Lance has the last word

On the final leg of the Tour de France is the convention that no one attacks on the run to Paris, and Andy Schleck stood by tradition and did not try to attack Alberto Contador's 39 second advantage as the Spaniard won the yellow jersey for the third time. But one man who did challenge the Tour's protocols was seven-time champion Lance Armstrong, writes Richard Williams in The Guardian.

On Lance Armstrong's last day as a Tour de France rider, the American's obsession with his own interests brought the race close to farce. As the riders left Longjumeau, the commissaires noticed that he and the other eight members of his RadioShack team were wearing black jerseys emblazoned with the yellow logo of Livestrong, the organisation that covers both Armstrong's cancer foundation and, increasingly, his own commercial activities.

A change of colours is against the Tour's rules, and they were forced to stop, replace the jerseys with their regular red shirts, and reaffix their race numbers, held on with safety pins, before being allowed to continue on their way to collect the team prize.

"The idea was to talk about the significance and magnitude of the fight against the disease," Armstrong said, "but the commissaires didn't see it that way. In the end I suppose what happened probably brought more attention."

Later, in a gesture of apparent defiance, all nine riders put the black jerseys back on for the podium ceremony. Armstrong may not have won his final Tour de France, but he was always going to have the last word.