Armstrong said racing in the Leadville Trail 100, a 100-mile mountain bike race in August, spurred his interest in returning to the sport. In the Vanity Fair article, Armstrong said the Olympic triumphs of older athletes like the 41-year-old swimmer Dara Torres and the 38-year-old marathoner Constantina Tomescu-Dita showed him that it would be possible for him to return to racing even stronger than ever.
“Older athletes are performing very well,” Armstrong told the historian and journalist Douglas Brinkley. “Ask serious sports physiologists and they’ll tell you age is a wives’ tale. Athletes at 30, 35 mentally get tired. They’ve done their sport for 20, 25 years and they’re like, I’ve had enough. But there’s no evidence to support that when you’re 38 you’re any slower than when you were 32.”
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