Charleroi, Belgium ? Lance Armstrong played it safe in the first full stage of the Tour de France.

The five-time winner knows he has plenty of time.

Saving himself for the ordeal to come, Armstrong finished comfortably back in the pack in 48th. He is focused on winning a record sixth straight Tour, not scrapping for victories in the hazardous and fast-paced early stages of the three-week race.

A final all-out burst of speed secured Jaan Kirsipuu’s victory in the 125.5-mile trek that featured roads turned treacherous by rain. There were crashes, crowds, wind, punctures and a mighty finishing sprint to contend with — all factors that make the Tour’s first week the part that Armstrong relishes least.

“You have to live with the crashes, and hope you don’t get into one,” said Armstrong, who is third overall.

But for sprinters like Kirsipuu, a 34-year-old Estonian, the Tour’s relatively flat early stages are their strength, the reason why they come to the Tour even though they have no prospect of winning the overall crown when the race finishes on July 25 in Paris.

Muscling his way through a gaggle of riders sprinting to the finish, Kirsipuu edged Australian Robbie McEwen and Norway’s Thor Hushovd.

“The sprint was incredible for me,” Kirsipuu said. “I am really, really happy.”

Armstrong finished in the main pack of riders on Sunday but started his Tour in emphatic fashion in Saturday’s prologue time trial, leaving key rivals in his wake. That performance silenced murmurs that, at age 32, the Texan is past his prime and could be ready to fall to his principal challenger, Jan Ullrich. The German finished 32nd in Sunday’s stage in the same time as Armstrong.

Before the stage’s start, Armstrong chatted with reporters, and appeared happy and confident — a marked contrast to last year when a cloud of tension was often felt around his U.S. Postal Service squad. He beat Ullrich for his fifth Tour title by just 61 seconds last year, a margin that redoubled the champion’s determination to do better this time.

“Lance is more relaxed,” his teammate Floyd Landis said. “But it’s a long race.”