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Floyd Landis

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Template:Road bicycle racer infoboxFloyd Landis (born October 14 1975) is an American professional road bicycle racer and the 2006 champion of the Tour de France.

A time trial specialist, as well as a strong climber, Landis turned pro in 1999 with the Mercury squad. He joined Lance Armstrong's US Postal Service team in 2002, and moved to the Phonak Hearing Systems team in 2005.

Biography

Floyd Landis was raised in a conservative Mennonite community in rural Farmersville, Pennsylvania in Lancaster County. Unlike the more familiar Old Order Amish, conservative Mennonites do employ some modern technology, such as automobiles, but avoid television, movies, and other elements of "modern" culture. Young Floyd thus grew up somewhat, but not totally, isolated from modern American culture; he did own a bike.

Floyd used his first bike to ride out fishing with friends, but quickly learned to enjoy riding for its own sake. Floyd became determined to ride in a local race and showed up wearing sweatpants because his religion forbade wearing shorts; he won anyway. More wins followed as Floyd continued to enjoy the sport of cycling. Disturbed at what he considered a "useless" endeavor such as racing bikes, Floyd's father tried to discourage Floyd from riding by giving him extra chores. This left Floyd unable to train during the day, so he often went out to train at night—sometimes at 1 or 2 a.m.—in the freezing cold. Floyd's father, unable to appreciate his son's passion for cycling, often followed Floyd at a distance to make sure he wasn't getting into trouble. Today, Landis' father has become a hearty supporter of his son and regards himself as one of his biggest fans.[citation needed]

Landis won the first mountain bike race he entered and in 1993 was crowned junior national champion. He told friends he would win the Tour de France one day. Landis made his decision at age 20, moving to Southern California to train full time. He soon established a reputation for maverick toughness—once finishing a race riding on only his rims. However, all was not well, so he spent more and more hours cycling in frustration, which affected his performances even more. Landis had the training regimen of a road cyclist and yet was part of the mountain biking circuit. In 1999, he switched to road cycling and performed so well that Lance Armstrong recruited him to U.S. Postal; such were his considerable talents that Armstrong chose him to ride alongside him in three Tour de France wins. In 2004, Landis left US Postal because of a difference of opinions in racing styles with team leader, Lance Armstrong. The latter still part owns the Discovery Channel team, formerly known as US Postal and US Postal presented by Berry Floor.

Landis is married to Amber Basile, and they have a daughter, Ryan. They live in Murrieta, California, north of San Diego.

2005

In the 2005 Tour de France, Landis finished ninth overall in the General Classification, his highest finish at that time in the Tour.

2006

Floyd Landis en route to victory in 2006 Tour of California.

Landis started the 2006 season very strongly, with overall wins first in the Amgen Tour of California, and then in the prestigious Paris-Nice, both week-long stage races. Winning Paris-Nice gave Landis 52 points in the UCI ProTour individual competition, starting him off in first place for 2006. Landis continued with his display of strength with another overall win in the Ford Tour de Georgia April 18 to 23, where he not only won the time trial, but did not lose any time to anyone on the most difficult climbing stage, Brasstown Bald, (where Tom Danielson beat him across the uphill finish line, but with the same time).

2006 Tour de France

Main article: 2006 Tour de France

With Lance Armstrong's retirement in 2005, the eyes of American cycling turned to Landis to become the next great American cyclist at the Tour de France. OLN, which televised the 2006 Tour de France in the United States, built much of its marketing campaign around Landis, proclaiming him "Cycling's Tough Guy."

The 2006 Tour de France had an unusual start, because of the Operación Puerto doping case. Landis' Phonak team was forced to withdraw two of his teammates, Santiago Botero and José Enrique Gutierrez, due to doping allegations. Many top racers from other teams also were absent from the 2006 Tour due to the doping scandal, including Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich, who finished second and third respectively in the 2005 race.

Landis had an inauspicious start. When it was his turn to leave the start house of the prologue, he was not even there, having suffered a cut tire on his rear disc wheel, the design of which makes it difficult to change. He rushed to the start house and started about 6 or 7 seconds later. He finished ninth, just 9 seconds behind winner Thor Hushovd. Landis encountered further technical difficulties following the Stage 7, 52 kilometre individual time trial to Rennes: a handlebar malfunction forced him to switch bikes midway through the race. Nevertheless, Landis managed to finish second, one minute behind T-Mobile's Serhiy Honchar of Ukraine, while also gaining an important time advantage over other top contenders for the overall victory in this year's Tour as it headed into the first mountain stages. He capitalized on this in the second mountain stage, Stage 11, taking third and taking the overall lead.

He retained the yellow jersey in Stage 12, but in Stage 13, he and his team made a tactical decision to not chase down a breakaway allowing another rider, Óscar Pereiro, to take the overall lead (by 89 seconds), thus passing on at least some of the responsibility to control the race to another team, and allowing him and his teammates to conserve some energy. When questioned about the tactic, Landis explained that it really wasn't a risk, since if he couldn't win the overall leader's yellow jersey back in the upcoming mountain and time trial stages, then he would have lost it anyway. The wisdom of the tactic was shown in Stages 13 and 14, when indeed Pereiro's team did do much of the work, and in Stage 15 when on the slopes of the legendary l'Alpe d'Huez Landis outrode Pereiro by almost two minutes, regaining the jersey and a 10-second overall lead in the process.

His lead—and seemingly his Tour—disappeared the next day, as Landis lost energy while climbing to La Toussuire in the final kilometres of Stage 16. He lost ten minutes and fell from first to eleventh place in the general classification, ending up eight minutes behind the overall leader. This great loss appeared to definitively put an end to Landis's 2006 Tour de France hopes.

But on the following day's Stage 17, Landis stunned the cycling world with a 120 km solo breakaway attack that has been called "one of the most epic days of cycling ever seen."[1] At the point where he surged ahead, he was climbing a 10% grade at 36 km/h (approximately 22 mph), a speed none could match. At one point on the course, he was 9'04" clear of maillot jaune-wearing Pereiro. He won the stage by nearly six minutes over Team CSC's Carlos Sastre and took more than seven minutes out of Pereiro's lead. Landis sat in third place overall, 18 seconds behind Sastre and just 30 seconds back from the time of the Tour leader.

In Stage 19, a 57 km individual time trial, Landis finished third, 1'29" ahead of Pereiro and 3'31" ahead of Sastre to reclaim the yellow jersey. Landis retained the lead through Stage 20, the "procession" into Paris, to win the 2006 Tour de France by 57 seconds. His victory will long be remembered for one of the greatest comeback rides in the history of cycling. It was on stage 17, when Landis made the break, that many felt the Tour was won.

Hip ailment

The powerful performance of Landis up to Stage 16 of the Tour de France and his comeback in Stage 17 are all the more remarkable given that he is afflicted with a hip ailment, osteonecrosis, which was revealed in an article in The New York Times during the 2006 Tour de France.[2] This deterioriation of the ball of his right hip was caused by the cutting off of the blood supply to the ball when scar tissue began to close off blood vessels after a femoral neck fracture sustained in a bicycle crash during a training ride near his Southern California home in October 2002. Landis kept the ailment secret from his teammates, rivals, and the media until an announcement made while the 2006 Tour was underway.

Landis rode the the 2006 Tour with the constant pain of the injury, which he described thus: "It's bad, it's grinding, it's bone rubbing on bone. Sometimes it's a sharp pain. When I pedal and walk, it comes and goes, but mostly it's an ache, like an arthritis pain. It aches down my leg into my knee. The morning is the best time, it doesn't hurt too much. But when I walk it hurts, when I ride it hurts. Most of the time it doesn't keep me awake, but there are nights that it does."."[3]

During the Tour, Landis was medically approved to take cortisone for this injury, a medication otherwise prohibited in professional cycling for its known potential for abuse.

Having won the Tour, Landis plans to undergo hip replacement surgery. It is unclear whether he will be able to compete at a professional level following rehabilitation; few pro athletes have successfully resumed careers after joint replacement (see Bo Jackson).

Major results

2006 - Phonak Hearing Systems
2005 - Phonak Hearing Systems
  • 3rd overall and Stage 3 win – Tour de Georgia
  • 9th overall – Tour de France
  • 11th overall – Dauphiné Libéré
    • 4th, Prologue and Stage 3 – Dauphiné Libéré
    • 5th, Stage 4 – Dauphiné Libéré
    • 12th, Stage 6 – Dauphiné Libéré
2004 - U.S. Postal Service
2003 - U.S. Postal Service
2002 - U.S. Postal Service
2001 - Mercury Pro Cycling Team
2000 - Mercury Pro Cycling Team
1999 - Mercury Pro Cycling Team

References

  1. ^ "Reactions to Landis's launch", VeloNews, July 20, 2006.
  2. ^ "What He's Been Pedaling", The New York Times, July 16, 2006.
  3. ^ "Landis's Hip Will Need Surgery After Bid for Tour", The New York Times, July 10, 2006.
Preceded by Winner of the Tour de France
2006 		Succeeded by
incumbent
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