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Formidable field awaits Armstrong

Gruelling 21-day Tour de France pedals off today

Armstrong is a strong contender for the title
Sastre feels he can win again

MONACO: As Lance Armstrong rode along the harbour to the Tour de France team presentation on Thursday, cheers erupted on the roadside as soon as fans spied him.

“Lance, you’re the best!” Scott McCann, a 15-year-old from Coleraine, Northern Ireland, said as he watched Armstrong ride past. “Ooh, he’s getting kind of gray.”

McCann and other cycling fans have not seen Armstrong ride in the tour since 2005, the year he won his record seventh title before retiring.

At 37, he is now one of the oldest riders in the peloton. He emerged last fall from his three-and-a-half-year retirement, but he is still one of the race favourites. And on Saturday, with the team time trial kicking off the 21-day race, Armstrong’s challenge to win yet another tour begins.

Not confident enough

“I don’t have the confidence that I had before,” Armstrong said to the packed crowd, which included Prince Albert II of Monaco, who sat next to the cycling greats Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault.

Armstrong said he would help his Astana teammates Alberto Contador or Levi Leipheimer win, if either one proves to be a better rider than he is. “Whatever it takes,” Armstrong said. “The most important thing is for us to win.”

The rest of the peloton, however, is out to capture the spotlight Armstrong has commanded since he announced his comeback last September.

Carlos Sastre of Spain, the defending champion, will try to keep the leader’s jersey and win another tour. Denis Menchov of Russia, who won the Giro d’Italia in May, will try to become the first man since 1998 to win the Giro and the tour in the same season. Andy Schleck of Luxembourg, who is only 24, will try to win his first tour and make his mark.

Boonen cleared

In a late development on Friday, former World road race champion Tom Boonen was granted an eleventh hour reprieve to compete.

The Belgian had been barred from the Tour following a positive test for cocaine in April but the French Olympic Committee’s arbitration panel upheld his appeal against the ban.

The Quick Step rider missed last year’s Tour for similar reasons. With the pressure higher here than at any other race, those riders are now settling down to focus on the task at hand.

“I don’t care about the other riders or think about them at all,” Sastre said. “I know how to win the race, and I think I can do it again. If Armstrong is strong, or if he’s not, it doesn’t matter to me. Is Contador riding well? It has nothing to do with me.”

If tour history is a guide, the racing goes along with doping scandals, which in the last several years have left black marks on the race.

Already this year, three days before the tour, the Dutch rider Thomas Dekker was booted from Silence-Lotto’s Tour roster for testing positive for the blood booster EPO.

But the several thousand fans at the team presentation had other things to think about on Thursday. They cheered their favourite riders. A few booed the ones they did not like. The favourites — like Armstrong, Contador, Sastre and Menchov — seemed to elicit the most applause.

“Wow, can you hear the people yelling for Armstrong?” Thomas Delen said to his wife, Caroline, in French. “It’s crazy that he is so famous. He is the Michael Jackson of cycling.” — Agencies

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