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Lance Will Ride Again Next Year
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Lance Armstrong’s dramatic comeback has him in the hunt for his eighth Tour de France crown. And his friend Mark McKinnon reports that the man in yellow will return for an encore in 2010.
In dramatic fashion, Lance Armstrong has returned to the Tour de France. And it looks like he will be returning again.
Right now, it's a thrilling two-man race between the young gun and winner of three grand tours, Alberto Contador, and the cagey old veteran and winner of seven Tours de France, Armstrong. And while the end result may not be clear until next weekend on the huge mountain finish up Mount Ventoux and the Paris time trial, we have learned one thing. Lance Armstrong just doesn't know the word quit. He intends to return to the Tour next year.
Click Below to View Our Gallery of Lance’s Life
"He plans on being back for sure," Armstrong's longtime business partner Bart Knaggs said Saturday. "He'll be back with a team with a clear role. Racing to win the Tour de France next year."
And given the form he's shown this year, why not?
He’s looked solid in the time trial, on the flats, and in the mountains. He’s been the elder statesman advocating for his cause off the bike as well as the presumptive “boss” in the peloton.
So far this year, he helped deliver Astana teammate Levi Leipheimer to his third consecutive Tour of California after riding in the Tour Down Under, and after recovering from a broken collarbone suffered in a race in Spain, raced a wild and crazy Giro d’Italia for the first time. And now he’s in serious contention for a podium position in this year’s Tour. He started off the first of 21 stages of this Tour de France with a 10th-place finish in the opening time trial, 40 seconds back from the winner, and 22 seconds behind his intra-team rival, Alberto Contador.
True to his experience in the peloton, Armstrong was in the right place at the right time in stage three when winds off the Mediterranean caused a break in the race that gave a group of 25 riders a 41-second gain over the rest of the peloton—including Contador. Ironically, other riders who missed the break blamed Contador for causing the break. That day Lance launched into third place overall, 40 seconds behind the leader and 19 seconds ahead of Contador.
Armstrong and Contador took a break from their personal duel to eliminate any doubts that they were the strongest team in the race. They won the team time trial by 18 seconds over the second-place Garmin-Slipstream team and took even larger chunks of time out of their overall (general classification) rivals on the other teams.
The Armstrong-Contador drama continued on the climb up to Arcalis in stage seven when Contador unexpectedly attacked “against the team plan” and gained 21 seconds on Armstrong, who played the good teammate and sat on the wheel of the only threatening rider, allowing Contador to get away.
The tension and drama have simmered for days on the team bus, in the peloton, and in the media as the riders await the next chance to determine who will be the leader of Astana on the climb up to the finish today in Verbier.
It would not have been much of a surprise if this year’s Tour didn’t live up to the hype. How could it possibly? But the Tour has lived up to and surpassed all expectations. Even one member of the French media, known for being a thorn in Armstrong’s side, stood up during an early press conference and thanked him for making the Tour interesting again.
Returning after a three-year absence, at an age most bike riders have retired, with 12 screws in his shoulder from a crash just two months ago, Armstrong has exceeded extraordinarily high expectations. The scary part is that with his own team next year that is likely to include Johan Bruyneel and a cast of riders of his own choosing, Armstrong will likely be an even stronger contender next year.
The Tour is back, Lance is back, and he’ll be back again…next year.
Mark McKinnon is on the Lance Armstrong Foundation Board. As vice chairman of Public Strategies and president of Maverick Media, McKinnon has helped meet strategic challenges for candidates, causes, and individuals, including George W. Bush, John McCain, Governor Ann Richards, Charlie Wilson, Lance Armstrong, and Bono.
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This comment has been removed by The Daily Beast's editors.
hey diks,
I suggest you move over to CRAIGSLIST.COM.
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ROBO TROLL ALERT
What about the woman he had his child with,did he marry her.?He certainly is a mega star,a champion,but left Chaerryl Crow at a time of cancer, Im not sure he should be on the web site,no relation,has value to him??Well,we worship the rich,sexy,in this country.He is a champion,and gave back glamour to the Tour de France.He is an athletic icon.Survivor.
He left Crow, then she found out she had cancer shortly after, and she sent him away when he tried to come and support her after they had broken up. You don't know what you're talking about.
This guy is the poster boy for OCD (obessive-compulsive disorder). Doesn't he have anything else he wants to do besides ride a bike?
The french love saying he's doping, just cause he's good.
Why not have the responsibility to give his kids the benefit of his name? Why not have the courtesy to visit his girlfriend in the hospital when she was having their baby? The man is a spoiled child. It is the measure of current journalism's values that he continues to be lauded like some sort of god. What a great model for young men. Yeech!
to widebear... all of armstrong's kids have his name. the elder three were born while he was married. 2nd, armstrong was at the birth of max armstrong.
get your facts right before posting, will ya?
He's going to run for political office and, to hazard a guess, McKinnon will run the campaign.
Banjo -- This from an interview a few days ago with cycling great Bernard Hinault:
"But what is his motive for coming back? Is it to win? To fight cancer, or something else in the future? To one day be the governor of Texas? I think at this moment, the Tour serves him more than what he serves the Tour."
http://tinyurl.com/n6mfng
Given McKinnon's recent efforts at political predictions and advice on the Daily Beast I'd suggest Armstrong run a million miles the other way from any advice McKinnon offers him.
McKinnon's irrelevancy is pushing him to pal around with possible cheats, as far as doping up to win races, as alledged by some past associates of Armstrong.
With Obama in power, McKinnon needs to leech off someone.
Or is he still pushing the "i am a Christian", pay me money for a lecture circuit line?
Spot on Bull....McKinnon has morphed from his drug fueled liberal folk singing days to the classic Aryan elitist. He worhips at the alter of macho gods like Pat Tillman and Lance. He zealously believes in the "super" race and is openly disdainful of regular or average folk, just as his "upper 1% partner" Rove has preached for years.
McKinnon is not just the worse American journalism has to offer, his dupliciousness, arrogant elitism and shameless shilling make him the worse America has to offer.
Don't know about the Aryan mumbo jumbo but as of late McKinnon has bet on the wrong horse in politics and now sports time and time and time again.
I have no idea if he is on the Armstrong payroll but McKinnon should have waited until Monday to write about his cycling pal / employer. Lance lost convincingly to Contador and recovering from today's lost time will be a chore if at all possible.
Contador finished the race today looking fresh and unbeatable. Lance finished out of breath, looking eleven years older and powerless against the young Spaniard.
Great photos, but one correction needs to be made: Lance Armstrong finished the 2008 Boston Marathon in 2:50:58, not 2:43:46. He did, however, run the 2007 New York City marathon in 2:46:43, which is no doubt what caused the error. Just change the name of the race and invert the minutes and seconds, or change his Boston time completely to be accurate.
Armstrong concedes the 2009 Tour?:
Contador said Sunday's result left no doubt about who should be considered the Astana team leader.
"The differences now are pretty big, and the team's bet should now be me, no?" Contador said. "I'm sure my teammates are going to put in great work to back me up just like they did today."
Armstrong conceded that Contador had been superior.
"I think when Alberto went, he showed he's the best rider in the race, certainly the best climber. ... Hats off to him," Armstrong said.
The American vowed that he would not go against the interests of the team by attacking Contador later in the race.
"That's not going to happen," he said. "There's been a lot of drama between Alberto and me ... but at the end of the day we sit as a team."-YahooSports
http://tinyurl.com/nlvdyw
All great athletes are OCD in some form. Have you ever trained for competition ardeth? In sport we call it focus. When our favorite performance inhibiting drug user won 8 gold medals in swimming and came out as ADD nobody criticized him. So what's wrong with OCD? You use what you've got.
As for the doping, you guys are so ignorant! For many years now, world class competition has outright required doping to get onto the level playing field. This outrageous bullying of Marion Jones- where were the test results for #2, I ask? 'Cos she was on the same stuff, I promise. Flo Jo was dead of mysterious causes at Lance's current age- after years of apparent doping. It's become the norm in too many sports, if you want to play at that level you take stuff.
Mr Armstrong is either riding clean or doping minimally and doing it really well- because it would have killed him by now if he was on the usual cycling chemical nightmare. And as he's on borrowed time from cancer I doubt he's interested in suicide winning.
He was married and had his kids with his wife, who had no clue what she was getting into with a pro cyclists schedule,eating habits, or training. Nobody knows why he broke up with Ms Crow- maybe she dumped him. None of our business.
If the people of Austin want to elect Lance Armstrong to some office- again, their business. But he makes so much money and has so much fun as a star athlete and chick magnet the Senate would be a huge come down from a palace in Spain and every gorgeous woman in the vicinity. He'll design bikes once he really has to give up competing- who knows them better?
Thank you.
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