Mont Ventoux, France ? French rider Richard Virenque won Sunday’s 14th stage of the Tour de France, and overall leader Lance Armstrong extended his lead with a third-place finish.

Virenque, who missed last year’s Tour while serving a nine-month ban because of drug use, finished the grueling 137-mile climb up Mont Ventoux in 5 hours, 43 minutes and 26 seconds.

Armstrong, seeking his fourth straight Tour victory, finished more than 2 minutes behind Virenque, but was well ahead of his closest rivals, increasing his lead over Spain’s Joseba Beloki jumped from 2 minutes to 4:21.

Armstrong hasn’t won a stage at the Ventoux in five attempts, including one in the 2000 Tour and three Dauphine Libere races.

“It’s too difficult,” Armstrong said of the climb to the summit. “Maybe it’s not possible for me to win this stage.”

Virenque won his fifth Tour de France stage.

“At the foot (of the Ventoux), I didn’t believe I could do it,” Virenque said. “The public carried me.”

Virenque, who rides for Domo Farm Frites, was a member of the Festina team that was thrown out of the 1998 Tour after banned substances were found in a team car.

In a trial that followed, Virenque was cleared of charges he helped supply drugs to Festina teammates, but caused a furor with his testimony on systematic drug abuse within Festina and cycling in general.

His admission of drug use led to the ban that kept him out of last year’s Tour. At the time, he said he felt his career was over.

Mont Ventoux rises up 6,309 feet from flat countryside, in southeastern France.