Absolutely fantastic news for cycling: Lance Armstrong will ride in 2009 for Team Astana. He's riding to raise awareness.

“If cancer got a whole new name tomorrow and a whole new set of fears associated with it and it had the toll that it does, we would act. Look at all those other things they act upon. Forget war and terror. Look at sars. Remember the bird flu? Remember all that stuff? aids, people freaked. Those were new, scary issues that all of a sudden were going to come jump into your house and ruin your life. “Obviously,” he says, emphatically, “we need health-care reform in the United States. It’s not a fair system. A third of the society doesn’t have access to decent care. It’s not right.” He then goes on to outline the emergency measures America needs to put into place, sounding positively Ruschaean: “Prevention. Screening. Detection. Survivorship.” But his huge beef—besides governmental lethargy and those pesky tabloids—is tobacco. According to the American Cancer Society, smoking accounts for at least 30 percent of all cancer deaths. “It’s the only product you can buy, and if you follow the instructions, it will kill you,” says Armstrong. “Twenty-four states and D.C. are now smokefree—we’re aiming for all 50.” Somehow, Armstrong has managed to work into his schedule enough downtime to answer thousands of letters from kids with cancer and leukemia, in a personal, non-form-letter way. “These days I’ve been doing these video messages,” Armstrong told me. “I’ll sit there with a little camera and record a minute-long video and just give a shout-out to them and e-mail it. They love it. They keep it forever, show it to their family and friends.”