Despite the apparent best efforts of fellow American riders Lance Armstrong and Levi Leipheimer, Bend’s Chris Horner will not race in the Tour de France next month.

Horner was left off the Astana team’s nine-man Tour squad, which was announced late Wednesday.

Horner, 37, had spent the last 10 days in Aspen, Colo., training for the Tour with Armstrong and Leipheimer, his friends and teammates.

“Lance and Levi fought for me to get on the team hard,” said Horner, reached by phone Thursday in Salt Lake City on his way home to Bend from Aspen. “They fought as hard as they could, and (Astana team director) Johan Bruyneel had his hands tied with politics. But they did everything they could to get me on the team.”

Seven-time champion Armstrong will return to the Tour de France in the unfamiliar role of support rider after Astana chose 2007 winner Alberto Contador as its leader for the race, which starts July 4. That choice also possibly led to Horner being left off the team, the Bend cyclist explained.

“Certainly Contador wanted certain riders on the team, for sure,” Horner said. “And I wasn’t one of them.”

Horner said he has become friends with Armstrong over the last few months, but that his relationship with Contador — a Spaniard who speaks little English — is “just professional.”

On his Twitter page Thursday, Armstrong wrote: “Horner is the man and we’ll miss him. Period.”

Horner has built a reputation with his climbing prowess, and with his ability to support lead riders on his team and guide them up mountains to overall victories by cutting their wind resistance and preventing breakaways by other riders.

He called being left off the Tour team “an emotional blow,” especially considering that he was coming off what he called some of the best racing of his career at the Giro d’Italia in May. Halfway through that race he was in 11th place in the overall standings, but he crashed on a downhill curve and broke his left leg.

He still managed to finish the stage, riding another 115 miles.

Horner returned to Bend and, he said Thursday, had fully recovered from the injury in Italy before traveling to Colorado to train at altitude with Armstrong and Leipheimer.

He said Thursday he considered himself the fifth-strongest cyclist on the Astana team.

“I was the last guy to do work for Levi at the Giro against the best in the world,” Horner said. “But it is what it is.”

Horner said that if his status with Astana does not change this year, he will likely look for another team next year.

“If it stays the way it is, I’ll look for a new job,” he said. “It’s two years in a row now, and I’m getting older. If I’m giving all the sacrifices I give for the sport, I want to be at the top level, at the Tour.”

Horner has raced in the Tour de France three times, 2005 through 2007. He was unable to race the Tour last year because Astana was banned from the race due to doping allegations.

Horner and Leipheimer ended up racing in Central Oregon’s Cascade Cycling Classic last July.

But don’t look for Horner to return to race the CCC in his hometown again this year. He said he is considering racing in the USA Cycling Pro Championships in late August, or perhaps in the Tour of Spain in late August and early September.

“I’m just going to go on vacation and hang out and enjoy July,” Horner said. “All I know is I was going to do the Tour … that was all I was focusing on.

“Now I’ll have to take a break and relax a little bit, and figure it out.”