Armstrong noted that his quest “took on a double story” after Tom Watson, 59, nearly won golf’s British Open. But Armstrong also understood that he had opened himself to public failure by willing himself back into the peloton, three and a half years after retiring when logic and his weary body had told him he was growing old.

Image Alberto Contador, in yellow, and Lance Armstrong, right, during the 19th stage of the Tour de France. Credit... Eric Gaillard/Reuters

Last Sunday, he saw Contador pull away from him on a mountain stage. On Thursday, he watched Contador ace the time trial, the way a champion should. They are not the best of friends, as demonstrated by Armstrong’s gritted words on Versus network early Saturday. Anybody could see what was going on, he said, meaning Contador was not a helpful teammate. But Contador has obviously earned the right to be the lead rider.

Armstrong will not give up chasing Contador  and why should he? On Thursday, he announced that he would race next year for a team sponsored by RadioShack. He will have a stable of domestiques laboring exclusively for him.

“I believe I’ll be better,” he said. “It’s hard to get back to speed, but now that I’ve been through the Giro and the Tour, I think I can make some tactical adjustments.” He talked about throwing a potential teammate like Levi Leipheimer at Contador and other opponents. He was already racing in 2010.

Why did he come back? Some people may use the word ego, but if ego is a bad thing, then we are all wasting our time following sports. Take away ego, and you take away Michael Jordan’s sneer and Martina Navratilova’s scowl and Dara Torres’s glint. They all went away and came back, for whatever their reasons, beating a lot of younger competitors, just out of orneriness.

Without ego, Armstrong would not have persevered for three weeks, through rain and heat and tricky curves and steep hills and drunken lunatics lurching centimeters away from him. The old man and the mountain.

None of this affects his past. He won his seven straight Tours, beating a lot of cyclists who were caught taking one thing or another, in a sport that was allowed to be highly dirty.