Packed field awaiting Lance Armstrong in Tour de France

MONACO — As Lance Armstrong rode along the harbor to the Tour de France team presentation Thursday, cheers erupted on the roadside as soon as fans spied him.

"Lance, you're the best!" Scott McCann, a 15-year-old from Coleraine, Northern Ireland, said as he watched Armstrong ride past. "Ooh, he's getting kind of gray."

McCann and other cycling fans have not seen Armstrong ride in the Tour since 2005, the year he won his record seventh title before retiring from the sport. At 37, he is now one of the oldest riders in the peloton. He emerged last fall from his 3 ½-year retirement, but he is still one of the race favorites.

And today, with the individual time trial kicking off the 21-day race, Armstrong's challenge to win yet another Tour begins.

"I don't have the confidence that I had before," Armstrong said to the packed crowd, which included Prince Albert II of Monaco, who sat next to the cycling greats Eddy Merckx and Bernard Hinault.

Armstrong said he would help his Astana teammates Alberto Contador or Levi Leipheimer win, if either one proves to be a better rider than he is.

"Whatever it takes," Armstrong said. "The most important thing is for us to win."

The rest of the peloton, however, is out to capture the spotlight Armstrong has commanded since he announced his comeback last September.

Carlos Sastre of Spain, the defending champion, will try to keep the leader's jersey and win another Tour. Denis Menchov of Russia, who won the Giro d'Italia in May, will try to become the first man since 1998 to win the Giro and the Tour in the same season. Andy Schleck of Luxembourg, who is just 24, will try to win his first Tour and make his mark.

With the pressure higher here than at any other race, those riders are now settling down to focus on the task at hand.

"I don't care about the other riders or think about them at all," Sastre said. "I know how to win the race, and I think I can do it again. If Armstrong is strong, or if he's not, it doesn't matter to me. Is Contador riding well? It has nothing to do with me."

If Tour history is a guide, the racing goes along with doping scandals, which in the last several years have left black marks on the race. Already this week, Dutch rider Thomas Dekker was booted from Silence-Lotto's Tour roster for testing positive for the blood booster EPO.

But the several thousand fans at the team presentation had other things to think about Thursday. They cheered their favorite riders. A few booed the ones they did not like. The favorites — like Armstrong, Contador, Sastre and Menchov — seemed to elicit the most applause.

"Wow, can you hear the people yelling for Armstrong?" Thomas Delen said to his wife, Caroline, in French. "It's crazy that he is so famous. He is the Michael Jackson of cycling."

Notes

• France's sports minister says Armstrong will be "particularly monitored" for doping during the Tour de France.

"The [doping] controls will be multiplied, and I tell Lance Armstrong that he will be particularly, particularly, particularly monitored," Sports Minister Roselyne Bachelot said Friday on French cable TV.

Armstrong, who has denied ever having taken banned substances during his cycling career, responded with a post on Twitter: "No worries, it's been this way for 10 years. I have nothing to hide."

The International Cycling Union, whose sport has been battered by drug and cheating scandals, is planning more than 500 doping checks during this Tour.

• Belgian cyclist Tom Boonen was cleared Friday to compete after winning his appeal of a ban for testing positive for cocaine.

Tour organizers ASO had sought to ban Boonen by saying the Belgian had damaged the race's image after testing positive in an out-of-competition test in April.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.