Le Champion avec Panache

Photograph Bruno Bade, Ingrid Hoffmann, Jean-Christophe Moreau
Wow. Incroyable! Amazing. Epic. After Wednesday's post, I thought I was going to have to eat my words. Floyd Landis lost over 11 minutes on Thursday in stage 16, in just the final 15 km. I thought his goose was cooked, his whole Tour done. One of the observations I was going to make Wednesday was that it looked like Landis was going to win the yellow jersey without winning a single stage, something that has happened before, but is unusual. Then in stage 17 he went out and in what I believe is the single best day riding in the Tour de France I have ever seen, and I've been watching since 1988, he beat every rider in the race for the stage 17 win. An historic stage, one that will be mentioned in the same sentence with the great ones.

Photograph BBC Sport
This was much more difficult than just a one-man breakaway, like Michael Rasmussen's in stage 16. It was more difficult not because the route was more tougher, stage 16 was the queen stage of the tour, the most difficult in this year's Tour and one of the most difficult in recent memory. It was more difficult because when he gained back most of the time he had lost, when the teams realized that he wasn't going to fade out in the end like he did the previous day, or like the lesser contenders did, there were four or five teams that wanted to chase him down, that needed to chase him down, and they couldn't. When he had gained back all the time and more, the pelaton still couldn't gain on him, the leaders couldn't gain on him, no one in the race could gain on him. And what is most amazing, the word had apparently leaked out that morning that he was going to attack early, and several riders told him not to go, that it would be committing race suicide, and he told them "you better drink some Coke, cause I'm going." Even when they knew he was going, they couldn't match him on that stage. That was his stamp on the race, the indisputable statement that he was the best rider in the bunch, and that no one was going to beat him. "A performance that will go down as one of the greatest in the history of the Tour de France" says Eurosport.

Photograph Bruno Bade, Ingrid Hoffmann, Jean-Christophe Moreau
The time trial was a formality, none of the other GC contenders expected to take back time on a long time trial from Floyd Landis. Not in the form he showed on Thursday. Not when the jersey was on the line. Not when he finally got angry. And for the eighth year in a row, an American will ride into Paris in the yellow jersey. How does that taste, Frenchies?

Read more in my series on the 2006 Tour de France:

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