Armstrong delays Tour de France decision

Lance Armstrong will decide in April whether to ride in this year's Tour de France but said today he has a deal with his team's new sponsor to ride in the world's leading cycling race at least once more.
The six-time Tour de France winner added that unlike in past years he would not begin the season with the Tour de France as his sole goal.
Instead, he will begin 2005 racing in the classic events before deciding whether to race in France in July.
"It's definitely a departure, not focusing from the beginning of the year...on the Tour," Armstrong, 33, said at a news conference after the official presentation of his team under a new sponsor ? the Discovery Channel.
"But the good news is that if you train for the classics and try to ride the classics... you will advance your form far enough that at least you will not be trying to play catch up.
"I plan on having a good training camp...and evaluating in April, late April," he added.
Under the terms of his contract with Discovery Channel, which replaced US Postal Service as the main sponsor of the team, Armstrong has agreed to ride in another Tour de France.
"That could be in 2005 or 2006 but I am fully committed to doing that. I'm not the type of person that... doesn't live up to my end of the deal. I've never worked that way and that won't be the case here."
"What's important is... to do one (more) Tour and also to try to win that Tour," he said. "I prefer to go and try to ride in front and win a seventh."
Armstrong, the only rider to win the Tour six times, hinted earlier at the official team presentation that his team's strong camaraderie might lead him to seek a seventh victory.
"The love of these guys, the love of camaraderie ? that's what's going to keep me coming back for number seven," he said.
But later he said it had not yet been decided if he would race in the Tour de France this year. Armstrong said he planned to compete in the Tour of Flanders in early March and the Amstel Gold Race and Liege-Bastogne-Liege in April.
"I'd like to go back and finally win one of those," he said of the cycling classics he plans to race.
"It's time to finally go and try to win one of the monuments in cycling."
Armstrong also plans to compete in April's Fleche-Wallone race, a classic he won in 1996.
Team chief Johan Bruyneel said the Discovery Channel team ? with 28 members including several new young riders ? would be hard pressed to match the success of 2004 when US Postal won 33 races including Armstrong's historic Tour de France victory.
"We come from a historical year... we have never won so many races as last year," said Bruyneel.
"We know...it's going to be very difficult to do better. (We will) try to get as close as possible to what we have achieved."
Bruyneel said the team would compete for the first time in the Giro d'Italia and noted that new team member Paolo Savoldelli, who won that race in 2002, was "very motivated" to be on the podium again.
Bruyneel also named 25-year-old newcomer Yaroslav Popovych, from Ukraine, as a "future contender" in the Tour de France.
"Depending on what Lance's programme will be, we will also define our goals there," he added.-Reuters