I think this just highlights the tremendous amount of luck he had during his run. I would like to think he was outworking everyone else too, but the amount of luck involved can’t be overlooked. A bad crash during that time, and his legacy is much different.
Mr. Blonde, I started contemplating exactly that at about the 2nd crash that LA was involved in. He's had plenty of crashes, plenty of punctures, but nothing so bad that he couldn't recover from it. Good support, great teamwork, etc, got him back in the saddle and back up to the front.
'You make your own luck', as they say, which can be looked at as expecting the bad stuff and planning how to ameliorate it with support / teamwork, etc. But even given that, Lance has had a remakably charmed career since returning to the peleton in the late 90s.
Lance got caught today in a perfect storm of ain't-gonna-happen. I think the Cadel / Schleck / Contador camps were going to fight it out no matter what today, not to get LA but to start the eventual fight early. What was thought to be a relatively minor climbing stage turned into a showdown at a pace not anticipated by many. Three relatively minor crashes, maybe some domestiques who weren't up to the challenge today, & a 38-yo body later, and Lance was simply left in the dust.