Paris Match

A month ago, if you had asked me about Floyd Landis, I couldn't have told you word one about him. OK, maybe not exactly a month ago, since the Washington Post had an article about him just as the tour began, giving his unusual background.

At the beginning of the day Wednesday, it seemed certain that Landis would merely have to have a few good rides to secure the win this year at the tour. At the end of the day, having been beaten by exhaustion, and falling back some eight minutes behind leader Oscar Pereiro, Landis seemed done. There were only four stages left, only only one mountain stage to reasonably stage a comeback.

At the end of the day Thursday, Landis had taken the bold move to break away early, and try to not only win the stage outright, but to demolish the field. Normally, this is a risky maneuver. When one rider decides to go out by himself, he has no protection. Team members block the wind so the leader can conserve energy.

It's often the case that the breakaway team is chased down and reined in by another group to maintain control of their pace.

At one point, Landis was 9 minutes aheard of everyone, but he too had to pace himself, because he couldn't afford to collapse on this day, and let the others catch up. That 9 minute lead shrunk to nearly a 6 minute lead, but that was enough to reclaim all but 30 seconds from the leader, and put the Tour within sight.

Friday, by contrast, was seen as a day of rest. On a mostly flat stage, the leaders decided to stay with the peloton, the large group of riders that use each other as protection. This meant Saturday was going to mostly decide the race. Saturday was a time trial, that would run some 40 miles. Landis's skill as a time trial expert was on par with Armstrong, and Pereiro himself acknowledged, even before the stage began, that he was not going to be able to win the Tour, though he would give his best effort. Pereiro wasn't in the same class as Landis.

I was hoping to watch some of the time trials on television today as I was getting some routing maintenance done.

Alas, dealers are like dentists. They tell you one price, but before long, they find problems, suggest other repairs, and so forth. In other words, it's always something, and if they can't charge you for a few hundred bucks, they're not happy. They are clearly not in it for your benefit.

It would be nice if the government would work with a few citizens, and penalize car repair companies for excessive charging. Presumably, a few fines would put the companies in order.

What should have taken two hours to complete, took nearly five hours. Landis finishes stages faster than that.

In the middle of this never-ending maintenance, I was desperately trying to find a place that was open that had television. The most common places open at 10 AM are bagel places and doughnut places. Breakfast places don't seem to indulge in oversized plasma displays.

Somehow, though, I stumbled on a place, nearly empty, that had two huge screen TVs, and they obliged by changing the channel to OLN, where I waited for about half an hour to see if Landis would win the time trial.

Not that he needed to win. He just needed to finish sufficiently ahead of Pereiro to ensure a win on Sunday. If he could stretch his thirty second deficit to, say, a two minute lead, that would give him enough cushion. Though, to be honest, a minute lead would be enough.

Honchar, the Ukrainian on Team T-Mobile, won in 1 hour, 7 minutes, 45 seconds. Landis came in third, at 1 hour, 8 minutes, 56 seconds. However, Honchar was further behind than Landis overall, so although he made up time, Landis had the lead. Pereiro himself came in fourth, but lost a minute and a half to Landis, meaning, he now trails by a minute.

After watching this, and being informed by the staff that it would still be at least one hour if not more before it was finished (funny, how they fail to keep me informed of these things, saying "it's almost ready" and forcing me to stay another two hours), I decided to spend some more time at the Barnes and Noble across the street, the only benefit from that was reading about the tour in a magazine fittingly called Bicycling.

This magazine has to be one of the most irreverent magazines out there. Surely, the ho-hum bland-as-anything editorial staff at Tennis would censor the articles before they ever saw the light of day.

The key interview was between pals Floyd Landis and David Zabriskie, both world class bicyclists, but also close friends. Landis has been dubbed the anti-Lance. He doesn't follow any special diets. He's as fond of In-and-Out burgers as anything.

The interview, effectively, was between the two of them. This is not unusual for the oddball Zabriskie, who often likes to conduct quick interviews in the middle of biking in the peloton. He did stop some of that because he wanted to focus on biking rather than find an Internet connection.

Landis grew up in Mennonite country in Pennsylvania. The Amish and Mennonite are rather related. Indeed, the Amish are an offshoot of Mennonitism or whatever it's called. Mennonites tend to preach modesty, lack of pride, and pacifism, which is not so different from the Amish. They aren't nearly as technologically restrictive as the Amish, however.

Landis rebelled against his upbringing. He was a fanatic bicyclist, who wanted to make his living racing mountain bikes. The mountain biking community is nearly disjoint from the road racing community, so much so, that Landis barely knew about the Tour when he decided to switch from mountain biking to road biking.

Of course, that was true of most people in the U.S. before Lance Armstrong put road biking on the map. True, Greg Lemond won the tour three times, but he never had the kind of grassroots effect that Lance did, and most people didn't really pay attention until Lance was heading to his fourth win. By his fifth win, people began to pay attention, and networks like OLN decided to broadcast the tour so Americans could watch.

It's pretty fun to watch the tour as they have almost no restrictions to access. Mini-european cars dart mere meters behind bicyclists. You could imagine a slip-up would equate to road kill, but I suppose the cars aren't travelling so fast. Fans line the road, often darting in, then darting out at the last moment as bicyclists pass by. It's surprising there aren't more accidents (there are always some). I know, if it were in the U.S., they'd want to put people very far away.

Both Landis and Zabriskie had unusual backgrounds. Landis rebelled and headed to California to train. Once he discovered he was actually much better suited to bike riding, he embarked on a multi-year training regiment to get him to where he is. Armstrong was suitably impressed by Landis that he had him with his group for three years. Last year, Landis decided to ride with Phonak, a Swiss hearing aid company.

His buddy Zabriskie grew up non-Mormon in Salt Lake City. He claimed that this put you in one of two groups. Either you hang out with the Mormons, or you hang out with the bad element. When he had a falling out with his Mormon friends, he sought solace in biking.

Zabriskie actually won the first time trial last year, edging out Armstrong, showing his strength in time trials. He's beaten Landis several times in time trials this year. He's had some bad luck due to injury, but this year, he did well enough in the time trial to place sixth in today's event.

In this interview, Landis makes excellent observations about what it takes to be a good cyclist in the Tour. He claims one can be strong and stupid, in which case, you'd better have some smart people around you to help out, or you can be weak and smart, in which case you can't really bike, or strong and smart, but there are few of those, or weak and stupid, in which case, don't bike, there's nothing for you.

Landis says he's strong and reasonably smart. He divides up duties of being manager between himself and John Lelangue, from Belgium, who has not had much international experience. He says that's a good balance because he can offer more input into what goes on.

While Landis is confident in his skills, Zabriskie was the one lavishing praise on Landis's chances. And you have to realize this interview was months before the start of the tour, before Basso and Ullrich were knocked out. Landis was rather surprised at the effusive praise, and modestly said he hoped to do well.

The language would occasionally get a little coarse, and that's the kind of thing you don't normally read in a magazine. Certainly, even Sports Illustrated would avoid such talk.

The two were called "dumb and dumber" by Lance Armstrong, who they raced with, because of their attitude. Armstrong was much more businesslike in his approach and expected his team to take a similar approach.

Indeed, on Thursday's race, Landis wanted to establish a lead to show his team that he was worthy of leadership (and he did so in spades), an odd remark showing some friction on the team.

Landis had managed to keep secret his hip ailment until the start of the tour when the Times broke the story, and ever since, people have marvelled how a man with a bad hip can win.

While watching the odd "rear view" cam shot of riders racing on roads, it was interesting to note how Landis's body hardly moved. It would undulate back and forth ever so slightly as his feet pedalled. He seemed very steamlined, and very focused.

While Armstrong was a bit aloof, the French probably like Landis better. He's perhaps more of a hick than Armstrong, and is rather modest about many things, except the confidence he has in his own skills.

There's still one stage left. If everyone is nice, Landis should merely bike in for a victory. However, Pereiro may want to challenge for the lead, or there may be a fall. It's one of those things that riders are very wary of, even at the end of a race. If Landis wins, it will be the best story of nobody to somebody in a long time.

Whether his folks will appreciate this is uncertain. It may rail against what the believe in. But he'll win other fans along the way.