Armstrong out of Milan-San Remo due to illness

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Lance Armstrong will not ride Milan-San Remo, Team RadioShack announced Friday morning. The seven-time Tour de France winner is “suffering from acute gastroenteritis,” the team said. He will be replaced by Japanese rider Fumiyuki Beppu.

"It would have been good to have Lance in the line-up for the start but we prefer not to take any risk," said team director Johan Bruyneel. "It would not be very intelligent to let him start in a race of almost 300K, while not being healthy."

Armstrong's most recent race appearance was at a charity race in South Africa. His next scheduled race is the Criterium International, March 27-28.

Team RadioShack for Milan-San Remo: Fumiyuki Beppu, Daryl Impey, Markel Irizar, Geoffroy Lequatre, Dmitriy Muravyev, Gregory Rast, Sébastien Rosseler and Tomas Vaitkus