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KUT: Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong says he’ll keep riding, but there won’t be an eighth championship.
Austin’s Lance Armstrong says his goal of an eighth victory in the Tour de France is no longer possible. He fell from 14th to 39th place overall after stage eight of the race on Sunday. It was the first stage in the mountainous French Alps.
Three crashes set Armstrong back Sunday. In the third, he injured his knee and lost a wheel off of his bicycle.
Bill Strickland, editor of Bicycling magazine and author of the book, “Tour de Lance,” says that the admission removes a lot of the pressure on Armstrong to win his eighth Tour.
“Well that’s the great thing about what happened, as well. He’s out of contention. So this means it’s going to free him up to ride however he wants to, and you’ve got to know he wants to end his career with a stage win,” Strickland said in a phone interview Monday. He also said that if RadioShack teammate Levi Leipheimer is still in contention, Armstrong would give whatever support he could to help Leipheimer to the top of the podium.
Armstrong is now 13:26 seconds behind overall race leader Cadel Evans of Australia. Riders had Monday off. Tuesday’s ninth stage will take riders through the Alps in the Savoie and Haute-Savoie regions of France.
