COMMENTARY

By Jim Litke

updated 6:19 p.m. ET July 23, 2006

Jim Litke

PARIS - The wind was at his back now, gently rustling the banners along the Champs-Elysées and urging Floyd Landis on with a certainty he hadn’t felt since he lit out of Pennsylvania Dutch country as a kid, vowing some day to win the world’s greatest bicycle race.

On Sunday, Landis was every bit as good as his word.

“I kept fighting, never stopped believing,” he said, and the yellow jersey stretched snugly across Landis’ slim shoulders confirmed the wisdom of that.

The first Tour de France of the post-Lance Armstrong era was captured by another American — on the same day and within hours of Tiger Woods winning yet another British Open — but nothing else about this race was the same.

Instead of order and the invincibility that characterized all but one of Armstrong’s seven straight wins, Landis was hounded by chaos from start to finish, projecting an all-too-familiar frailty throughout. What he proved by the end was that you doubt his courage at your own risk.

Landis seized the lead several times only to give it back, and just last Wednesday, in one of the most shocking collapses ever witnessed on the Tour, he seemingly threw any chance of winning over the side of the Alps.

Abandoned by his teammates on a 113-mile ride up the mountains to La Toussuire, Landis was passed by one rider after another, plummeting from first place to 11th and losing almost nine minutes in the bargain.

“There are days when you crack, but on those days, you lose one, maybe two minutes. This wasn’t a crack,” Robbie Ventura, Landis’ coach said. “It was a detonation.”

Yet the very next day, Landis attacked on the first climb back up the same mountain range, a 125-mile stage to Morzine-Avoriaz, and didn’t stop until he left his opponents out of breath and in denial. The gamble was so audacious, so hardheaded and risky that as word of Landis’ plan rippled through a peloton worn out after a week in the Pyrenees and Alps, several riders pulled up alongside and begged him not to try it.

“I just told ’em,” Landis would recall, “’Go drink some Coke, ’cause we’re leaving on the first climb if you want to come along.”’

That epic ride was still the talk of the Tour late into Saturday night, just a few hours after Landis effectively locked up the race with a third-place finish in the 35.4-mile individual time trial to Montceau-les-Mines.

Armstrong and Belgian Eddy Merckx, two of the greatest champions the sport has ever known, were huddled in a back booth at the Hotel Costes, awaiting the largely ceremonial last-stage run-in to the Champs-Elysées.

“How crazy was that?” Armstrong said finally.

Rather than answer, Merckx, a five-time champion himself and a competitor so fierce he was nicknamed “The Cannibal,” shook his head slowly in disbelief. A moment later, though, he lifted the right sleeve of his polo shirt and flexed his biceps.

“Strong,” Merckx said, shaking his head again. “Just incredibly ... unbelievably ... strong.”

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