One of the moments which is both most important and most hilarious in the day of the life of a written journalist covering the Tour de France tends to come round about 40 minutes after each stage has finished. There you are, fingers working furiously over your keyboard, when a press officer, Philippe Maertens, enters the press room and shouts loudly “Lance Armstrong!”

This is your indication to leave your laptop and run like hell for Maertens. Maertens is the press officer for Astana. He brings with him his own laptop on which he has downloaded the post-race comments of Armstrong and these comments then get played to whichever journalists have moved fast enough to be within range of hearing what he has said.

It actually doesn’t really matter if you haven’t heard, because someone else will give you the quote. And I mean “the quote” because you can be sure that not a day will go by without the seven-times champion delivering a bomb via Maertens’ laptop. The chain of delivery is Armstrong to Maertens, Maertens to the press room and then, via websites or newspapers around the world, the bomb will be dropped on his team-mate and rival, Alberto Contador.

Armstrong’s use of language is splendid. He doesn’t waste a word. He has goaded the young Spaniard since day one. In fact, he has been goading him for months, commenting on his lack of experience, how he has so much to learn, how he isn’t a team player, how he is young and impetuous, how there is tension in the team when Contador says there isn’t.

Contador gave his own press conference yesterday in which he went out of his way to duck the flak. He said that he and Armstrong eat happily together and that they share the bus happily together.

While Contador is either lying or he doesn’t read the press, Armstrong is trying his damndest to a) start a fight and b) clamber his way up to the moral high ground. But the only suggestion that Contador has taken in any of Armstrong’s mindgames was his electric breakaway on the Arcalís climb on Friday. That was a considerable riposte, fulfilling to the letter the old cliché about letting his legs do the talking.

Contador, it seems, can play rope-a-dope. He can take all the verbal punishment Armstrong throws at him and not even flinch. And then something like Arcalís comes along and he finally strikes back.

Yesterday at his press conference, you had to wince at some of the questions he had to handle, almost all of which were targeted at the awkward Contador-Armstrong dynamic and almost all of which suggested that Armstrong was outmanoeuvring Contador within the Astana team.

“Alberto, which members of the Astana team support you and which support Lance?”

“Alberto, do you get the impression that Johan Bruyneel [the directeur sportif and a long-time Armstrong ally] is killing you and giving Armstrong the advantage?”

“Alberto, can the politics hurt your victory chances?”

Contador steadfastly refused to rise to any bait dangled before him. He repeated his intention to “stay quiet”. So far, he has managed to do so. Armstrong, you feel, is trying to egg him into making a mistake. Has there been another athlete, since Muhammad Ali, who has so purposefully used the media to help him fight his war?