At 26, Contador, a slightly built Spaniard, is at the top of the sport  and enjoying the Giro from the comforts of his home right now.

While big-name riders like Armstrong, the 2008 Tour winner Carlos Sastre and the two-time Vuelta champion Menchov, have been competing on this grueling Giro course  tackling mountains in the Dolomites and even the volcano Mount Vesuvius  Contador has been saving his energy for the Tour.

“I personally think riders like Menchov, Sastre and Lance came to the Giro because, psychologically, they don’t believe they can beat Contador at the Tour,” said Matt White, a race director for the Garmin-Slipstream team and Armstrong’s former teammate on the United States Postal Service team. “They’d rather get a big win here. It’s very hard to be in full flight here and then back it up in July at the Tour. Only a few riders have ever done it.”

To ready himself for the Tour, cycling’s most prestigious race, Contador rode several races earlier in the season and will ride in the Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré in June. He was leading Paris-Nice before crumbling one stage from the finish, needing to be helped off his bike. He said he had forgotten to eat and replenish his energy before the stage.

Armstrong, a brash Texan, wrote on Twitter that Contador “has a lot to learn,” but they later said they had defused any controversy. Before the two raced together for the first time with Astana, at the Castillo y León event in Spain in March, Armstrong struck a conciliatory note.

Image Alberto Contador. Credit... Maurizio Brambatti/European Pressphoto Agency

“I think right now it has to be him, naturally,” Armstrong said of Contador, according to The Associated Press. “There’s no way I can come back after four years and reclaim leadership or reclaim some type of ownership. I have to respect the current results, and he’s the best right now. And until that changes, he’s the leader.”