Jul
21
A day after spectacularly losing the leadership of the race and dropping almost 7 minutes behind the race leaders, Floyd Landis has ridden fast to jump back into contention, in the final mountain stage of the tour.
The American, whose legs almost literally turning to Jell-O on the slopes of an Alp called La Toussuire, had been leading the race before yesterday before his spectacular collapse left him eight minutes eight seconds behind race leader Oscar Pereiro.
Not that today’s stage was any easy pushover. The Tour’s final mountain stage, over five Alpine passes, including the behemoth Col de Joux Plane, ending with a screaming descent into Morzine.
Landis attacked on the first climb, in what would be considered by most as an absurd plan at best, given the physical toll this stage would take. Most riders would have stayed with the main pack and conserve energy and attack later. Not Landis. From the first climb, the Pennsylvanian pushed his team to the front of the main pack, chasing down a small bunch of breakaway riders out front, and started to execute the plan.
Halfway up the first climb, Landis accelerated even faster, setting such a difficult that no one followed. Other riders were anticipating that he would burn out eventually over the next few punishing climbs.
Landis eventually caught up with the group of eleven breakaway riders who’d earlier escaped. Upon overtaking them, he commenced negotiations. Was anyone interested in forming an alliance?
No one took his offer. “Nobody wanted to work with me,” he later recalled. Alone, Landis set off at even greater speed, leaving them in his wake. Patrik Sinkewitz of T-Mobile, hung about in Landis’s slipstream for 70km.
Until the ascent of the Col de Joux-Plane, when Sinkewitz could hold on no longer. Landis had by this time opened up such a massive nine minutes and four seconds lead on the pack.
Landis eventually crossed the line in Morzine 5:42 ahead of Carlos Sastre of CSC. In the Classement General, Landis lies 18 seconds behind Sastre and 30 seconds behind race leader Oscar Pereiro.
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