Lance Armstrong has said he’d be open and accommodating to everyone in his comeback in professional cycling, and apparently he meant it.

Three-time Tour de France champ and Armstrong antagonist Greg LeMond attended Armsrtrong’s press conference at InterBike, and Armstrong noted his presence and gave him the first question.

According to cyclingnews.com, LeMond quizzed Armstrong about the anti-doping testing that expert Don Catlin, formerly head of the UCLA anti-doping lab, would do on Armstrong. Here’s an outtake from the cyclingnews.com story.

LeMond pressed Armstrong and Catlin about the type of testing they had planned. He levied some reasonable critiques, essentially calling into question the proposed testing, arguing that it is not comprehensible enough, such as using T/E ratios and tests for specific EPO drugs as opposed to measuring physiological variables such as power output changes over time. LeMond inferred that a spike in power output would better indicate the use of something compared to trying to test for particular substances.

“That is not my area,” responded Catlin. “He will be subject to testing by everyone under the sun. I think that will be all sorted out.”

Catlin said that the actual program is still taking shape. “[Lance] has agreed to a couple of a few very fundamental points. One is his data, like T/E ratio and all that kind of stuff that a doping control is allowed to do will be on the web, so you can see it. ‘Ah, your T/E ration changed today, what happened?’ Like to see if he is taking EPO - all the actors to make it a very public campaign.”

Lots of other good stuff in the cyclingnews.com story: Armstrong will ride at the Tour of California next year, after officially starting his comeback at the Tour Down Under; Armstrong reportedly is buying into SRAM, the American component brand that is on Trek bikes; the UCI and the grand tours apparently have kissed and made up and we’ll have peace between the tour organizers and the governing body next year (we hope).

Still, to me, the highlight was LeMond and Armstrong facing off. What theatre! Bully for LeMond for being there in the front row to quiz Armstrong, and bully for Armstrong for taking the question (tho he apparently dismissed some followups).

In some ways, these two cats are much alike — bodacious and strong-willed. No wonder they butt heads. And no wonder they won 10 Tours between them.

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