Confusion Surrounds Armstrong Plans to Race Again Next Year

The team linked with a possible comeback by Lance Armstrong with the Tour de France as a potential goal were today playing down the idea as speculation mounted that the American seven-times Tour de France winner may have plans to race again in 2009.

"There are no contacts or plans of Team Astana to take Lance Armstrong," the team press officer Philippe Maertens said. "As far as I know, Lance Armstrong doesn't have plans to do road cycling. We have no plans."

Astana, the team run by Armstrong's former manager Johan Bruyneel, was named in a story this week as the team most likely to hire him if he returned to racing. Speculation ranges from the Texan returning to ride mountain bike events to the notion that he may race a five-event calendar taking in the Tour of California, the Tour of Georgia, Paris-Nice, the Dauphine Libere, and the Tour de France.

Astana were not admitted to the Tour de France this year because of drug scandals involving the team in 2007, before Bruyneel took over the helm. They won the Giro d'Italia with the Spaniard Alberto Contador, the rider who took first place in last year's Tour de France riding for Amstrong's former sponsor Discovery Channel.

The International Cycling Union president Pat MacQuaid said today that he would welcome an Armstrong comeback. "If he wants to come back, he has every right to. Good luck to him," MacQuaid said. The ICU has in the past received donations from the American to its anti-doping program.

"It may be he has a chip on his shoulder because of the accusations and rumors surrounding him, none of which were proven," said MacQuaid. "Now there is a new system in place that can show any manipulation of the blood, he wants to show he was the athlete he claims he was."

Since retiring from racing in 2005, Armstrong has turned his attention to marathon running and recently finished second in a 100-mile mountain bike race in the Rockies. The US Anti-Doping Agency confirmed Armstrong is part of its out-of-competition testing pool and would potentially be eligible for elite competition on February 1 2009.