By IANS,
New York : Lance Armstrong, cancer survivor and seven-time Tour de France winner, has announced that he will emerge from retirement of over three years to get back to professional cycling for the 2009 season.
In an e-mailed statement Tuesday, Armstrong, 37, said he had discussed his comeback with his family and friends and decided to go ahead with it to “raise awareness of the global cancer burden”.
On his specific plans to compete again on an elite level, he said he would discuss his strategy at the Clinton Global Initiative on Sep 24 in New York.
However, the website of VeloNews, a prominent cycling publication, said in a report that Armstrong would join the Astana team next year and would compete in five road races, including the Tour de France.
Armstrong himself was quoted in an article published Tuesday on the website of the magazine Vanity Fair that he would contact French President Nicolas Sarkozy to plead his case for an entry in the Tour de France if he and his team were disallowed an entry to the race for some reason.
He revealed to the magazine that racing in the Leadville Trail 100, a 100-mile mountain bike race in August in which he finished second, spurred his interest in returning to the sport.
He added that the Olympic triumphs of older athletes like the 41-year-old swimmer Dara Torres and the 38-year-old marathoner Constantina Tomescu-Dita have inspired him to to return to racing.
“Older athletes are performing very well,” Armstrong told the Vanity Fair interviewer. “Ask serious sports physiologists and they’ll tell you age is a wives’ tale. Athletes at 30, 35 mentally get tired. They’ve done their sport for 20, 25 years and they’re like, I’ve had enough. But there’s no evidence to support that when you’re 38 you’re any slower than when you were 32.”
Armstrong, a US national, retired from racing in July 2005 at the end of the 2005 Tour de France.