Contador rips Armstrong
This updated story corrects an earlier mistranslation of a key quote. - Editor
Tour de France winner Alberto Contador on Monday launched a stinging attack on teammate Lance Armstrong, saying relations between the two were tense throughout the race.
"My relationship with Lance is zero. He is a great champion and has done a great Tour, but on a personal level I have never had a great admiration for him and I never will," the Spaniard told a news conference in Madrid.
Contador won the Tour on Sunday with a comfortable lead over his rivals. His Astana teammate Armstrong, a seven-time Tour de France champion who came out of retirement for the 2009 event, finished third.
"It was a delicate situation, tense, the two riders who had most weight on the team did not have an easy relationship and that puts the rest of the technical staff and the riders in an uncomfortable position," said the 26-year-old Contador, who also won the Tour in 2007.
But he added, "We knew that if kept cool heads, there would be no big problem."
The Spaniard also described as an "enormous blunder" the playing of the Danish national anthem when he stepped up to the podium on the Champs-Élysées on Sunday.
Contador was to be feted later Monday in his native town of Pinto near Madrid.
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