In an interview with Sports & Style, a magazine from the Sydney Morning Herald, Lance Armstrong admits that he and teammates have fabricated tension and conflicts in the past in order to play mind games with the competition.
But, he says, with Alberto Contador ”We are not making it up. It’s there.”
Following Contador’s win at this year’s Tour de France, Armstrong (in)famously skipped out on the teams celebratory dinner to meet with reps from RadioShack, which prompted Contador to tell media in Madrid that his relationship with Armstrong was ”non-existent” and, ”even if he is a great champion, I have never had admiration for him and I never will.”
Despite the mutual dislike, Armstrong does concede that their rivalry will be terrific for cycling and the 2010 Tour de France.
”It will make for an epic build-up, an epic Tour. Those key stages will be epic,” he says.
And while he might not like Contador, he admires his physical and mental prowess, saying: ”He is strong physically, but he is possibly even stronger mentally. He ain’t easy to disintegrate.”
Check out the SMH article here.
