Armstrong noted other athletes in his age range competing at a high level, specifically 41-year-old Olympic medalist swimmer Dara Torres and 38-year-old Olympic women’s marathon champion Constantina Tomescu-Dita, of Romania.

“Ask serious sports physiologists and they’ll tell you age is a wives’ tale,” he said.

Torres certainly agrees.

“To hear that he’s making a comeback, that just shows what kind of athlete he is and that he doesn’t think age is anything but a number,” she said from her Florida home.

Armstrong also must line up a team. His U.S. Postal Service and Discovery teams were loaded with top lieutenants, such as Hincapie, when he won his previous titles.

On Monday, the cycling journal VeloNews reported on its Web site that Armstrong would compete with the Astana team in the Tour and four other road races — the Amgen Tour of California, Paris-Nice, the Tour de Georgia and the Dauphine-Libere.

Armstrong’s close friend and longtime team director, Johan Bruyneel, told The Associated Press by phone Wednesday that he would welcome working with Armstrong again.

“My relationship with him goes beyond the professional rider-director relationship. I don’t see myself running a team and having to race against him,” Bruyneel said. “It’s all happening so fast, so it’s a little difficult for me now. I don’t want to run too fast, but I can say that I cannot imagine him being on another team. We are obviously going to have to speak a lot in the next few days.”

There are no guarantees Astana will race the 2009 Tour. Race officials kept the team out this year because of previous doping violations.

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If Armstrong and his team aren’t invited in 2009, he plans to appeal directly to French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

“I’ve already put a call in to him,” he said.

Off the bike, the Lance Armstrong Foundation has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for cancer awareness and survivorship programs. Its yellow “Livestrong” wristbands that started selling in 2004 are still seen everywhere — with many copycats.

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After he retired Armstrong took on cancer as a political issue, lobbying federal and state lawmakers and co-hosting televised forums with presidential candidates. He was instrumental in persuading the 2007 Texas Legislature to pass a $3 billion fund for cancer research.

“This is a damn war for me. It’s nothing other than that,” he told the AP in 2007.

Armstrong’s social life has done just as much to keep him in the spotlight.

After his divorce from wife Kristin, the mother of his three children, Armstrong has had high-profile relationships with rocker Sheryl Crow, fashion designer Tory Burch and most recently, actress Kate Hudson.

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