By RACHEL COHEN
AP Sports Writer

NEW YORK (AP) _ Lance Armstrong won his first seven Tour de France titles with Johan Bruyneel as his team director. No way would he try for No. 8 without him.

Armstrong said Wednesday he will ride for Bruyneel’s Astana team as he seeks to win the 2009 Tour and will compete in the Tour Down Under in Adelaide, Australia, in January.

Kazakh Cycling Federation deputy chief Nikolai Proskurin told The Associated Press that Armstrong agreed to ride for the Kazakhstan-based team for free the first year and has signed up to take part in five races, including the Tour de France.

The smile in the AP Photo says it all.

The comeback offers the 37-year-old Armstrong an opportunity to try to prove that he is clean to skeptics who doubted that he could have achieved his feats without using performance-enhancing drugs. And anti-doping expert Don Catlin will run an independent program to test the rider.

“Ultimately you have one of the world’s leading experts to validate the performance,” Armstrong said.

Catlin oversaw testing for anabolic agents at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics and ran the country’s first anti-doping lab at UCLA for 25 years. He now runs Anti-Doping Research, a nonprofit organization he founded to research performance-enhancing drugs, uncover new drugs being used illegally and develop tests to detect them.

Armstrong also is starting an under-23 team that will include 18-year-old Taylor Phinney. Phinney, the son of 1984 medalists Connie Carpenter-Phinney and Davis Phinney, finished seventh at the Beijing Olympics in the individual pursuit.

What Armstrong’s Astana team will look like is unclear. Alberto Contador, the 2007 Tour de France champ, might already be looking for a new team.

“I think I’ve earned the right to be the leader of a team without having to fight for my place,” the Spanish rider said Tuesday in AS newspaper. “And with Armstrong some difficult situations could arise in which the team would put him first and that would hurt me.”

In a statement released by Astana on Wednesday, Contador was conciliatory, but didn’t commit to remaining on the team.

“Right now people are looking to make up controversy, but honestly I have no ill will towards Lance,” he said. “I identify with his passion for the sport. He has certainly been a role model for me and others throughout the world and I imagine having him on Team Astana will only motivate me further.”

Contador, signed with Astana through 2010, won the Spanish Vuelta on Sunday. Combined with his 2008 Giro d’Italia title, he became just the fifth cyclist to win the three highest-regarded Tours.

The 37-year-old Armstrong said he’d like to have Contador on the team.

Another Astana rider, American Levi Leipheimer, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Armstrong’s return was good for the sport and good for the team. Leipheimer said he believes he will be his best on the best team, even if he isn’t the leader.

“We have spent some time together, and we get along well,” Leipheimer said of his relationship with Armstrong, his former teammate with U.S. Postal Service.

There are no guarantees Astana will race the 2009 Tour. Race officials kept the team from competing this year because of a series of previous doping violations, and Contador was unable to defend his championship.

“I can’t force myself on the event,” Armstrong said. “It’s their event, and I respect that. (Tour director) Christian Prudhomme has promised that as long as we abide by the rules that everybody else abides by — which we will, plus some — that we’re welcome to come.”

Prudhomme didn’t immediately respond to messages requesting comment.

Earlier Wednesday, in a speech to an audience full of political and corporate leaders at the Clinton Global Initiative, Armstrong announced that his foundation was committing $8 million over five years to expand its fight against cancer from the U.S. to underserved parts of the world such as Africa and South America.

He said that his decision to come back was as much about spreading his message as it was his desire to compete.

There were no confident proclamations about winning an eighth Tour.

“I will try to be as prepared as possible,” he said. “I don’t know if that equals victory. In 2001, I could say that: ‘Yeah, I think I can win.’”