Today’s NY Post quotes Lance Armstrong as insisting that he and Ashley Olsen are “just friends” and are not having a May-December romance. He says that despite reports that they were all over each other in public, those were group dates and we shouldn’t read anything into it:

“Ashley Olsen and I are strictly friends,” the world-renowned athlete told us. “We have hung out amongst other friends, and she strikes me as a nice, smart lady.”

[From The NY Post]

I love how he calls her a “lady,” as if he’s trying to attribute maturity beyond her years to the 21-year-old Ashley.

Lance might be telling the truth and he might be “just friends” with Ashley. It’s possible their all-too-public fling is over at this point. Tabloids were reporting that 36 year-old Lance’s friends were giving him grief for dating young Ashley, and this week’s OK! Magazine says that Ashley stood him up on Halloween.

The pair [Ashley and Lance] was spotted getting cozy in NYC, and on Oct. 29, Ashley, 21, and Lance, 36, enjoyed each other’s company at the Rose Bar inside the Gramercy Hotel. Though they rendezvoused again at the Waverly Inn days later, Ashley might be already scared off. They were supposed to meet up at hot spot The Box on Halloween, but, a source tells OK!, “Ashley didn’t show up and left Lance there waiting.”

[From OK! Magazine, print edition, November 19, 2007]

So now Lance is denying that he has anything going on with Ashley, and it’s probably true since it looks like he got dumped.