MADRID, Spain — If Lance Armstrong joins the Astana cycling team for his comeback, then Alberto Contador is ready to leave.
“I think I’ve earned the right to be the leader of a team without having to fight for my place,” the Spanish rider said Tuesday in AS newspaper. “And with Armstrong some difficult situations could arise in which the team would put him first and that would hurt me.”
Contador, the 2007 Tour de France champion, won the Spanish Vuelta on Sunday.
“My intention is to stay (at Astana) because I have a contract until 2010, but I have already received a good number of offers from other teams,” he said.
Earlier this month, Armstrong announced that he is returning to cycling after three years in retirement and would attempt to win the Tour de France for the eighth time.
He could be reunited with Johan Bruyneel, his former coach who now leads Contador at Astana. Bruyneel has said he could not imagine Armstrong riding for anyone else.
Armstrong will outline his comeback Wednesday in New York.
“On the basis of what he says, we’ll make a decision,” said Contador, who, like Armstrong, plans to skip the Italian Giro and Vuelta to focus solely on the Tour.
Contador said he got no help in his Vuelta victory from American teammate Levi Leipheimer, who finished 46 seconds behind the 25-year-old Spanish rider.
“It’s not normal that someone working for you finishes less than a minute off in the general standings,” Contador said. “If (the penultimate stage time trial) had been 20 kilometers more who knows what would have happened.”
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