ST DIZIER, France: The normally impassive Lance Armstrong whooped with joy after leading his US Postal team to victory in the Tour de France team time trial for the first time on Wednesday.

Armstrong hugged each of his team-mates in celebration after they won the stage, 30 seconds ahead of the Spanish ONCE team.

"It's a big result for us. We've always been close to winning the team time trial but for one reason or another we never got our tactics right.

"This year we worked on our team riding several times and now it's paid off with a great result," the four-times Tour champion said.

"They say the team time trial is either a gift or a curse because you either gain or lose time on your rivals. Today I'm happy to take the gift of time in the overall standings.

"Some of them talk a lot but we prefer to keep it quiet for when it's all on the line and then show what we've got. Hopefully today was the start of that."

The American, who is one second behind team-mate Victor Hugo Pena at the top of the overall standings, said he had given everything to help his team win the stage.

"Some days you win and get to the finish and think 'that was easy.' It wasn't like that today. It was a full effort for everybody," he said.

"We thought we'd take long pulls at the end of the time trial and be heroes but we were all taking short 10 second pulls because we were empty."

Perfect race

The US Postal team rode a perfect race, upping their speed in the final section of the 69-km course.

"The team went fast when we had to go fast. We were six seconds behind at the second time check after 44 km but we had the confidence to come back," Armstrong said.

As the Tour de France heads towards the Alps, Armstrong is in a strong position with a 33 seconds advantage over Joseba Beloki of Spain, 39 seconds ahead of Germany's Jan Ullrich and 1:33 on Santiago Botero of Colombia.

"I had some problems before the Tour that I didn't elaborate on but I'm feeling better and better every day. I wasn't sharp in the prologue, I was bad Monday, yesterday was better and today even more so," Armstrong said.

"In the last few years we've been second and third in the team time trial and we sat at the dinner table saying we could have done this and that.

"It's not a good feeling and I didn't want to do it this year. After finally winning I think it'll be a great feeling at dinner tonight," he added.

Agencies via Xinhua

(China Daily 07/11/2003 page8)