Multiple Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong will make his much-anticipated return to competitive cycling in Australia in January.

The Tour Down Under, the first event on the 2009 world pro cycling calendar, will be raced over six days from 20 January around South Australia.

Armstrong, seeking an eighth Tour de France win, is expected to announce which team he will join at 1700 BST.

Many observers are predicting a link-up with the controversial Astana. Superb All Blacks win Tri-Nations ...
Vande Velde 'can stop Armstrong' ...
Contador would welcome Armstrong ...
Armstrong 'to make Tour return' ...
Sastre wins 17th Tour stage ...
Czechoslovakia's beginnings in France remembered ...

The team suffered two high-profile doping scandals in 2007 and were barred from this year's Tour de France despite a substantial overhaul in team management.

The Tour Down Under will be raced from 20-25 January in South Australia, centered on the capital Adelaide.

Race director Mike Turtur said: "We're all looking forward to the comeback of the greatest cyclist that ever raced the Tour de France."

Armstrong is coming out of retirement to raise awareness about cancer. The 37-year-old Texan nearly lost his life to the disease before battling back to win his first Tour in 1999.

He has, however, been dogged by unsubstantiated accusations that he used drugs to help him become a winner.

Astana is run by his friend and former sporting director Johan Bruyneel, who helped the American win all his seven Tours.

Bruyneel has suggested that he would find it almost impossible not to include a fit-again Armstrong in his team.

But there were reports in Madrid on Tuesday that Spanish rider Alberto Contador would leave in those circumstances.

"I've earned the right to be the leader of a team without having to fight for my place," Contador, the 2007 Tour de France winner, said in AS newspaper.

"And with Armstrong, some difficult situations could arise in which the team would put him first and that would hurt me."

International Cycling Union president Pat McQuaid told BBC Radio 5 Live he did not think Armstrong's "primary motivation" was to win the Tour.

McQuaid said: "I think he has done as much as he can with his cancer foundation in terms of knowledge of it in the US and now he wants to globalise the foundation using the sport of cycling.

"Winning the Tour is secondary but I think he has every intention of trying to do it."

(BBC)

<< Back