Armstrong plans 2009 Tour de France return

Lance Armstrong, the seven-times Tour de France winner, yesterday said that he intends to make a second comeback to professional cycling and that he hopes to win an eighth Tour de France next year at the age of 37.

If he were to manage the feat - and currently he has no confirmed team, no confirmed entry to the race and nothing more concrete than an interview in the magazine Vanity Fair - he would be the oldest cyclist to win the sport's major event. His spokesman confirmed that the Tour is "the intention", although the organisers were not available for any comment.

"I am happy to announce that after talking with my children, my family and my closest friends, I have decided to return to professional cycling in order to raise awareness of the global cancer burden," said the Texan, who survived testicular cancer to return to the sport and win the Tour seven times in a row amid what seemed like continual controversy. He added: "I'm going to try and win an eighth Tour de France."

There are reports that Armstrong will plan to race five events in 2009: the Amgen Tour of California, the Tour of Georgia, Paris-Nice, the Dauphiné Libéré stage race and the Tour de France. He said that he did not consider age an obstacle.

Since his retirement in 2005, Armstrong has devoted himself to his cancer charity as well as running marathons. Most recently, racing in a 100-mile mountain bike event in the Rocky Mountains is said to have sparked his desire to return to the sport full time.

He has yet to announce a team for this next venture. The squad that took him to his Tour successes was disbanded in 2007, although his manager, Johan Bruyneel, has moved to the Kazakh-financed Astana squad, relaunched this year after a spate of doping scandals. The Kazakh team were this year refused entry to the Tour. They said yesterday that they had no immediate plans to sign Armstrong. Full details of the American's comeback to the sport are to be announced on September 24. Yesterday, Armstrong said that if his team were refused a place in the 2009 race, he would appeal directly to the French president Nicolas Sarkozy. "I've already put a call in to him," he said.

Armstrong was never sanctioned over a positive drugs test during his career but was dogged by controversy, primarily over his close working relationship with an Italian doctor, Michele Ferrari, who was convicted of malpractice, although the charges did not involve Armstrong. Ferrari was later acquitted on appeal. In 1999 during the Texan's first Tour win, traces of a cortisone-based substance were found in his urine but he was cleared on the grounds that the drug was used to treat a skin complaint.

In 2005, after Armstrong took his seventh Tour win, an investigation by the French newspaper l'Equipe revealed that the banned blood booster erythropoietin had been found in urine samples provided by the American during his first Tour win in 1999. No sanctions were taken because an inquiry commissioned by the International Cycling Union ruled that the testing had been carried out on an unofficial basis, for research purposes.

He said he wanted to put to bed suggestions that he had cheated in winning the Tour. "Many of the guys that got second through 10th, a lot of them are gone. Out. Caught. Positive tests. Suspended. Whatever. And so I can understand why people look at that and go, 'Well, [they] were caught - and you weren't?' So there is a nice element here where I can come with really a completely comprehensive program and there will be no way to cheat."