But six of the video cameras trained on the 37-year-old cyclist's surprise breakaway were not working for a newspaper, magazine, TV station or website - they were sent by Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Hollywood loves beat-the-odds stories and Sony hopes Armstrong's return to racing after a three and a-half-year absence could prove as enthralling as any make-believe film. The studio, a stranger to non-fiction film-making, is financing a feature documentary chronicling Armstrong's attempt to win the world's most prestigious cycling race.
"In all of my sporting experience, I've never seen anything like it," the untitled documentary's producer, Frank Marshall, said from near La Grande-Motte, France, where Armstrong had just escaped with several dozen other riders from the main field (and all of the tour's pre-race favourites) to move from 10th to third overall in the race's third stage.
"We're very pleased." (Armstrong later moved into second place.)
Armstrong has won the tour a record seven times (consecutively). Although an Armstrong victory this year - still a long-shot outcome with 17 stages of racing to go - would give the documentary an astonishing ending, his daily performance in the tour's peloton was never the film's focus.
"What interested me was the story of his comeback - his will," said the documentary's director, Alex Gibney, the filmmaker behind Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and the Oscar-winning Taxi to the Dark Side.
"I wanted to understand Lance and what makes him tick. And the more I know, the more compelling the story gets."
Sony and Armstrong have a long relationship. For years, the studio has been developing a movie based on the cyclist's 2000 memoir, It's Not About the Bike: My Journey Back to Life, which chronicles Armstrong's recovery from testicular cancer to his first Tour de France victory in 1999.
Columbia Pictures president Matt Tolmach is one of the industry's most avid cyclists and a friend of Armstrong's. When Tolmach learned in August Armstrong was planning to return to racing - largely to promote cancer awareness and push for research funding - he saw the possibility for a captivating documentary, even if the studio was not in the non-fiction business.
"It's about cancer. It's about getting old. It's about proving all the naysayers wrong," Tolmach said. "It's about a comeback. It unfolds in an isolated period of time. It's all the ingredients for a documentary."
"As a small movie, it struck me as having enormous commercial potential," Tolmach said of the $US3.5 million ($NZ5.57 million) production.
Tolmach and Marshall picked Gibney because, as Tolmach said, "We wanted someone who could get inside of him." It was far less important that the filmmaker understood the minutiae of race strategy and team tactics. "When I first met him, I said, `I know next to nothing about your sport'," Gibney said.
Gibney, Tolmach and Marshall agreed that the movie would not work as hagiography. So the filmmakers needed broad access - Gibney's cameras witness several of the unannounced blood-doping tests that Armstrong and all tour racers must take - and enough time with Armstrong to get past his well-practised media patter.
"Maybe the most daunting part of telling this story is that Lance is so very good at telling his own story," Gibney said from Monaco, where Armstrong finished a strong 10th in the tour's opening prologue.
"There are levels within levels. He's a masterful producer-director of his own myth." While the filmmakers and studio obviously hope Armstrong wins, they do not believe the movie's success depends on it.
"The end of the movie is going to be great no matter what happens," Tolmach said. "It's about the journey."
