Lance Armstrong could not have captured the Tour de France’s yellow jersey in more dramatic fashion yesterday. The stage his Discovery Channel squad conquered was quite possibly the most nail-biting team time trial in the history of the Tour, and, as a matter of record, the fastest. The silver-and-blue streak clocked a 57.324 km/hour average over the 61 km course, eclipsing a record set 10 years ago.

Yet even that record-shattering effort would not have been enough for Armstrong to take the overall lead had it not been for David Zabriskie’s crash with just two kilometers to go. He and his CSC teammates were on a frenetic pace to edge out Discovery Channel by six seconds when Zabriskie’s tires slipped out from underneath him, taking him out of contention and slowing the riders beside him, who had to veer off their line to avoid a pile-up.

“The team time trial is so hard at the end that everybody is at the limit,” Armstrong said. “When we came into the city there were a lot of turns and it’s easy to make a mistake like that.”

Before the crash, Zabriskie had emerged from relative obscurity on Saturday to become only the third American in history to wear the coveted yellow jersey after a slim defeat of Armstrong in the opening stage. But yesterday he was left to gingerly pedal across the finish alone, his lycra shorts shorn at the thigh and road rash covering the right side of his body. X-rays at the hospital confirmed that nothing was broken and Zabriskie will continue riding in support of teammate Ivan Basso, one of the most legitimate threats to Armstrong’s crown.

Had Zabriskie crashed just a half-kilometer farther down the road, he would have been saved by the so-called “red flame” rule – racers who crash in a stage’s final kilometer are credited with the same finishing time as the group they were riding in when the crash occurred.

None of this, of course, takes away from what the Discovery Channel team accomplished. Just as Armstrong and company had done the previous two years, they started off slowly, built momentum through the time checks, and – following one another in a well-disciplined single file – executed the route to perfection. The result: Armstrong’s third team time-trial victory in as many years. It is his favorite facet of racing, and his team’s outstanding performances in 2003 and 2004 set him up for record-tying fifth and record-breaking sixth straight titles.

Team manager Johan Bruyneel, who planned the Discovery tactics, felt that the team’s proven single-file attack would be its strongest trait, especially with a well-trained CSC team so loaded with talent behind it.

“I knew that CSC would be quicker than us from the start,” Bruyneel told French television after the finish. “The secret was to stick close together, and I think that is what made the difference in the end.”

Armstrong and company now face the question of whether to defend the yellow jersey. They were in a similar position last year after the team time trial, and chose to let it go.

“We’re going to think about it,” Armstrong answered, though Bruyneel, standing beside him, was less sure. He forwarded the possibility of another rider keeping the jersey while Lance saves his muscles for the mountains. Teammates George Hincapie and Jose Luis Rubiera share the top-five bracket with Armstrong: If they get the green light from Bruyneel, they could join the breakaways that are sure to be attempted over the next few days. And super sprinter Tom Boonen’s Quick Step will try to control the race to give him more chances at sprint finish glory.

But the major threats to Armstrong – Basso, and the two aces from T-Mobile, Alexandre Vinokourov and Jan Ullrich – will likely wait until the mountain stages before mounting an attack. Ullrich is still feeling pain from crashing into a car while training the day before the Tour, and Vinokourov showed last year that he shines in the Alps. The 81- and 96-second leads that Armstrong has earned over Vinokourov and Ullrich, respectively, are a mental boost for the Texan, but a rather insignificant margin in the mountains, where leads are often counted in minutes.

Today’s 183km stretch just south of Orleans is mostly flat and ideally suited for sprints, aside from a 20-km stretch of hills in the middle. There is also the potential for more disastrous falls: The forecast calls for isolated rain showers just as the riders will be starting the descent and heading into the windy village streets that lead to the finish in Montargis.