Lance Armstrong will make what he termed a risky but worthwhile departure from his habitual training pattern this year as he aims for a record sixth consecutive Tour de France victory.
The recently divorced Armstrong will pass up a good chunk of the spring European racing season to spend at least a month in the United States so he can see his three young children. He will race in either Georgia or New Mexico in April, which would be Armstrong’s first stage race on home turf in six years.
If that puts him at a competitive disadvantage, he said, so be it.
“If it means I lose, I lose,” Armstrong said Friday at the U.S. Postal Service team’s training camp in this small town north of Santa Barbara.
“It’s a risk,” he said. “If you see what has worked for five years and you change it, anybody’s going to look at it and say you’re taking a risk. But to me, it’s totally worth it.”
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Armstrong said he is “totally confident” he can prepare properly for his historic attempt.
April is too early, cold and wet to scout mountain stages anyway, he said, “so it’s not a conflict.”
He enters the season with a new chief climbing assistant as Portugal’s Jose Azevedo replaces Tour of Spain champion Roberto Heras.
Heras, now leading his own squad, is one of several riders who will be looking to dethrone Armstrong. Perennial runner-up Jan Ullrich has a particularly strong cast around him on the T-Mobile team.
Armstrong will spend February and March at his home in Girona, Spain, racing in Portugal, Spain and Italy before heading back to Austin where his ex-wife, Kristin, lives with their 4-year-old son and twin 2-year-old daughters.
He plans to return to Europe sometime in May to do Tour stage reconnaissance and probably will race once in France before the main event.
“I think it can work,” Armstrong said. “Then again, if . . . I don’t focus and don’t train as hard as I should have in April and it costs me the Tour in July, I have to do it.
“It’s going to kill me to go two months without them,” he said of his children. “You don’t get used to missing them.”
A relaxed Armstrong scoffed at the notion that he is slacking off in training–speculation he knows may be a byproduct of his relationship with singer Sheryl Crow.
“I know what I’m doing,” he said. “I’m not sitting on the beach every day eating doughnuts like people think.”
Armstrong and Crow met last fall in Las Vegas at a benefit for tennis star Andre Agassi’s academy for underprivileged children.
The couple was interviewed at a recent Lakers game where Crow’s casual remark that she liked Krispy Kremes gave rise to the doughnut rumor. They also were photographed attending a Hollywood movie premiere.
Armstrong, 32, said the event started at 7:30 p.m. and did not keep him up past his bedtime.