Lance Armstrong hadn’t competed on the cycling tour in three-plus years. He is 37, 38 in September, which is easily on the back side of an athlete’s career.

Yet he went to the Tour de France and hung around the leaders for nearly three weeks before getting pretty much buried today — though he remains in fourth place.

But, heck, to do what he has done, even if it is a fourth-place finish, come Sunday’s ride around the Champs … well, that’s quite an accomplishment.

Professional cycling fascinates me.

What I find compelling is the extremes of exertion the riders go through. Driving their pulse rate up to 200 beats a minute, or something crazy like that. Peddling up Alpine climbs that last for hours. And then the hair-raising dashes downhill at 55 mph, or whatever.

I have respect for physical achievement I know I never could have survived. At any age. Triathletes. Marathoners. And cyclists are out there on the ragged edge “what they would do would kill most of us.”

Armstrong was the best, of course. He has the seven Tour de France championships to prove it. And it would have been a great story — as big as Tom Watson winning the British Open — if Armstrong could have pulled this off. At age 37.

Now, after the sort of punishing ride through the Alps that — five years ago — would have had him leaving the rest of the field behind, Armstrong was a well-beaten fourth and now trails Astana teammate Alberto Contador by nearly four minutes, with practically no chance to make that up.

He was more than a minute behind Contador going into this stage, but if he had finished where Contador had … he could have flipped the standings and taken the yellow jersey back down into the lowlands.

But, the younger man prevailed, which is generally how it goes in sports. Watson could tell you about it.

And now we just need to pay tribute to Armstrong’s comeback, and his returning the Tour de France to prominence, and giving us all a fun ride for 17 stages — before he lost touch with the leader.