Lance Armstrong comeback to the Tour de France – not for the money but to further raise cancer awareness and funding

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NEW YORK - MAY 13:  Tour de France champion La...Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Lance Armstrong – cancer survivor and 7 time Tour de France winner is coming out of retirement at age 37 to compete again in this grueling race.

The news was first broken in VeloNews, and there is a full write up in a special Esquire piece.

He has nothing to prove, as he came back after beating cancer, and while nobody thought he could comeback to professionally cycling (other than Lance) – he not only came back but heroically won the Tour de France (and went on to win a record setting 7 times in a row).

He is not doing it for the money since he will be taking no salary, but instead wants to further raise awareness for cancer and cancer research. At his LiveStrong website he talks in a short video and discusses how the full details will be released on September 24th at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York city.

I have previously discussed the relative failure of cancer research over the last 50 years, and the new complexity of cancer treatments earlier this week.

As with many dominant athelets in their chosen sports rumors of doping practice has swirled around Lance, but he argues he has passed every doping test (and there has been a very large number). He is going to great lengths during his comeback to be transparent as possible and release all his tests and of course he will be part of the new more stringent professional bicycling drug testing.

Can Lance comeback and win the 2009 Tour de France at age 37 and after being retired 3 years (last win was in 2005)? I wrote during the recent Olympics about how older athletes showed some very strong performances (including gold medals) that might make us reconsider what is old. Lance will be close to 38 when he competes in next years Tour de France – but I guess that is not to much of a hill compared to coming back from cancer.

Despite your personal opinon of Lance I think all of us hope he contines his fight against cancer, and even develops greater awareness of cancer, and further increases funding for cancer research.

Go Lance Go – toward progress in cancer treatments.