Lance Armstrong took the bold but unenviable step of leading out his team’s squad in the Individual Time Trial in Monaco.  Perhaps he thought getting out so early he would likely snag – albeit possibly temporarily – the top spot on the leader board.  And he did.  For several minutes the lead was his, and by a tidy half a minute over some nameless riders he’d thoroughly thrashed.

Then his position started to slip.  Every couple of minutes another rider would undermine Lance’s time.  No less than three members of his own team put time on him: Firstly, Levi Leipheimer slipped by a couple seconds quicker, then Andreas Kloden took the race from a 20+ minute affair well down into the 19s.  Finally, Alberto Contador dropped comfortably below Kloden’s time, beating everybody but the God Of Time-trialing, Fabian Cancellaria.

As the smoke cleared on a phenomenal first day of racing, and one of the best opening days of any Tour in the past decade, what should be clear is that Astana has brought a highly stacked deck to this poker match.

They’d cleverly posted two of their top riders to open the day, and two to close it.  We suspect coach Bruyneel had a diversification strategy in place, in which he’d take weather changes off the table by having strong riders cover the course hours apart.  However, the weather cooperated and such risk-management proved unnecessary.

What also should be crystal clear, is that the strongest CLIMBER on the Astana team just posted the team’s fastest TIME-TRIAL, besting all but the God of such races.

In doing so, Contador grabbed hold of the leadership mantle of the Astana team in a way that should eliminate any further confusion thereabout.  Armstrong, on the other hand, came in 4th place ON HIS OWN TEAM in an event that used to be his wildcard.  What he should have won or challenged for, he did well but not particularly spectacularly.

Coach Bruyneel, in our view, should be doubly pleased at the moment, with his man Contador sitting comfy in a superior position for the overall contest, and the future mission for Mr. Armstrong now absolutely clarified.  In retrospect, perhaps Bruyneel anticipated all of this, and thus left Chris Horner at home because his excellent capabilities as super-domestique to the stars was going to be made redundant by one Mr. Lance Armstrong.

What doesn’t seem clear at all, is why Lance and his brother-froma-nutha-mutha (as my adolescent kids like to chant) Johan Bruyneel fail to embrace Alberto as the risen one.  Instead, as they plot the future of Team Astana (seemingly involving flushing sounds and swirling waters) and its metamorphosis into Team Nike/Livestrong, there seems to be no efforts at all to secure the ongoing services of the greatest stage racer in the world today, aka Mr. Alberto Contador.

Rather, only weeks ago it seemed that Astana was about to plunge into the abyss and almost simultaneously re-surface donning a splendid black and yellow Nike life preserver, and yet Bruyneel was apparently allowing Mr. Contador to be swept into a nearby lifeboat manned by the good folks at Garmin Chipotle.

So, we ask, Johan: Why no love for Alberto?

To us, Bruyneel and Lance seem to have a chip on their collective shoulders when it comes to young Alberto, and it could be a matter of Lance not wanting to embrace Alberto because Lance still hopes to be the man the team works for, and not the other way around.  Bruyneel’s motivations are more murky to discern. Perhaps he believes one should bring a multitude of relatively competitive stars into one squad and see how that works out.  If so, perhaps he doesn’t recall the problem T-Mobile experienced (aside from the rampant drug problem, that is) by having Ullrich, Kloden, Vinokourev, et. al., “working together” in one squad.  The main problem was that they didn’t exactly do so.  Every man wanted to be leader, or at least co-leader, and every man wanted a stage more than he wanted to drop back and help a team leader — especially if he disagreed that the other man deserved such position and therefore such help.

Were it up to us – say, Johan gets hit by a bus and Lance otherwise goes missing and the sponsors ring us to step in on short notice, just as we regularly dream would happen – we’d quickly set up a “blue-train” (and with something other than baby-blue, thank you) built singularly around the goal of having Alberto Contador continue his ongoing global domination.  Maybe the strategy fails.  Maybe Alberto crashes or comes up lame, or whatever, but who could blame us?  Every bookmaker in Europe says we’re right about this one.  Build the team around Leipheimer, and you’re setting your goals on winning lots of Tours of California.  Build it around Kloden and you’re counting on getting top 10 in major races, but podium positions in none of them.

Build it around Lance, and you’re simply, hopelessly, nostalgic.

Recall that Michael Jordan was the best basketball player in the world, but at some point Michael and the Bulls had to say, enough.  Tiger Woods’ day will fade; maybe it’s beginning to fade already.  It happens.  Eddy Merckyx (forgive our spelling) is still alive and still one of the greatest cyclists that ever rode, but he knows his proper place in the sport these days, and assumes it with grace.  Personally, we hope Lance gets out of his mission whatever he’s hoping for, including, when the time is right, a graceful exit so that future champions can enjoy their day without the former champ casting verbal shadows on their time in the sun.

For now, though, we’re hoping to see Levi, Lance, Kloden, and the rest of the Astana squad huddled obediently around young king Alberto.  He’s earned the support, and deserves the respect.