Lance Armstrong has guaranteed the drug-testing program he arranged with America's top anti-doping expert will be in place by the time he rides in his first official race in January.
The seven-time Tour de France winner was to start training with his new team yesterday without having subjected himself to drug tests by Don Catlin, the expert he teamed with, and with no deal in place to post results of those tests online.
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Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong of the U.S. smiles during a stop on the first day of training with his new team Astana in Tenerife, Spain's Canary Islands, Dec. 1, 2008. Armstrong came out of retirement to ride for Astana, which started its preseason training camp in Tenerife, in the Canary Islands. [Xinhua/Reuters Photo]
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But in an interview on Sunday, Armstrong said the goal was not to have the program in place by this week, but by the time he rides in Australia in January - the first race of his comeback.
"It's a tough thing to organize, but we will make it happen," Armstrong said. "All the stuff we said we were going to do will happen."
When Armstrong announced his comeback earlier this year, he partnered with Catlin to set up a testing program. Catlin said he thought it was important to make those results available to the public.
Catlin said over the weekend that while Armstrong has been placed back in the testing pools at both the US Anti-Doping Agency and UCI, cycling's international body, that he has yet to test him and that an agreement to document Armstrong's results online is not in place.
Armstrong acknowledged he hadn't been tested by Catlin, but said he had been tested seven times since re-entering the anti-doping testing programs run by federations such as USADA and UCI.
Armstrong came out of retirement to ride for Astana, which was scheduled to begin its preseason camp this week at Tenerife, on the Canary Islands.
