Sydney - Seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong ended more than three years of retirement Sunday in a 51-kilometre race around the streets of the Australian south-coast city of Adelaide.

More than 100,000 spectators lined the barriers for the twilight 30-lap stand-alone criterion that serves as a curtain raiser for the start Tuesday of the six-day Tour Down Under.

The criterion will reacquaint Armstrong with the demands of staying upright in a bunch of 133 riders going helter-skelter round narrow streets.

"It wouldn't be my first choice," the 37-year-old Texan said of the mad-dash criterion. "The main thing is to stay out of trouble, stay up front and avoid the drama."

Sleepy Adelaide is ablaze with excitement at the rebirth of a sporting legend who won the first of his Tour de France victories in 1999 after surviving well-advanced testicular cancer that doctors expected would ravage his body and probably kill him.

There's not a hotel room left vacant, hardly a billboard without a likeness of his chiselled features and, seemingly, not a radio presenter who isn't embarrassed at comparing Armstrong's reprise with the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

"He did a lot of things, but I don't know that He rode," Armstrong quipped at his final press conference when a reporter reiterated the comparison.

Armstrong is the lead rider for Astana, one of 19 seven-man teams lining up for the 11th Tour Down Under and its first edition with the coveted ProTour status.

It's the only event outside Europe accorded a place in the ProTour calendar. Unusual for a ProTour event is that the six stages begin and end within a 2-hour drive of Adelaide.

No stage is longer than 150 kilometres, and a bunch sprint usually decides the stage winner. Half the overall winners have been Australians - and a local is tipped to win again this time.

Armstrong is using the Adelaide event as a tune-up for the more arduous Tour of California next month. He has been impressive on training rides and has declared himself only a little short of peak condition.

"I still go in with modest expectations - mixed with nerves and excitement," Armstrong said of the stage race. "No major goals - other than to make it through and get back to the rhythm of racing."

Team Columbia's Andre Griepel won the Tour Down Under last year but team manager Alan Peiper said the locals, rather than his burly German sprinter, were favourites this year over the 802-kilometre course.

Peiper said Armstrong couldn't rest on his laurels once the real racing started on Tuesday.

"There'll be massive respect for what he's done as a cyclist and what he stands for as a human being," he said. "But they all know he's human as well. May be some of the young guys might be a bit awe- struck, but they're there with Lance to race."

Armstrong, who has had more than a dozen doping tests since September when he announced his plan to return to racing and try for an eighth Tour de France win in July, said he was not worried by the prospect of tarnishing his legacy through a failed comeback.

"They bring up all the names - (boxer Muhamed) Ali, (basketballer Michael) Jordan - everybody who's ever tried to come back - and legacy is the first thing they ever talk about," Armstrong told reporters. "I'm willing to take that risk. From a sporting perspective, yes."

Armstrong said it was a joy to be back in the saddle - and back in the peleton.

"I'm relaxed because I'm having fun," he said. "I will be totally honest with you, I wake up every day and I am doing this for free. I can't say 2004, 2005 was like that. I think it became a job then and I've recaptured that passion. I can't say it any simpler than I'm just having a hell of a good time." dpa