Outcry over Armstrong Tour ride

LONDON: Lance Armstrong’s plan to ride this year’s Tour de France route for charity has been branded “disrespectful” by Brian Cookson, the head of cycling’s governing body.

The disgraced American, stripped of his seven Tour titles because of doping, has been invited by fellow cancer survivor and former English soccer player Geoff Thomas to ride the route to raise money for a leukaemia charity.

“I’m sure that Geoff means well,” Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) chief Cookson said at a sports industry meeting yesterday.

“Bringing Lance Armstrong to ride on some or all of the route one day before the race, I can’t think of better words than disrespectful and inappropriate to the Tour de France, the riders, the UCI and anti-doping. It looks like Lance was persuaded into it and if he was, it’s not a good judgement.”

However, Cookson said he was powerless to stop Armstrong. “He can cycle around France as long as he wants, there’s nothing the UCI can do about that really.”

Asked whether he had any sympathy for Armstrong, who is trying to have a life ban from cycling reduced, Cookson was unequivocal: “He has been singled out and made an exceptional case, but then there aren’t many who have won the Tour de France seven times by cheating, so he was an exceptional case.

“I am not anxious to be the president that brings Lance Armstrong back into cycling.”