Thursday, July 20, 2006

FLOYD LANDIS IS A GOD!


I went on vacation and missed two stages of the Tour de France on travel days. The first one put my boy Floyd Landis in the yellow jersey for the first time in his life. The second one, which was yesterday, saw Landis figuratively crash and burn in the mountains, falling from number one in the G.C. to 11th and losing a huge amount of time - about 10 minutes - to drop over 8 minutes in the chase.

So he even comes out after that stage in the evening and talks to reporters. He says he had a really bad day. Everybody thinks he bonked but he says that wasn't it - but apparently people deny it when they do. He says he doesn't expect to win the race any more, but that he's going to continue and keep fighting.

The last mountain stage is today. A large breakaway group goes out at the beginning - 14 riders, no GC contenders. About an hour in, Phonak ups the pace at the front of the peloton, and then maybe 40 minutes later, Landis breaks away. Comes up to the breakaway group and immediately passes them. From this point in the race he never drafts again, because even when he rides with another guy for a few miles, he won't pull him. Landis rides the rest of the race - and I think it was like 100K - as a 1-man breakaway. Water bottle in hand until the last climb, mind you, and taking on food every few minutes from his team car. He made up his 8-minute gap and with his time bonuses is only 30 seconds out of the lead now. Damn.

Oh, it was his first stage win too, but that's like getting the Vezina trophy along with the Stanley Cup. Now he says he'll have to win another one on Saturday (the last stage, an individual time trial) to get the rest of his lead back.

His personal coach says he trains on rides like this, long solo rides. Also it's more likely a lone rider can have success in a mountain stage because drafting doesn't figure in very much when everyone's climbing. But it's still amazing.

Of course you all must have heard that he's got practically no bone left in his right hip because of a complication after he broke it in 2003. He's taking time off after the Tour de France to have hip replacement surgery! I suppose that might have figured in to this move - he has nothing to save for next year because he doesn't know if he can race again after the operation, nobody ever has. Then again, nobody ever came back from super-metastatic cancer before Armstrong.

Anyway, it was a pretty exciting day.

Hope he wouldn't mind my saying that god thing - he was raised Mennonite (he got special permission from his spriritual leader to wear lycra when he started getting serious about racing mountain bikes). I meant one of those other gods, you know.

Oh yeah, George Hincapie is still my boy too. It's not exclusive, okay?

Handy links
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycling_terminology
- http://www.olntv.com/tdf/