Morally, Floyd pulled off an impossible turnaround. Hitting the wall is utterly demoralizing — your body goes into revolt, protesting as your muscle cells literally tear themselves apart, cannibalizing themselves for fuel. Mentally, you’re cooked — it’s like you’re calling down to the engine room for more power, and there’s nobody manning the station. Coming back from that takes time — you have to learn to trust your body all over again, and it needs time to rebuild. Landis did it in a night.

Where others would be happy to salvage their race with an attempt at cracking the top 10, Landis wasn’t willing to settle for anything less than the podium’s top step. After his performance he told OLN, he didn’t come to race, he came to win, and that he wouldn’t be able to make up six minutes — what he figured he’d need to regain the yellow jersey in the final time trial — on the final climb. So that meant he had to go early.

The sheer audacity of the move was one thing, but the power he displayed was something else. When his lead ballooned to more than nine minutes the teams realized Landis was for real, but they couldn’t take him. T-Mobile massed at the front, then CSC, even Rabobank and Pereiro’s Caisse d’Epargne squad went at it, and one by one their riders burned themselves out and couldn’t make it. Floyd Landis singlehandedly rode the entire peloton into the ground.

It was a dangerous move. Landis suffered visibly on that final climb, and if he’d faltered in the slightest he would have been done for good. But somehow he found the will to make the attempt, and the strength to pull it off. It was the ultimate do-or-die move, risking an almost-certain top-10 finish for glory. And in the end it paid dividends.

Landis clinched it in Saturday’s time trial, pulling clear of Pereiro by 59 seconds on the overall and holding that margin on Sunday’s final stage. It was the seventh-closest margin in Tour history, but in my mind it was arguably one of the most exciting.

Looking ahead, Landis faces an uncertain future. He currently suffers from an arthritic hip, which is scheduled for replacement in a matter of months. That’s about as invasive as surgery gets, and whether he’ll find this sort of form again remains to be seen, much less whether he might be an entrant in next year’s Tour.

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America’s other hope might lie with Levi Leipheimer. Despite his terrible performance in the first time trial he put in some strong rides in the Alps, and while they proved futile in his quest to crack the top 10, he showed he can perform as a team leader. Whether he can withstand the pressure of race leadership in a three-week tour remains to be seen, but he’s definitely a possibility.

George Hincapie, groomed as Lance’s successor at Discovery, didn’t deliver. The most well-oiled, well-drilled team in the Armstrong era became just another bunch of also-rans. They could succeed as America’s team in le Tour, but not with an American leader (unless they recruit Levi or Floyd) — their best Tour hopefuls are past Giro d’Italia champ Paolo Salvodelli, or young hopeful Yaroslav Popovych.

It’s too much to think ahead, not when there’s this year’s Tour to be savored. It was an incredible race: unpredictable, exciting, tumultuous and tremendous. And in the end it was Floyd’s story — the ultimate fall from grace, and the sweetest redemption. This was one of history’s greatest-ever Tours, and Floyd’s the hero. Well done!

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