Armstrong to return for ‘09 Tour - More Sports - SI.com.

Lance Armstrong will end his retirement and hopes to compete in the 2009 Tour de France, according to a cycling journal report.

The 36-year-old seven-time Tour de France champion will compete in five road races with the Astana team in 2009, the cycling journal VeloNews reported on its Web site Monday, citing anonymous sources.

Armstrong’s manager Mark Higgins did not immediately respond to a voice mail left by The Associated Press.

The move would reunite Armstrong with Johan Bruyneel, now the team director for Astana.

VeloNews reported Armstrong also will compete in the Amgen Tour of California, Paris-Nice, the Tour de Georgia and the Dauphine-Libere.

The Astana team, however, was not allowed to compete in this year’s Tour after Alexandre Vinokourov was kicked out of the 2007 Tour for testing positive and the team quit the race.

VeloNews, which said Vanity Fair will publish an extensive article detailing Armstrong’s comeback, said the cyclist will race for no salary or bonuses and post his internally tested blood work online.

Okay … what the fuck does Armstrong think he’s doing? I’m guessing that he’s stepped up from EPO to crack. Does he really think that he’ll be helping cycling by attempting a comeback?

Even if he does come back and does well at the Tour de France (or any other race he enters), does he think it’s really going to put to rest the question of whether or not he doped throughout his career.

Does he think that Levi Leipheimer and Alberto Contador will willingly step aside so that he can lead the team again? Does he expect us to believe that he’ll be the super-domestique that Bernard Hinault promised that he’d be to Greg LeMond in 1986?

This is bad news for cycling. It might be good news for those of us who want to watch it on Versus, but bigger picture, this is NOT a good thing.

I can only hope that this is a wicked rumor.

VeloNews posted the following article after my earlier post today on Rock Racing and the Tour de Georgia.

Michael Ball: Georgia’s promoters had one condition, “Don’t freak us out.”

Rock Racing team owner Michael Ball said Friday that his team earned an invite to the Tour de Georgia based on just one simple condition.

“They said, ‘can you conduct yourselves in a way that doesn’t freak us out?’ ” Ball said in a conference call with reporters.

He said that at Georgia he will not be accompanied by the Hollywood-style entourage that followed him at the Amgen Tour of California. He also said the team would not bring podium girl models to Georgia, although he said that’s because the models were unavailable, not because of his promise to avoid freaking anyone out.

Rock Racing had filed suit against the race when it was not invited, but dropped the suit this week when the race announced that the Saunier Duval team was not going to attend and that Rock Racing would fill the spot.

At the same time, Rock Racing was named as a Founding Sponsor of the race. Ball said his company’s sponsorship of the race was not a condition of its invitation.

“I know it could appear that way,” Ball said. “My intention is to support cycling. This is another great American tour and from the get go we have tried to get involved.”

Somehow, I doubt that my earlier post had anything to do with this comment, but I find it funny that other people were obviously thinking the same thing.

From Velonews: Rock Racing sues to get into Tour de Georgia

Rock Racing is suing the Tour de Georgia’s owner and its organizing company, asking to be let into the race that starts April 21.

The team’s owner, Rock Racing LLC, filed a complaint April 8 asking for an injunction against the race’s owner — the Tour de Georgia Foundation, and its organizer, Medalist Sports, court records show.

A hearing in the case is scheduled for Tuesday in superior court in Fulton County, Georgia.

Rock Racing spokeswoman Martine Charles said the team had an “oral agreement” with Medalist Sports to participate in the race.

“It was revoked at the last minute. We’re pursuing legal alternatives,” she said.

Last month, Medalist’s Jim Birrell told VeloNews that Rock Racing was not invited to the race simply because there is not enough room for the team.

“There are a finite number of slots we’re interested in filling, and it’s hard, there are too many qualified teams to extend invites to, and not enough slots,” Birrell said.

Has a lawsuit ever helped anything in professional cycling, except draining the coffers of the team?

At least the Amgen Tour of California was honest about why it was excluding various members of the (Crack) Rock Racing team … doping allegations, and open investigations into Operación Puerto.

Medalist’s story seems unlikely, but convenient. Rock Racing is bad for cycling … even for the clean riders on the team (and I’m sure the vast majority are), the bad boy image doesn’t help. And the Escalades and podium girls just make it all about image; not about the sport.

Tick-tock, tick-tock, how soon the implosion for the Rock?

From VeloNews:

Prior to the Amgen Tour of California Ball very publicly came to loggerheads with AEG Sports president Andrew Messick over the decision to keep his riders from starting the race, based on the UCI’s definition of what constitutes an “open doping investigation.”

At the conclusion of the Amgen tour Birrell made it clear he felt that Ball’s public struggle with AEG, combined with the team’s traveling entourage — including four podium-girl models, a four-person PR firm, fashion photographers, a dozen-man film crew shooting a documentary and Ball’s driver/bodyguard — had overshadowed the race.

“I like all the riders he has on his team — it’s just that renegade approach and his desire to steal the limelight away from the platform that has been created for everybody else is what troubles me,” Birrell told VeloNews in California. “Right now, for Georgia, Colorado and Missouri, I just don’t know if there is a fit for that team at those stage races. We still haven’t finalized those rosters, but I don’t know if they are under consideration or not.”

I find it so ironic that a person who is trying to help define style in the fashion world is finding that style to be to his team’s detriment. Rock Racing would stand a much better chance of survival as a team if Michael Ball stepped back completely and left the running of the team to someone who is not in it to pimp his own image.

From cyclingnews.com comes word that “Cipollini and Ball’s relationship on the rocks”:

The relationship that was started last fall in a Las Vegas discotheque could come to an end if Mario Cipollini does not get his say in the management of Rock Racing. The Italian, who came out of retirement at the age of 40 to race in the Tour of California last week, and his lawyer met with the owner of the team, Mike Ball, yesterday to discuss the coming season.

“We need to sit at the table and make clear who is in command,” said Mario Cipollini in an interview with La Gazzetta dello Sport’s Luigi Perna. The Italian from Lucca and lawyer Giuseppe Napoleone were scheduled to meet with Ball later in the day.

“The boss is Ball, but after him it is me. Therefore I want to manage the squad starting now. I can organise the participation in [Milano-] San Remo. To find men to race is not a problem. … If Ball does well it will continue, otherwise goodbye. I now understand that the name Cipollini still has value, in the United States and elsewhere.”

Cipollini was happy with his return, but not with the fiasco surrounding the team and Ball’s backing of Tyler Hamilton, Oscar Sevilla and Santiago Botero. The riders, all allegedly linked with Operación Puerto, were barred from racing by the organiser, but continued along daily by riding behind the race caravan and signing autographs for fans at the stage villages.

“For a week I had an infinite amount of patience … Maybe it was my great desire to return to racing with an important project. However, we can’t go forward like this. We are not able to continue to pull along this heavy weight that ruins our image, and now Ball also understands this. It is not enough to advertise and show off models.”

So, first Sevilla, Botero, and Hamilton are prevented from riding the Amgen Tour of California … and now, Cipo is threatening to bolt from the team unless he takes a more active role in how the team is run … somehow, I don’t see Michael Ball giving up any control of the team unless/until the team starts to disintegrate, and by that time it will be too late.

I’m still calling for an implosion before the end of the Tour of Georgia.

We’ll see.

2008 Teams Announced | Amgen Tour of California

I cannot believe that the organizers have invited (Crack) Rock Racing to participate in the Amgen Tour of California …

This is a team that has hired alleged (and in at least one rider’s case, convicted) dopers like Santiago Botero, Oscar Sevilla, and Tyler Hamilton. This is a team that is actively consorting with a rider that is currently banned from the sport for a doping violation (in Floyd Landis). This is a team that is losing sponsors (HED for sure, and others are rumored) because of these associations.

Ah, but this is also a team that signed on as a “founding sponsor” of the Amgen Tour of California itself … I guess when you buy your way into a race, it wouldn’t really be cool to exclude the team.

But with all the ridicule that Amgen, makers of the most widely abused performance-enhancing drug, has taken for sponsoring a race, why not add a team that seemingly turns a blind eye to doping to the mix as well.

And people wonder why this sport is going to hell in a handbasket.

I know Sager has got at least one compadre on the squad, and there are a lot of other good riders on the team; but Michael Ball reminds me of John Wordin (and the whole Mercury/Viatel fiasco) … and I’ll feel sorry for the rank-and-file riders when the team implodes mid-season.

And I really hope I’m wrong, for their sake.

Recently, it was announced that Larry H. Miller (owner of the Utah Jazz, amongst many, many other businesses in Utah) will be sponsoring the Tour of Utah stage race.

Needless to say, this has aroused a lot of ire amongst some of the more liberal-minded cyclists locally, who are calling for a boycott of the race, because LHM yanked Brokeback Mountain from one of his theaters in Sandy, Utah (before it opened), because of the gay theme.

I’m torn.

As hard as our sport is hurting, however, I don’t think we should chase anyone away who is willing to give us money. If the ToU organizers distance themselves from LHM at this stage, they likely will not be able to find another sponsor for this year. If the event doesn’t happen this year, it’s even more unlikely that it will happen next year … and Utah’s premier cycling event goes bye-bye.

Not to mention that LHM owns Thanksgiving Point, so they’d lose the main venue as well.

It’s a matter of balance. LHM won’t be hurt of the ToU gives back the money. LHM won’t be hurt if cyclists boycott the ToU. The only people that will be hurt there are racing cyclists and the organizers.

There are many other examples of odd sponsors to cycling races as well. Kent cigarettes sponsored the Tour of China in the mid-1990s. All sorts of car-manufacturers sponsor races and teams … and now, Amgen, manufacturers of EPO, is sponsoring the Tour of California.

How would it hurt any of those businesses if people stayed away from those races?

It’s a tough call sometimes.

People rail on many companies for off-shoring their manufacturing to poor nations, accusing them of exploiting cheap labor (and compared to US labor, it definitely is).

On the other hand, in general, most of these companies are paying better than average local wages, vastly improving the standards of living of those people now being employed.

So what does the conscientous person do?

If I thought I stood a snowball’s chance in hell of winning any money, I’d do what I could to win, and then donate my winnings to the Human Rights Campaign.