Comeback

Opvallend wielernieuws vandaag : Lance Armstrong bereidt een comeback in het wielerpeloton voor en wil voor de 8e keer de Tour de France winnen!
Hier op de website van Vanity Fair kan je het volledige artikel lezen, hieronder een stukje waaruit blijkt dat het serieus is.

“……..As we sat in our terrace chairs overlooking the manicured vista, Armstrong nervously fingered the yellow band on his wrist. He insisted he had something on his mind. “Something huge,” as he put it. I braced for the worst.
Then, in almost robotic fashion, he said, “I’m going back to professional cycling. I’m going to try and win an eighth Tour de France.”
For a moment I gaped at him. Was I being punked? (Armstrong would later tell Doug Ulman, the president and C.E.O. of L.A.F., that my eyes bulged into saucers, like some boinged-out character in a Ralph Steadman illustration.) As the news sank in, though, I realized he was deadly serious. I knew from Armstrong’s memoir, It’s Not About the Bike, that his VO2 max (the gauge by which the human body’s capacity to transport and use oxygen is measured) is superhuman, his ship-sail lungs uncommonly efficient.
But at age 37? A 2,000-mile, 23-day race, much of it uphill? By next July?

I asked him, rather ungraciously, if he wasn’t too old to get back into shape that quickly. He laughed. And he was off and running. “Look at the Olympics. You have a swimmer like Dara Torres. Even in the 50-meter event [freestyle], the 41-year-old mother proved you can do it. The woman who won the marathon [Constantina Tomescu-Dita, of Romania] was 38. Older athletes are performing very well. Ask serious sports physiologists and they’ll tell you age is a wives’ tale. Athletes at 30, 35 mentally get tired. They’ve done their sport for 20, 25 years and they’re like, I’ve had enough. But there’s no evidence to support that when you’re 38 you’re any slower than when you were 32. “Ultimately, I’m the guy that gets up. I mean, I get up out of bed a little slow. I mean, I’m not going to lie. I mean, my back gets tired quicker than it used to and I get out of bed a little slower than I used to. But when I’m going, when I’m on the bike—I feel just as good as I did before.” I wasn’t totally buying it. “Are you really 100 percent going to race in the Tour de France?”
“One hundred percent!” he replied. “One hundred percent!...................”

Heb ik 'm dan toch al zien trainen in de Franse Alpen, in juni? Op de 28e tijdens mijn beklimming van de Col de Glandon? Ik had al zo mijn vermoedens.
Dat hij in training is, is wel duidelijk. Kijk naar onderstaande video van de Leadville 100. Een 100-mijls mountainbikerace op 9 augustus 2008 waar hij als 2e finishte.