ESPN.COM Article on Lance's return

This article is on ESPN.COM by Bonnie D. Ford

"WHY NOW? WHY NOT?

A DELAIDE, Australia -- He's back. Then again, many would argue Lance Armstrong never really went away.

Since Armstrong's retirement in 2005 after a record seventh consecutive Tour de France victory, he has remained a formidable presence in and beyond the sport -- a standard for athletic excellence, the celebrity face of an insidious disease and the subject of an ongoing debate about whether he competed clean.

Armstrong is revered, feared, resented and admired. He is credited for pushing road cycling into mainstream U.S. culture, spurring a spike in equipment sales, participation and spectator interest that is colloquially referred to as "the Lance effect." Some people can't get enough of him. Some have had more than enough of him.

At 37, Armstrong has re-entered the present tense of his sport, whether people like it or not, citing his love for cycling and his desire to use it as the vehicle to drive a global cancer awareness campaign. His epiphany came while training for a mountain bike race in Colorado in the summer, and it seemed like a puzzling and abrupt U-turn at first. In a May 2008 cover story interview with Men's Journal, he scoffed at the idea of a comeback, saying, "I'm so focused on other things now that I never think about it."

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