Floyd Landis paced himself perfectly in the final major rendezvous of the 2006 Tour de France. He didn’t waiver from his plan at the start of the day and wasn’t tempted to try and catch the dominant Serhiy Honchar who won his second successive Tour de France time trial. Floyd knew that the most important thing was to finish over half a minute ahead of Oscar Pereiro; he did just that and tomorrow he’ll arrive in Paris as the fourth American winner.
This si one of those feel good stories. The Europeans where expected to win with the top bikers being from Spain, France and Germany. And then a drugging scandle later, and we are now hearing about the miracle comeback from Landis. It’s the amazing comeback a couple days ago from Landis… going from collapse to catching up and bypassing everyone on the mountains. Again the Americans are winning this race.
With yellow on his back, Landis has struck gold
In the first of many bizarre twists to this changing-of-the-guard — if not the flag — Tour de France, Floyd Landis arrived late to start in Strasbourg three weeks ago. However, 2,268 miles later, it appears he’ll finish on time.
Wearing the famous yellow shirt, too. Although the mines in the area are long abandoned, Landis found gold.
“That’s what I came for,” the plain-spoken Pennsylvanian said. “I did what I needed to do.”
Landis failed to catch Serhiy Gontchar again — in the second individual time trial — and Andreas Klöden also posted a quicker time, but his was an irrelevant failure.
Landis still claimed one of the most improbable Tour victories since Henri Desgrange came up with the idea of staging a bike race around France way back in 1903.
Support crew dwindles
Improbable? Not long before the Tour started, Landis’ Phonak team took the eyebrow-raising step of dropping two of his would-be Tour helpers because their names had been linked to a Spanish drug investigation — the same one that took Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich out the race the day before it began, rocketing Landis up to the top of the list of favorites.Improbable? He lost several seconds before he ever got started because of his tardy departure from the Prologue gate on July 1. A mechanic noticed that one of his tires had a slice in it. A blowout on the road could have been catastrophic, so they changed the wheel.
Improbable? Coming out of the Pyrenees, Phonak let Oscar Pereiro pick up 8:18 on Wednesday on Landis, and Pereiro didn’t go away until Saturday.
Improbable? On the first rest day, Landis announced he will be having hip-replacement surgery soon to ease the chronic pain caused by a degenerative condition in the joint. The problem started with a crash in early 2003, six months before Landis completed his first Tour as an eager water carrier for Lance Armstrong.
Improbable? Wearing the yellow jersey he had only just reclaimed on the 21 hairpin turns up to L’Alpe-d’Huez, Landis suffered a monumental meltdown on the second of three brutal stages in the high Alps on Wednesday. He handed back the lead for a second time and falling more than eight minutes behind.
Improbable? The next afternoon, he won what he called “a four-hour time trial,” attacking relentlessly, almost blindly, over five climbs to defy logic and undo most of the damage.
From feast to famine, literally. Landis now admits he didn’t nourish himself properly on that near-Armageddon afternoon — and back to feast again, leaving him only 95 uncontested, strictly ceremonial miles from cycling’s grandest stage, the podium on the Champs Elysées in Paris this afternoon.
There, he’ll keep the American era, if not the Armstrong era, going.
Granted, Landis, 30, didn’t have to defeat cancer to raise his arms in triumph on the final Sunday, but his story isn’t too shabby, either. And while the field was a weakened one, missing the top five finishers from a year ago, he is about to whip the 175 men who started with him.
“I feel lucky today,” he said. “The race is three weeks long, and a lot of guys who wanted to win put in as much work as I did. On the right days we had the right luck.”
U.S. era continues
Speaking to the press on Tuesday, Armstrong said Landis had all the right stuff to keep the royal line alive — U.S. cyclists have won 11 of the last 21 Tours, going back to Greg LeMond’s breakthrough in 1986 — but he had no idea the Pennsylvanian was going to make such a dramatic detour south less than 24 hours later.Nor, to be sure, did Landis.
“That was not in any way part of my plan,” he said. “All I felt after that stage was humiliation and depression.”
As for the time trial of 35 miles from Le Creusot, Landis praised his ex-Phonak teammate Pereiro for an “exceptional” ride on a sweltering afternoon.
The Spaniard twice snatched the yellow jersey from Landis and still held a 30-second lead Saturday.
What followed might have been Pereiro’s best effort in the race against the clock — but he’s clearly no specialist in the discipline. Landis left him 59 seconds behind.
Sastre falls to fourth
Landis also shucked off CSC’s Carlos Sastre, who was 12 seconds behind Pereiro at the outset. Another mediocre time-trialer, Sastre lost his spot on today’s podium, tumbling to fourth place while dropping 89 seconds to Landis.”I felt I was the favorite,” Landis said. “But when the yellow jersey is on the line, people get inspired. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I was afraid that four-hour time trial a few days ago might have taken some energy out of me. Fortunately, I woke up feeling OK.”
When Landis took his morning reconnaissance lap with his two main sidekicks, coach Robbie Ventura and training guru Allen Lim, he was apparently much more relaxed than they were. Noted Ventura: “Floyd was singing Kid Rock. When he sings Kid Rock, that’s always a good sign.”
“Floyd feels great,” Lim said outside the team bus. “He’s ready to rip one.”
As it turned out, he didn’t. Gontchar finished 71 seconds faster and Klöden 31.
But they didn’t matter.
By then, the hard part was over.
Tags: Cycling, Interesting, Sports
Nice stuff…
I really like this post!…