• Schleck sticks to tradition and does not attack on final stage
• Spaniard takes title without being at his best or winning a stage
Alberto Contador and his team Astana team-mates enjoy the ride on the way to Paris and overall victory for the Spaniard. Photograph: Bryn Lennon/Getty Images
A handful of kilometres into today's final stage of the 2010 Tour de France, Alberto Contador was handed the traditional flûte of champagne and shared a toast with his fellow members of the Astana team as they rolled out of Longjumeau towards Paris. This, surely, would have been the moment for Andy Schleck to attack.
Only 39 seconds separated Schleck from the man in the yellow jersey after 3,500km and 19 days of racing. There would have been long odds against the chance of the Luxembourgeois making a solo escape stick all the way to the finish, but it would have been worth a try, given the prize.
The Tour is riddled with traditions and protocols, many of them to be cherished. The daftest, however, is the convention that no one attacks on the run to Paris – at least until the sprinters, a breed apart, unleash their death-or-glory stampede.
Protection of the yellow jersey is the idea, but it makes little sense. The Tour was last decided on the final day in 1989, when Greg LeMond snatched the maillot jaune from Laurent Fignon by eight seconds – the smallest margin in the race's history – after a time trial. People are still talking about it.
The thousands of people gathering for the concluding stage, and the many millions who watch the drama develop on television over three weeks, deserve the chance of that kind of climax, rather than the certainty of its denial.
After 10km today Contador and Schleck broke away for a replay of Thursday's duel on the Col du Tourmalet, but it was only a bit of larking about. After a couple of hundred metres there was a handshake for the cameras and a return to the somnolent pace of the peloton, whose members were able to resume another tradition, that of riding up to the front, one after another, to pay their respects to the yellow jersey.
The talent of the 27-year-old Contador and his three Tour victories make him worthy of their tributes, even though today he became one of only six men since the second world war to win the race without taking a stage victory en route. The others were Roger Walkowiak (1956), Gastone Nencini (1960), Lucien Aimar (1966), LeMond (1990) and Oscar Perreiro, who inherited the win in 2006 after the post-race disqualification of Floyd Landis.
There is no disgrace in joining that company but maybe it would have been better had Contador ridden away from Schleck on the Tourmalet. His decision to let his rival lead over the line seemed more than anything like a compensatory gift for his controversial attack on the Port Balès, where he took 39 seconds – a fateful figure, as it transpired – out of his rival while Schleck was trying to put his chain back on. Contador later issued an apology for breaching the race's unwritten code of chivalry.
The champion was not at his best this year, as he admitted, and he was perhaps lucky that some of his leading rivals – notably Cadel Evans, Ivan Basso, Carlos Sastre and Bradley Wiggins – had expended energy during the Giro d'Italia that might otherwise have been used to attack him. But the fact that his form was a few percentage points below his normal standard is bad news for Schleck. The winner of the best young rider award rode bravely without the guidance and protection of his older brother, Frank, who broke his shoulder in a fall on the race's fourth day, but he must wonder if he is ever going to force Contador to crack on a major climb.
The only uncertainty surrounding Contador is the name on the jersey he will be wearing next year. Astana, with the resources of the government of Kazakhstan behind them, are hoping to retain his services. Bjarne Riis, who is losing his Saxo Bank sponsorship, would like him to lead his next team. The dire state of the Spanish economy seems to have dimmed the prospect of Fernando Alonso, the Formula One driver and noted bike enthusiast, starting a team for Contador with backing from Santander. Whatever the outcome, the odds must be on a fourth Tour win next year.
Elsewhere today, the old protocols did withstand one frontal challenge. 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.
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