Lance Armstrong Set To Ride Australia In January

GENEVA - Cycling's governing body is relaxing its rules to allow Lance Armstrong to make his comeback at a road race in Australia in January.

The International Cycling Union said the seven-time Tour de France champion can compete in the Jan. 20-25 Tour Down Under, his first race since coming out of retirement after three years.

A strict application of testing rules would not have allowed the 37-year-old Texan to compete until Feb. 1, 2009, six months after he filed paperwork with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency.

Armstrong's comeback is meant to draw attention to his global campaign to fight cancer, a disease he survived before winning seven straight Tours from 1999-2005.

It is also a defiant stand against critics who doubt he could have achieved those victories without the use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Armstrong said last month he was tested in late August, and has enlisted personal anti-doping expert Don Catlin, who will make his test results available to the public.

Catlin, who ran the first anti-doping lab in the United States at UCLA for 25 years, will freeze and keep samples of Armstrong's blood to be analyzed in the future.

Armstrong will not be paid for returning to the saddle and the testing costs will be covered by his Kazakhstan-based Astana team, which is managed by his cycling mentor Johan Bruyneel.

Armstrong has suggested he might enter the Paris-Nice classic stage race in March, and could compete in South Africa before taking part in the Giro d'Italia in May. He will attempt to win the Tour de France an eighth time in July.