Armstrong
LONDON, (Reuters):
FIVE-TIMES Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong says he is considering retirement at the end of this year.
The 32-year-old American will be chasing a record sixth victory in cycling's blue-ribbon event this season and could quit the sport if he fails in his bid.
"This could be my last year," he told The Times newspaper in an interview yesterday. "I cannot imagine myself being retired 12 months from now, but I'm open to the possibility that there will be a tap on the shoulder and someone says, 'Time's up'.
"If I lost, I just don't know if I would say, 'OK, I'm past my prime, time to go', or if I'd say, 'I've got to try again'.
"Knowing myself and the people who know me best, I think they'd say the guy has to try again."
U.S. Postal rider Armstrong, who won last year's Tour de France with a 61-second lead over his German rival Jan Ullrich, finished fifth in the Tour of the Algarve earlier this month after winning the 24-km individual time trial.
His time trial performance was a pleasant surprise for a rider who normally aims to peak by mid-year.
"I wonder what Jan thought when he heard I won in Portugal, that I'm winning in February, when I'm nowhere near my peak'," Armstrong said.
"And I was thinking what would I do if I heard Ullrich had won a time-trial in February.
"I think I'd get straight down and do 50 sit-ups just to say to myself I was doing something. I didn't expect to win (in Portugal), but I did."
Armstrong, who fully recovered from surgery and chemotherapy in 1996 after being diagnosed with cancer, describes cycling as "one of the two or three toughest" sports in the world.
"The Tour de France is the ultimate sporting event," he said. "I don't think there is a harder sporting event anywhere.
"Imagine a marathon and Formula One combined - that's what it's like. "It's three weeks of agony and it's hard and it hurts and it can be dangerous and every single guy who does it is one tough bastard."
