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SI.com: Austin Murphy: All not well within Astana after 17th stage

LE GRAND BORNAND, France -- Worst kept secret at this Tour de France: Astana general manager Johan Bruyneel will announce tomorrow that he intends to start a new team next year, backed by American sponsorship and led by Lance Armstrong.

SI.com: Austin Murphy: As Tour rests, rivalry between Armstrong and Contador heats up

Well, that was a trifle anticlimactic, no?

SI.com: Austin Murphy: Armstrong in an uphill battle against teammate, field in Tour

Recall, if you will, Bernard Hinault's terse message to Lance Armstrong five years ago, after the Texan drained much of the suspense from the 2004 Tour de France by winning his third straight alpine stage. "No gifts," declaimed the Badger. Implicit in those words: a pro bike race is a knife fight, not a bridal shower. There is no place in it for charity or sentimentality or mercy. No gifts. Lance-o-philes loved it so much they put it on a T-shirt.

SI.com: Austin Murphy: Lance Armstrong goes for his eighth title, more drama to watch at this year's Tour

Two weeks before the start of the 96th Tour de France, 1,870 days after his last pro victory, Lance Armstrong soloed to first place in the Nevada City (Cal.) Classic, a brief but brutal 40-lap circuit in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Asked afterward about the upcoming Tour, which starts Saturday in Monaco, the Texan poor-mouthed his own chances, pointing to Astana teammates Alberto Contador and Levi Leipheimer as clear favorites. After those two, he went on, "they got an old man like me to come around and pick up the pieces."

SI.com: Austin Murphy: Lance Armstrong's comeback is on track

Just because he's lean and ripped and far more fit than he's ever been at this time of year, Lance Armstrong won't necessarily regain the form that won him seven Tours de France. Just because those questions about his past have faded from the foreground, they haven't necessarily gone away. And while none of them care to be quoted, there are plenty of cycling people who wish he'd leave and not come back. He is a magnet for attention that might otherwise redound to more deserving riders -- guys like his Astana teammate Levi Leipheimer, who on Sunday clinched his third straight victory in the Amgen Tour of California, but whose next mention in this story is more than a thousand words away. But give Armstrong this: Three-and-a-half years after his retirement, two races into his comeback, he has plunged an IV full of Red Bull into the arm of a sport sorely in need of a pick-me-up. By his mere presence in the peloton, the 37-year-old Texan makes pro cycling an infinitely more interesting

Time.com: Lance Armstrong to Return to Cycling

Seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong will join Team Astana for his return to competitive cycling

SI.com: Austin Murphy: Lance returns to prove a point

Grim news for gossip rags everywhere: Lance Armstrong confirmed Tuesday that he is, in fact, coming out of retirement. The immediate result, of course -- aside from a defibrillation of interest in cycling in this country -- will be a marked reduction in late-night sightings of the Lone Star State's most prolific Lothario with celebrity blondes of various vintages on his arm. If Lance is going to take the start at the Amgen Tour of California on Valentine's Day, 2009 -- the first of five stages races he's reportedly eyeballing, culminating with the Tour de France next July -- he'll need to maybe be dial down the night life a bit.

Out of retirement, Armstrong eyes 8th Tour de France win

Cyclist Lance Armstrong confirmed Tuesday that he will be returning to road racing and will shoot for an eighth win at the Tour de France.

SI.com: Austin Murphy: Cyclists out to regain public trust at 95th Tour de France

Rhetorical question posed on the eve of the 95th Tour de France, which begins Saturday in Brest, at the tip of the Breton peninsula: Wouldn't it be surprising if cycling, for so long the poster child of pharmacologically jacked-up sports, turned out to be cleaner than, say, the NFL, or the NHL, or Major League Baseball?

SI.com: Austin Murphy: After poor Calif. Tour, more bad news for Rock Racing

From Rock Racing, the only U.S. Pro Continental team that travels with its own stable of podium girls, comes this breaking news: team owner Michael Ball has had an epiphany! On Tuesday, Rock announced plans to adopt "an aggressive internal team anti-doping program," such as those employed by Slipstream, High Road, CSC, Astana and others.

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