Basso Is Ready for Lead Role

It is a position most comfortable for Basso. He is a professional cyclist, one of immense talent, with the kind of special drive that pushes a man to keep pumping, even as the mountain grade makes it easier to fall back, even as the cold air freezes around his nostrils, even as the other riders lose their breath and their spirit, unwilling to take the pain and punishment one must endure when racing a bike through the Pyrenees or Alps.

Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong has retired from the sport he made famous in the U.S. Basso, a friend of Armstrong's, a quiet Italian who seems to gather only friends and no jealous enemies, has taken over Armstrong's role as Tour favorite.

Basso, who finished second to Armstrong last year, and Germany's Jan Ullrich are most frequently mentioned as Armstrong's likely successors.

The 2006 race begins Saturday with the prologue in Strasbourg in eastern France, in an area of quiet rivers, rolling hills and the grapes that make Alsatian wine.

Basso, 28, comes from Cassanago Magnago, a small town in the mountains between the lake area near Como and fashion capital Milan. Basso says he grew up in a household where words weren't much in use. Getting on the bike and riding away into the woods provided Basso even more quiet.

He is a husband now to Micaela and the father of two, a daughter, 4-year-old Domitila, and Santiago, his infant son. On his bicycle he has a heart with Micaela's name entwined in the middle. His cycling hero is not Armstrong but Miguel Indurain, "Big Mig," the silent Spaniard who in the 1990s won five consecutive Tours while seldom saying a word.

Basso is trying to step out from under Armstrong's shadow. This spring, for instance, he won the Giro d'Italia -- the tour of Italy -- considered the world's second-most-important race and one very difficult to win for anyone planning to race the Tour de France six weeks later. That's a double Armstrong never tried.

"The Giro just wasn't that big a deal in the U.S. and for our sponsors," Armstrong once said.

Former Tour rider and current television analyst Paul Sherwen said, "If you'd asked me at the start of the year who I'd favor, I would have said right out it was Basso. Right now it's a question mark. The fact is, trying to do the double is very difficult.