AUSTIN, Texas (AP)—Look out France, Lance Armstrong is making a comeback.
The 36-year-old Armstrong is breaking out of his three-year retirement and aiming to win yet another Tour de France in 2009, a move sure to shake up things across the Atlantic and give a boost to a sport that has missed its biggest star.
In a formal statement Tuesday, Armstrong called his comeback an attempt to raise global awareness in his fight against cancer. Just as likely, it’s also about his relentless desire to compete and win, especially at the Tour, which he won a record seven times from 1999-2005.
Citing the slow pace of last year’s Tour and the rush from last month’s Leadville 100 race, Armstrong decided it was time to return.
Armstrong’s riveting victories over cancer and opponents on the bike, his work for cancer awareness and his gossip-page romances have made him a modern-day American icon.
Professional cycling and particularly the Tour have missed Armstrong’s allure, even though skeptics refused to believe he could win without the help of performance-enhancing drugs.
Prudhomme noted the suspicions of drug use that followed Armstrong, and suggested that it wasn’t guaranteed that the former champion would make it to the start line next July.
“Suspicion has followed Lance Armstrong since 1999, everyone knows that. But in this proposed comeback … you have to remember we are in mid-September and that much water will run under the bridge until the Tour de France departure in Monaco,” Prudhomme said.
Armstrong is determined to silence the doubters. He’s even hired a video crew to chronicle his training for 2009, as well as his drug tests, for a possible documentary.
“There’s this perception in cycling that this generation is now the cleanest generation we’ve had in decades, if not forever,” said Armstrong, who’s never tested positive. “And the generation that I raced with was the dirty generation. … So there is a nice element here where I can come with really a completely comprehensive program and there will be no way to cheat.”
And if he has his way, no way to lose.
“We’re not going to try to win second place,” Bill Stapleton, Armstrong’s lawyer and longtime confidant, told The Associated Press.
Diagnosed in 1996 with testicular cancer that had spread to his lungs and brain, doctors gave Armstrong less than a 50 percent chance of survival. Surgery and brutal cycles of chemotherapy saved his life.
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