Armstrong persuaded to ride Tour de France route 24 hours ahead of race for cancer charity

A fellow cancer survivor has persuaded disgraced former American cyclist Lance Armstrong to ride the Tour de France route 24 hours prior to the peloton this year.

Former English Premier League footballer Geoff Thomas, who captained Crystal Palace in the early 1990s, said initially that he thought the idea would be too controversial, but later changed his mind and following an initial phone conversation he went to America to convince the confessed drugs cheat to come and help him raise money for the Cure Leukaemia charity.

Initially Armstrong had reservations about making an appearance, but Thomas, a cycling fan, had swayed him and they hope to ride each of the 2015 Tour stages a day before the professional cyclists take them on, Stuff.co.nz reported.

Thomas said that Armstrong's admission that he'd used performance enhancing drugs had disappointed him and he'd been among the many cycling fans who felt conned, but fighting cancer was outside that realm.

Thomas admitted that doping is wrong, but added that in the context of the illness, and the connection he had as someone who had also survived cancer, the sport was kind of irrelevant. He insisted that all that ever really mattered to him was Armstrong's attitude towards the disease; the desire to fight it and the desire to make a difference when he got better.

The former footballer claimed that Armstrong has made his mistakes and now he's paying the price, but he insisted that none of that actually concerns him. He said that this isn't about cycling or doping or the UCI, adding that this is about cancer and saving lives.