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VeloNews sits down with Lance, Levi and Chris.

Published: May. 2, 2009
Leipheimer chats with reporters Saturday morning.
Leipheimer chats with reporters Saturday morning.

VeloNews, along with two other reporters, sat down with Chris Horner, Levi Leipheimer and Lance Armstrong Saturday morning at the house where they're bunked, up in the hills outside of Silver City, New Mexico.

When we arrived, Armstrong was laying on an opened pull-out couch in the living room, wearing shorts, knee-high black compression socks and Nike sandals. Johan Bruyneel and a few friends were sitting nearby, and the sunny open space was cluttered with clothes and food, including an opened case of FRS cans. Windows looked down toward the city and hills and across toward a huge copper mine across the valley.

The six of us sat around a kitchen table and had a wide ranging conversation about the Gila, the Giro, Armstrong's 'showergate' incident and his kids' athletic pursuits. Below are a few excerpts.

Levi: Giro favorite?

VeloNews: Levi, Lance said the other day you are among the favorites for the Giro. Are you going there with the objective to end up on top of the podium?

Levi Leipheimer: I think all this talk about me being a favorite is a little bit overblown. I mean the Italians are super focused on it, and they know the Giro in and out, unlike myself. I don't really know the race that well, I've done it once. I think I'm just going to take it day by day. I think this year especially, and the last few years, I've been more and more relaxed and just having fun and going with the flow and it seems to be working. I'm definitely not going to step up and say I am equally a favorite as Basso or Di Luca or whoever, I just have to be sorta the underdog and play conservative and day by day and we'll see what happens.

Lance Armstrong: I think it's hard when we haven't seen it. I mean I was just looking at the course online today and if you look stage by stage and we talk about the big days, which are stage 4, stage 5, which are early mountain stages, you talk about the TT ... you talk about Blockhaus, Mayrhofen, Vesuvio ... the days in between all that stuff? Not easy, never flat. long stages, you have back-to-back 250km stages.

Chris Horner: And you have super short ones too, it's going to be hard.

LA: You have these odd 75km stages, 125km stages — which are just: warm up and then sprint your ass off uphill. It's something that I certainly don't know, and I don't think these guys do either. So we need to be conservative from a tactical standpoint. I've seen the time trial and I know Levi so ...

VN: Levi, have you seen the TT?

LL: No, no.

LA:I told him it's flat, dead flat. (Laughs)

...

VN: Levi what does the Giro mean to you?

LL: The one thing that stands out about the Giro to me is the tifosi. Having done the Giro last year, the support of every little village you go through. You go through a village and all the shop windows are decorated pink. Pink banners and pink confetti everywhere and it's got the crowds and every bit as much fan fare as the Tour de France.

There are so many people out there, whether it's sunshine or rain or snow, they are there, toughing it out, and they have a lot of passion for cycling and I think that's what makes the Giro so special. Last year was a difficult year because there were a lot of transfers and a lot of long stages and lot of things that the riders didn't like. But I think it was all offset by the fans and the amount of love that you got from those people, you couldn't help but notice.

The Gila

VN: Do you guys get any sense of what folks in Europe know about the Gila and what they think of you being here?

LA: They definitely pay attention, all those guys, they look at the sites, the results, they dissect the results, they look at the pictures, the positions — are they light, are they heavy? A guy like Basso for sure he's reading every day, word for word, about the Gila.

CH: Especially the TT day.

LA: Yeah, for sure they are watching.

VN: I was wondering what they think about you being at such a small race — I mean, we got letters accusing Levi of being a bully by coming here and attacking.

LL: I'll let Lance take that one.

LA: There's always a few, loud whiners. Cycling has to get away from that. I don't care which way you cut it, this is good for cycling. We are happy to be here. We are just three slappers riding around in bike shop jerseys. SRAM was generous enough to pick this event up when it was just about to die, obviously we have a relationship with them from a team standpoint, I have a relationship with them from an investment standpoint. There's no downside. We are not taking any prize money. I could understand if we came and said we want appearance money, we are going to take the prize money and we're leaving. But we are here hanging out with everybody else, staying in borrowed housing like everybody else, giving the money back so that it can be distributed to the other classes and the other fields. The event is on Good Morning America, it's on CNN International — that ain't bad for cycling.

CH: And, it's a pro race. That's all that needs to be said. Lance is a pro, Levi is a pro, I'm a pro; it's a pro race. If you don't want to race with the pros, stay amateur.