Tour de France: Warrior's legacy leads Botero to the peak

Armstrong may have to look over his shoulder as a Colombian 'guerrero' makes up for lost climb

Before drugs took over Medellin, there was the textiles industry. Before football and Formula One dominated the sports pages of the Colombian press, there were cyclists, haunted little men often overwhelmed by the power of the European riders until the road started to climb.

The succession can be traced back to the Indomitable Zipa, who rode the first Tour of Colombia through a civil war, to Ramon Hoyos, Cochise, Rafael Niño, a peasant boy from the Boyaca region, Chepe Gonzalez and on to Lucho Herrera, who won the Tour de France stage to Alpe d'Huez in 1987 and Fabio Parra, whose third place in 1988 remains the best placing by a Colombian in the Tour.

In the mid-Eighties, as many as 25 Colombians found employment in Europe, but, almost overnight, the collapse of the coffee prices drained sponsorship from the sport. Fashions changed, the drug lords found football a more glamorous outlet for their wealth and, though there are still cycle schools for the talented young riders, they exist without funding or real structure. Only three Colombians will contest the 2002 Tour de France: Ivan Parra, the brother of Fabio, of Once, Hugo Pena of US Postal, and Santiago Botero, twice a top-10 finisher and one of the few legitimate challengers to the hegemony of Lance Armstrong.

If Botero, of the cash-strapped Kelme team, can harness his time- trialling form of last year to the climbing skills which brought him an Alpine stage win in 2000, Armstrong's run to a fourth successive Tour title might not be as simple, and dull, as many fear. Botero has been bequeathed the task of beating the unloved American, a role traditionally adopted by Jan Ullrich, who is injured. More significantly, victory for Botero – and defeat for American imperialism – would ignite a passion which has lain dormant for too long in the high hills of Antioquia and Boyaca, the cycling heartlands of Colombia.

"Botero is an anomaly," says Matt Rendell, whose wonderfully evocative book and television documentary on Colombian cycling, Kings of the Mountains, traced a personal journey through those same hills. "He is blond and blue-eyed, for a start, and he has the solid build of Cochise rather than the sparrow-like quality of the traditional Colombian climber, Gonzalez or Lucho Herrera. He is also the most sophisticated man in the peloton and shares the same agent as Juan-Pablo Montoya, the Formula One driver."

Like anyone brought up in Medellin, Botero has his war stories. Though the Tour of Colombia remains remarkably untouched, cyclists have been inevitably drawn into the violence. Two former riders, Oliverio Rincon and Herrera himself, were kidnapped, but survived. Jose Vicente Diaz, a former Kelme rider, was murdered in Tunja in 1995. Four years later, Elkin Dario Rendon, a well-known cycling coach in Medellin, was shot while riding his bike on the outskirts of the town. In January 1993, a car bomb intended to kill Pablo Escobar's mother and son, who lived in neighbouring apartments, blew the windows out of Botero's home. A few days later, another two bombs ripped off half the house, flinging the 20-year-old Santiago to the floor.

Suffering and violence, the twin towers of Colombian cycling. In Rendell's eyes, cycling's importance owes much to the spiritual imagery of the tortured soul. In Kings of the Mountains, a photograph of the statue of the Fallen Lord in the basilica of Monserrate, overlooking Bogota, is placed alongside a picture of Lucho Herrera, blood pouring down the side of his gaunt face from a cut above his eye, arms raised in salute to his victory at St Etienne on the 1985 Tour.

"In Colombia, there is a cult of the bike," says Rendell. "You will see old men riding up ridiculous climbs with full loads and yet you will never see anyone get off and push. The cyclists are spiritual ambassadors, carrying crosses up the mountains, paying for the sins of their nation."

Rendell cannot fully explain how he came to be a crusader for Colombian cycling, but, having survived Hodgkin's Disease, he was no stranger to suffering and as a medieval historian, a gifted linguist and a passionate follower of cycling, he brings a curious streak of logic to his obsession. Riding from Argentina to Bolivia one summer, he just kept going until he reached Colombia. One phone call to the local radio station and the next moment he was being welcomed into the home of Chepe Gonzalez, stage winner on the 1996 Tour, in a northern suburb of Bogota.

"I'd been working on a multi-national feed for Channel 4, in some basement, on the Tour when Chepe won that stage and I remember thinking as I looked at him: 'I wonder what brings you here?' Chepe was another Boyaca peasant, cold and forbidding to a lot of Colombians, but this bumbling Englishman just sneaked in under his radar." Through Gonzalez, Rendell began to learn about the reality of Colombia's mountain men, about the climbs which wind forever, the baked mud roads which are washed away by the rains and the shrine to the Virgin near Sogamoso which, on the first Saturday of every month, welcomes a line of aspiring cyclists seeking blessings. Above all, he saw the reverence for cycling which has survived the violence and the brutality. Gonzalez is talking about riding again; he needs the money. But Montoya is now the idol of the young.

The thinning thread now rests in the hands of a business graduate from Medellin. In 1999, Botero was handed a six-month ban by the UCI, the sport's governing body, for high testosterone, a suspension he still bitterly contests. He nursed his grievance back in the hills of his boyhood in Antioquia, returning lean and fresh to win the King of the Mountains jersey in the 2000 Tour. Last year, in an effort to improve his power, he put on muscle and lost time in the mountains. But, for much of the last seven months, Botero has been riding with his old team-mates from the now defunct cycling club, the Pride of Antioquia, recreating the conditions of the winter of 1999.

"The team folded recently," Botero told Procycling magazine. "That left a lot of excellent Medellin riders out of work. They have continued to train and look for sponsors, but I admire them enormously and they will add to my motivation to do well at this Tour." Botero has also been training three times a week on the track behind a motorbike ridden by an old mechanic from Postobon, once one of Colombia's strongest teams. "His name is Milcho and he charges 5,000 Colombian pesos an hour [less than £2]."

Botero says he intends to ride the 21 stages and 3,000km of the 89th Tour as a "a madman, a buccaneer and a guerrero". Armstrong will be aware that a Colombian's definition of a warrior could spell danger over the next three weeks.

Kings of the Mountains, by Matt Rendell, published by Aurum Press, £16.99. Matt Rendell will be covering the Tour for ITV2 and Procycling.

Texan titan home and dry as Millar finally runs out of gas

By Alasdair Fotheringham with the Tour de France

Any doubts about whether the three-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong was capable of continuing where he left off last year were wiped away when he romped home to win the race's 7km prologue in Luxembourg.

Had yesterday's forecasts of rain proved correct, the Texan had vowed to take no risks on the technical circuit through the old quarter of the Grand Duchy's capital. Instead the course stayed dry for Armstrong, allowing him to go all out for the opening stage.

He appeared to relish the difficulty of the course, which featured stretches barely the width of a car, cobbled hill sections, twisting descents and badly cambered corners.

"It was beautiful, a great stage to win," Armstrong said afterwards. "It was dry so I went all out from start to finish." The demanding second half, including a winding ascent and a long straight climb through Luxembourg's streets to the end proved decisive for the result, and made riders' calculation of their strength a crucial factor.

Britain's contender for the prologue, the Cofidis leader David Millar, was four seconds faster than the Texan 1500m from the finish, but ran out of gas on the last ascent, finally taking fifth place, five seconds behind. The Scot earned the Best Young Rider's white jersey for his pains.

"It was won and lost in the final section," Armstrong acknowledged. "I was behind at the time-check half-way through but I was going cross-eyed in the last kilometre."

Armstrong's first victory in a Tour prologue since 1999, the year he first won the race overall, will allow him to establish an important psychological advantage over his rivals, particularly after he had lost two time-trials in recent warm-up races. He refused to see it that way though.

"When people say: 'Oh, this means he's going to win,' when they put you up on a pedestal, that really scares me. The day you turn up at the start thinking you can win hands down isn't just a lack of respect for your rivals, it's the day you lose."

For largely the same reason, he revealed, he had decided not to wear the yellow jersey, as is his right as defending champion, during the prologue itself. "I wanted to look down and see the team colours. That way I would say to myself: 'when you get to the other end, it'll be yellow'."

Another inspiration, he added, was the presence of his family at the race, with his son Luke offering him a bottle of water as he warmed up minutes before starting. "They were probably the best motivation I could ask for."

As for Armstrong's rivals, the closest was the 2001 King of the Mountains Laurent Jalabert, who finished two seconds adrift of the American. Good news for the host nation to see a Frenchman so close to the almighty US Postal leader, but Jalabert, a dourly realistic veteran of many a Tour, has already renounced any possibility of fighting for the overall prize.

Of the remaining major contenders, the Colombian Santiago Botero came an excellent fourth, four seconds behind, with Spain's Igor Gonzalez de Galdeano nine seconds adrift. Worse off was last year's prologue winner, Christophe Moreau, back in 40th spot, 24 seconds behind.

Asked if he intends an all-out defence of the jersey from start to finish, Armstrong responded: "Probably not. But probably from [Wednesday's] team time-trial onwards." The others have been warned.

Alasdair Fotheringham writes for 'Cycling Weekly'