time winner Lance Armstrong will make a Tour de France comeback next year, his spokesman said Monday. The 37-year-old rider announced in September he was coming out of retirement for the 2009 season. A cancer survivor, Armstrong won the Tour for a record seven consecutive years from 1999-2005. The American retired following his 2005 victory and has since devoted himself to the fight against cancer – raising funds and awareness through his foundation. Armstrong, who will race for Astana, had already confirmed that he would race the Giro d'Italia, the Tour of Flanders and the Tour of California and several of the one-day classic races. The Texas-born former road race world champion and bronze medallist from the Sydney Olympics in 2000, had said he would make his first race back in the Tour Down Under around Adelaide, Australia in January. Armstrong has had a strained relationship with the Tour de France organizers, the Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), who said in October that his return would be “embarrassing”. The French daily newspaper L'Equipe, owned by ASO's parent company EPA (Editions Philippe Amaury), claimed three years ago that samples of Armstrong's urine from 1999 showed traces of the banned blood-boosting substance erythropoietin. Armstrong, however, never tested positive and was cleared by a Dutch investigator appointed by the International Cycling Union. The American has also questioned how safe he would be in France, expressing concerns about being targeted by fans. Armstrong has guaranteed the drug-testing program he arranged with America's top anti-doping expert will be in place by the time he rides in his first official race in January. The seven-time Tour de France winner was to start his training with his new team Monday without having subjected himself to drug tests by Don Catlin, the expert he teamed with, and with no deal in place to post results of those tests online. But on Sunday Armstrong said the goal was not to have the program in place by this week, but by the time he rides in Australia in January. “It's a tough thing to organize, but we will make it happen,” Armstrong said. “All the stuff we said we were going to do will happen.” When Armstrong announced his comeback earlier this year, he partnered with Catlin to set up a testing program. Catlin said he thought it was important to make those results available to the public. Catlin said this weekend that while Armstrong has been placed back in the testing pools at both the US Anti-Doping Agency and UCI, cycling's international body, that he has yet to test him and that an agreement to document Armstrong's results online is not in place.
