Lance Armstrong discusses a point with team director Johan Bruyneel during the ongoing Tour de France

Pau (France): The question was asked in French. The answer came quickly and loudly in English. Johan Bruyneel, a poker-faced Belgian who drives with his knees and speaks five languages, was asked this: “Would Lance Armstrong have won a single Tour de France title without him?”

“No,” Bruyneel said, “I don’t think so.”

Bruyneel, 40, most noted for taking a wrong turn off a cliff in the Alps during cycling’s greatest race, has lived in the shadow of Armstrong since the two joined forces in 1998. Bruyneel calls himself “the man without the engine but the mind to win,” and in Armstrong he found the engine.

Armstrong is pointed toward an unprecedented seventh consecutive Tour de France title when the 2005 race ends Sunday in Paris. After staying even with or gaining time on his top rivals last weekend in the Pyrenees, even five-time runner-up and 1997 champion Jan Ullrich, who is fourth overall, said Monday that, “I’m only racing for the podium now.”

In other words, Ullrich is hoping to finish second or third. Defeating Armstrong would only come, he said, if something unexpected happened to the 33-year-old Texan, who has a 2 minute, 46 second lead on second-place Ivan Basso and a 5:58 lead on Ullrich.

One of the few losses Armstrong’s Discovery Channel team has suffered this year came Monday when Basso, a talented 27-year-old Italian, announced he had signed a three-year contract extension with CSC. Without knowing Basso had re-upped, Bruyneel said he would like to see Basso inherit Armstrong’s role as leader for Discovery next year.

“Too bad,” Bruyneel said. It sounded as if the director of Discovery Channel team felt it was too bad for Basso.

Bruyneel, the son of jewelry store owners, was a bike racer from a small town near Brugges who started the sport late after getting his marketing degree. After finishing his competitive career at the end of the 1997 season, he thought he would move into the field of public relations.

“It happened that Lance called me in the fall after I retired,” Bruyneel said. “We were talking, and he said he wasn’t happy with the leadership on his team. As we continued to talk he asked me if I wanted to work with him. I am a man of impulse, and on impulse, I said yes.”

Armstrong was still feeling his way back to the sport after spending nearly two years recovering from the testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain. His French team, Cofidis, had ended its contract with the American rider and Armstrong had signed with the US Postal Service team (Discovery Channel took over sponsorship this year).

Bruyneel had competed against Armstrong before the Texan had become ill.

“An immense talent with an immense engine,” was Bruyneel’s impression. But Bruyneel also thought Armstrong was undisciplined, impetuous and headstrong.