Away from the spotlight of the Tour de France and back in Spain, his home country, Alberto Contador took the chance on Monday to say what he really felt about his Astana team mate Lance Armstrong. “My relationship with Lance is zero,” Contador said at a news conference, one day after winning his second Tour. “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.”

Contador’s comments came after three weeks of near silence about his rivalry with Armstrong, a tense relationship that Contador played down throughout the race, which ended Sunday in Paris. At the Tour, Contador and Armstrong, a seven-time Tour winner, fought to be the leader of Astana, a team based in Kazakhstan. Both riders will be departing the team at the end of this season.

With two Tour champions on the same team, many wondered how their relationship would play out, particularly when each of them wanted to win the Tour again. Their interaction provided daily drama at the Tour.

Separate ways

In the end, Contador said, it is good that he and Armstrong are going their separate ways. “On this Tour, the days in the hotel were harder than those on the road,” Contador said. “The situation was tense and delicate because the relationship between myself and Lance extended to the rest of the staff.”

On Monday night, Armstrong responded to Contador’s comments on his Twitter page, saying: “Hey pistolero, there is no ‘I’ in ‘team’. What did I say in March? Lots to learn. Restated.”

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