Yes, that's what I was talking about (tho' I got Armstrong's deficit to Kililev wrong.) Here's what Wiki says about 2001 stage 8:
The peloton took a day-off, but not so a group of 14 riders that had broken away. In the end they had a lead of almost 36 minutes, by far the largest one achieved in recent history. Even a lead of 22 minutes had not occurred in the last 25 years. Formally, this meant that the whole peloton finished out of time limits, but the referees understandably used a rule saying that they could give clemency to any group of more than 20% of the stage's starting riders, officially citing the weather conditions as their reason to do so. Still, the effects on the general classification were huge: Stuart O'Grady, who was in the group, retook the yellow jersey, and is now over 35 minutes ahead of Armstrong. Armstrong also has to make good over half an hour on Frenchman François Simon. Perhaps even more dangerous is Andrei Kivilev. He is 'only' 13 minutes ahead of Armstrong, but unlike the others from the escape group, he is known to be good in the mountains, so he needs not lose very much on the toppers in the rest of the Tour.
Stage 10 ended on Alp d'Huez, and Lance made up all but 2 minutes on O'Grady. But he was still 20 min behind Simon and 8 behind Kivilev. Lance finally took the lead on stage 13.
2001 was also the year of "The Look," when Lance looked Ullrich squah in the eye and took off up l'Alpe D'Huez, winning the stage and putting something like a minute and a half into Ullrich.
As a rule of thumb, the tour goes clockwise around France in odd years and counter clockwise in the evens.