agreement that night, and again, it seemed, after Stage 15 this past Sunday, when Contador established beyond any doubt who the strongest was.
The two have been playing cat-and-mouse since the moment Armstrong announced he was coming back as part of Team Astana, which used to belong to 2007 tour champion Contador. Once out on the road, the jockeying for position continued: Armstrong using his experience one day to duck into a slipstream of opposing riders and hitch a ride to the front; Contador replying the next, throwing team strategy to the wind and catapulting himself right back into contention.
The jockeying ended, though, with Stage 15. Near the end of the 129-mile leg, on the steepest part of the hill, Contador put the pedal behind his reputation as the best climber in the sport and zoomed away from the pack. He won by 43 seconds.
“Lance Armstrong was my idol, but dropping him today wasn’t important — he was just like any other rider ... It’s an honor for me to have him working for me,” Contador said
“As far as I’m concerned, I’m happy to be his domestique,” Armstrong concurred. “I’m proud of him.”
Nothing happened Tuesday to suggest they’ll be trading places anytime soon. Armstrong flashed a bit from his past, but all it enabled him to do was keep track of Contador and hold on to second place. He still found time to announce there’s a “pretty good chance” he’ll race the 2010 tour, that he’s already lined up a new American sponsor for Astana next year, and that he’s fully prepared to step in if Contador “were to have a bad day.”
Even that eventuality, though, might not be enough, since there are a few other riders every bit as strong ready to pounce — and all of them have a lot fewer miles on their legs. But just like 59-year-old Tom Watson at the British Open last weekend, the 37-year-old Armstrong can lose the tour and still win.
He’s already burnished his legend, single-handedly re-energized his sport, and given the rest of us something to talk about other than his serial-dating habits.
Armstrong set out 10 months ago to take back his narrative, so that whenever he gets off the bike for good and decides to write the next chapter — the guess here is that it will involve twisting the arms of fellow congressmen for more cancer-research dollars — he’ll get to teach a whole new crowd what it means to be the strongest.