Lance Armstrong will race in Tour of California

Lance Armstrong, photographed at a cycling convention in Las Vegas, will ride in the Amgen Tour of California race in February.

The news comes one day after Armstrong officially announced his return to professional cycling after a three-year break.

By Diane Pucin, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

Lance Armstrong announced today that he would ride in America's biggest cycling stage race, the Amgen Tour of California.

Armstrong made the announcement at Interbike, a cycling convention in Las Vegas.

The news came one day after Armstrong officially announced his return to professional cycling after a three-year break. However, he had not listed the Feb. 14-22 California race on his schedule.

Andrew Messick, president of AEG Sports, which owns and operates the race, said today that his company and Armstrong came to an agreement that does not include any appearance fees for Armstrong.

Armstrong, who retired from cycling after winning a record-setting seventh consecutive Tour de France in 2005, will open his comeback season in January in Adelaide, Australia, in the Tour Down Under. When Armstrong made that announcement, Australian media questioned race officials about whether Armstrong was receiving a personal guarantee to make his first competitive Australian performance. No answer was given.

The 37-year-old Texan said Wednesday he is not taking a salary from his new team, Astana, and that his purpose in racing was to raise money for his cancer foundation, Livestrong.

Also Thursday, the Associated Press reported Tour de France officials said that as long as Astana remained free of doping controversies that the team would be invited to participate in the 2009 Tour de France.

Last summer, Tour officials refused entry to Astana because of doping problems in 2007. Because Astana was one of several teams to have been caught up in recurring drug scandals, it seemed as if Astana's Tour de France ban was extra punishment aimed at team leader Johan Bruyneel for his associations with Armstrong.

It is no secret that Tour officials have long suspected Armstrong of doping. Instead, French investigations uncovered doping among other prominent cyclists, and champions such as Jan Ullrich, Ivan Basso and Floyd Landis were knocked out of the sport.

Messick called Armstrong's decision to ride in California, "Great news for Amgen, for American cycling and for the cancer cause. Lance has a singular ability to create a lot of attention and focus people's eyeballs on cycling and do an enormous amount of good for cancer."

But Messick said he did not feel pressure to attract Armstrong to his race.

"The importance was to realize that this isn't just a Lance Armstrong race," Messick said. "It's a race where the best teams and best riders want to compete. Having Lance here is verification of that, but we'd like to think we're getting to a point where we're a race and not reliant on a single personality."

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