Lance Armstrong at the 2007 Tour de France (Image credit: AFP)
By Gary Boulanger, Bikeradar.com
In an upcoming interview with Procycling magazine, seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong has tipped Cadel Evans as one of his favourites for the 2008 race, which starts in less than three weeks time. But with much of Armstrong's life in retirement spent away from the European cycling scene, the Texan said he no longer follows professional racing as much nowadays.
"I follow enough to be able to say that I do like Cadel Evans," said Armstrong. "He had a good ride last year, is riding well this year - that could be a good or a bad thing. I was never able to have a great spring, a great Classics season, and then be competitive in the Tour. It would be super-cool if someone could, so if he's able to do that and win the Tour - hey, that's great! I mean who else is there?"
On the subject of other Tour contenders, Armstrong was cool on the prospect of Damiano Cunego taking the Tour title back to Italy. "He'll never win the Tour. Those Tour climbs... he can't climb like that. And he can't time trial like that. And that's not a slap at him. He's a little guy. I just don't think he's a Tour rider.
"If I could pick one guy and say 'let's make this a project', I would pick Stijn Devolder. I think he can win the Tour some day. He can climb well enough, and he's lean, skinny, certainly can time trial. Tactically, I don't know, it's a little different from winning Tour of Flanders, but he's got a good team and smart guys around him so that should work.
"As far as the Americans go, I'd say we're at least a couple of years away. Those riders referred to as the Great White Hopes haven't really panned out. That's not a criticism of them, it's just that European cycling is just very different than the Tour of Georgia or Redlands or a VO2 test in the lab."
Asked about the exclusion of Astana from this year's Tour - the team managed by his former directeur sportif Johan Bruyneel - Armstrong described the decision as "a Johan Bruyneel/Lance Armstrong penalty".
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"It's their race so they can do whatever they want," he said of Tour organiser ASO. "As for the decision to leave out Astana... at the same time they're allowing in a lot of other teams that are in the same situation, or certainly potentially in more of a 'devious' situation, or certainly more of a history. Astana 2008, aside from the sponsor, is certainly not anything like Astana 2007.
"That's simply a decision they took as a Johan Bruyneel/Lance Armstrong penalty. And if that's the way they want to run their event, they're going to be managing a very small group of people real soon. You can't make those decisions in world sport.
"And they have double standards by keeping in the CSCs and the Rabobanks, all the guys that have a laundry list of problems. If you want to kick one out, kick them all out. They're just playing games, and that's a disservice to the sport, to the fans, to the media, certainly to a guy like [2007 Tour winner] Alberto Contador. It's not fair.
"If they want to play games like kids, then play games, but the record will show that I think ASO and the sport of cycling was fairly, if not very, prosperous during our time winning seven. And the record will show that since then it has not done well. And I'm not taking any credit, I'm just saying, for the record, the facts are what they are."
