You're reading: Schleck says Armstrong clean after 2009

 ADELAIDE, Australia — Tour de France winner Andy Schleck believes Lance Armstrong's claim he didn't use performance-enhancing drugs after his comeback to cycling in 2009.

During a two-part
interview with Oprah Winfrey, screened in the United States Thursday and
Friday, Armstrong was impassioned when he insisted he didn’t dope
during an unsuccessful comeback to cycling between 2009 and 2011.

Schleck
and Alberto Contador beat Armstrong into third place in the 2009 Tour
de France and Luxembourg’s Schleck says he is sure Armstrong was riding
clean on that tour.

“He made his comeback and he was beaten in the
first year by Alberto and me,” said Schleck, who is in Australia to
ride the Tour Down Under, first event of the 2013 WorldTour.

“So, in my eyes, I was clean. I know I was always a clean rider and I keen on riding clean. So why should he be behind me?

“I believe in his comeback that he was clean.”

Armstrong
launched his comeback to cycling at the 2009 Tour Down Under and rode
the race twice more, in 2010 and 2011, before retiring for the second
and final time.

Race director Mike Turtur, an Olympic cycling gold
medalist and former member of cycling’s world body the UCI, said he
could not say for sure that Armstrong was clean when he rode in
Australia.

“I can’t say because I don’t know,” Turtur said. “I can’t answer a question that is based on speculation.

“It’s hard to answer that sort of question.”

The
South Australia state government paid millions of dollars to Armstrong
to compete in the Tour Down Under in 2009, 2010 and 2011, seeking to
boost the race’s profile and encourage tourism.

The state is now
seeking repayment of those appearance fees, joining a queue of former
Armstrong sponsors and supporters who say they should be reimbursed
after his admission he was a cheat.

The Tour Down Under, which
starts Sunday with a criterium prologue and continues over six stages
from Tuesday, is the first event of a new professional cycling season.
Riders hope that after Armstrong’s admissions to Winfrey it may also
mark a break with a tarnished history.

World road race champion
Philippe Gilbert of Belgium said “we’re just looking to start the season
and to finally speak about the sport.

“This is part of the story of cycling, of course, but this is the past and we just want to see something different now.”

Defending
Tour Down Under champion Simon Gerrans of Australia began his
professional career in 2005, the same year in which Armstrong last won
the Tour de France and the year in which Armstrong says he last doped.

Gerrans said cycling now had a new generation of riders who competed clean.

“I’ve never been exposed to doping in any of the teams I’ve been involved with,” he said. “I’ve never doped.

“In saying that, the fight against doping is an ongoing battle. I don’t think the sport will ever be 100 percent clean.

“I don’t think any professional sport will be 100 percent clean because people cheat. That’s human nature.”

Schleck’s
brother Frank is currently suspended pending the hearing of a doping
charge stemming from last year’s Tour de France. Andy Schleck won the
2010 Tour de France after Alberto Contador’s disqualification for a
positing drugs test. Contador continues to fight that charge.