Armstrong doesn’t want rivalry with Contador to destroy Astana’s hopes to win Tour de France

Armstrong-Contador rivalry takes a break on Tour

ISSOUDUN, France — After teasing his rival and teammate Alberto Contador for more than a week, Lance Armstrong has maybe realized that too much rivalry could lead his quest for an eighth Tour de France win to its ruin.

The battle between the Spaniard and the seven-time Tour winner — who trails his younger challenger by only two seconds overall — has been the talk of the Tour so far.

Their fight has sparkled on the roads and in newspapers, but Tuesday it was time for a time-out, on a day when Contador and Armstrong held their second and third spots in the overall standings behind race leader Rinaldo Nocentini of Italy. Britain’s Mark Cavendish won the 10th stage, ridden without earpieces.

“In the first week, the media are looking for stories to write,” Armstrong said. “They analyze every little thing, they say: ‘They hate each other.’ It’s not the case.”

The 37-year-old Armstrong doesn’t hide his goal to win another Tour while Contador, whose legs are 11 years fresher than Armstrong’s, is craving a second victory in the most prestigious three-week race in the world.

“The biggest tragedy would be that if we both want it so badly that someone else gets it,” Armstrong said, two days after admitting that “tensions” existed in the Astana camp.

The Armstrong-Contador rivalry turned into animosity last week in the Pyrenees, where the Spaniard launched an attack on his way to the Andorran ski resort of Arcalis to leapfrog Armstrong overall. After that stage, Armstrong hinted that Contador was riding against the team strategy.

But Armstrong tried to minimize the ill-feeling within his team, explaining Tuesday that clashes were natural between the two greatest champions cycling has known for the last 10 years given their respective ambition.

“There’s a little bit of friction, of tension. We both want to win the Tour,” Armstrong said.

The Texan perfectly knows how important is the unity of a team in a bid to win the Tour. During his seven-year dominant spell on the race between 1999 and 2005, Armstrong has always had the strongest team of the field to support him. With four riders in this year’s Tour Top 10 — Contador, Armstrong, Andreas Kloeden and Levi Leipheimer — Astana is arguably the best team but an internal rift between the pro-Armstrong and the pro-Contador camps could lead the Kazakh-funded squad to a failure.

Contador is likely to leave the Astana team at the end of the season while Armstrong, back to competition after 3½ years of retirement, has expressed the wish to ride another year. It seems improbable to see them in the same squad next year but it’s crucial for Astana to maintain its unity as long as possible.

The settling of old scores will inevitably happen and has been scheduled in the mountains. Until Friday’s treacherous stage between Vittel and Colmar — a prelude to Sunday’s first Alpine stage — Contador and Armstrong are likely to sit back in the peloton, leaving the headlines to the sprinters and their king, Mark Cavendish.

Last year, Cavendish won four stages but did not finish the race. He has now won seven stages in his Tour de France career and his main goal is to earn the best sprinter’s green jersey.

“The green jersey is always sitting on the back of our minds,” said Cavendish’s Columbia teammate Mark Renshaw. “If ‘Cav’ does win four stages then it’s very likely that he is going to have the lead in the green jersey and of course it’s an objective to get to Paris with that.”

Nocentini finished 34th on Tuesday while Contador was 40th and Armstrong 46th on the route from Limoges to Issoudun. Nocentini stayed six seconds ahead of Contador.

Cavendish’s victory was overshadowed by the controversy surrounding Tour organizers’ decision to ban earpieces during the stage.

Riders were stripped of their customary earpieces, left to fend for themselves and denied contact with their teams during the 121-mile route. The decision to ban rider radios and TV sets in cars was made last month.

The Tour wanted to inject drama into the race by eliminating earpieces for the 10th and 13th stages. Many riders — Armstrong, Contador and Nocentini — were far from pleased with the experiment.

“The fact is for us it’s dangerous not to have them,” Nocentini said. “There are dangers on the road.”

AP Sports Writer Jerome Pugmire contributed to this report.