Stage 13: A Whole New Tour Leaving the Pyrenees Today's stage to Plateau de Beille was both harder and longer than yesterday. Instead of just two hard climbs at the end, there were a total of six climbs, and the finish line was atop the nastiest of them all. Armstrong started the day most concerned about Jan Ullrich, Tyler Hamilton, Ivan Basso, Andreas Kloden, Iban Mayo, and Roberto Heras, but everything would change in the course of 200 kilometers. The strain of 14 days of racing took a heavy toll during Stage 13. Denis Menchov was the first to submit, dropping out of the race due to knee pain. Then the man who raced through the pain of a broken collarbone to finish fourth in 2003 pulled over to the side of the road just 80 kilometers into the stage and peeled off his race number. Tyler Hamilton came to France to stand on the podium in Paris, but the pain in his back wouldn't allow him to climb the mountains with the leaders. With some time to recover, he can still have great performances at the Olympics in August and other late-season races, but his Tour de France aspirations will have to wait another year. Iban Mayo, the winner of the Dauphine Libere just two weeks before the Tour started, stopped in the middle of the road to quit the race, but was persuaded by his team director and teammates to continue on. He finished the stage a massive 38 minutes behind. His teammate and fellow Spaniard, Haimar Zubeldia, could not be persuaded to finish and abandoned the Tour. Roberto Heras, a great climber who left the US Postal Service team to be the leader of the Liberty Seguros squad, crashed on the descent from the Col de la Core. Though he got back into the lead group, he was later dropped on the Col d'Agnes and finished the stage over 21 minutes behind. As the time gaps between the pre-race favorites opened, other riders rose to the occasion and seized their chances to move up in the overall classification. CSC team leader Ivan Basso started the Tour with an outside chance of challenging for the yellow jersey, but confirmed his talent by being the only man with the power to match Armstrong pedal stroke for pedal stroke these past two days. A former winner of the Tour's Best Young Rider competition, the 26-year-old Italian has the potential to win the Tour de France, although he's going to have a tough time stopping Armstrong this year. Jan Ullrich's teammate Andreas Kloden emerged as another man with the power to challenge Armstrong for the race leadership this year. The bronze medallist in the 2000 Olympic road race, Kloden was considered the next great German champion. After a few tough seasons with few results, most people had written him off. He returned to top form in 2004 and won the German National Championship a few weeks before the Tour de France by powering away to a solo breakaway win. The final week of the 2004 Tour de France will be far different than anyone expected. Instead of a battle between Armstrong, Ullrich, Hamilton, Mayo, and Heras, it looks like the race is going to be between Armstrong, Basso and Kloden. Sitting 6:39 behind Armstrong in the overall classification, Ullrich has to decide whether to continue riding as the leader of the T-Mobile team or ride in support of Kloden. Although Ullrich seemed to have a slightly better day than he did yesterday, he's always said he'd ride for the strongest man on his team, and right now that seems to be Kloden. Stages 12 and 13 were not easy for Lance Armstrong by any means, but he came to the 2004 Tour de France in the best shape of his life and with the strongest team in the race. The pacing work done by the team put tremendous pressure on Lance's rivals, and then he had the power to finish them off. There's still a lot of racing left, but if Lance continues to perform as he has thus far, everyone will be racing for second place.