MADRID - Tour de France winner Alberto Contador found the time he spent off the road with Astana teammate Lance Armstrong tougher than the race itself, the Spaniard said yesterday.
The 26-year-old picked up his second Tour title Sunday in Paris, finishing ahead of Luxembourg’s Andy Schleck and Armstrong, who placed third.
“My relationship with Lance Armstrong is zero,’’ Contador told a news conference in Madrid, where he was given a hero’s welcome.
“He is a great rider and has completed a great race, but it is another thing on a personal level, where I have never had great admiration for him and I never will.
“On this Tour, the days in the hotel were harder than the those on the road.
“The situation was tense and delicate because the relationship between myself and Lance extended to the rest of the staff.’’
Contador, publicly criticized by Armstrong for ignoring team orders during the Tour, refused to be drawn into discussion of his future but it is unlikely to lie with his current team.
“We’ll have to see what happens,’’ he said. “I don’t know where I will go, but it will clearly be with a team that is 100 percent behind me.’’
After being greeted by family, friends, and fans at Madrid’s Barajas airport, Contador was given a victory reception by the president of Madrid’s regional government in the center of the capital.
At every opportunity fans sang the Spanish national anthem as a reminder to Tour organizers, who accidentally played the national anthem of Denmark at the podium ceremony Sunday.
