Landis is Tour big wheel

PARIS -- His life has been a series of breakaways, so it's not surprising that Floyd Landis won the 2006 Tour de France with the most audacious move the peloton had seen in decades.

When you've told your family you are abandoning its teachings and moving thousands of miles away, picking your way through a minefield of love and hurt and rebellion and fulfillment, how hard could it be to pedal alone up a few mountains? When you've survived a very public spat with your former mentor, who happens to be the most successful and popular cyclist in history, how hard could it be to rebound from one bad day on the bike?

Landis mounted the podium on the Champs-Elysees yesterday without apparent distress, although his wife, Amber, said his degenerative hip condition makes the everyday act of climbing stairs more painful for him than ascending a steep mountain road. The 30-year-old Landis pulled his stepdaughter, Ryan, up with him during the victory ceremony under a brassy-hot late-afternoon sky and lifted his arms in triumph.

His speech was short and direct, in contrast to the zany and circuitous path he took on 2,000-plus miles of French roadways to become the third American to win the Tour. US riders have won 11 of the last 21 editions of the world's toughest and most famous bicycle race. His winning margin of 57 seconds was one of the slimmest in history.

``Thank you, everyone who kept believing in me, most of all my team, when things weren't going so well," Landis said.

The brief trophy presentation capped a much more arduous journey that began when Landis, already an accomplished mountain biker, left his Mennonite community in eastern Pennsylvania at age 19 to move to Southern California. He later rode for three of Lance Armstrong's Tour-winning teams, but clashed with the Texan after defecting for the Phonak team in late 2004.

Landis was promoted to team leader after Tyler Hamilton's suspension for a doping offense, and finished ninth in the Tour last year. Over the winter, he worked to refine his time-trial skills and built up a reservoir of confidence -- motivated even more by the prospect of potentially career-ending surgery on his bad hip.

Technically, Landis clinched the Tour title in the last individual time trial, but he really won it when he took off by himself in the Alps a few days ago.

He was eight minutes behind the race leader, courtesy of a mortifying collapse the day before. In a sport hidebound by tradition and etiquette, that time gap was the cue to write a concession speech and wait 'til next year. His initiative was viewed as desperate, foolhardy, and doomed.

Actually, it was characteristic, not only of the wiry, hawk-nosed, hardheaded man, but of the athletic culture from which he springs. It was the grand slam, the long touchdown pass followed by the onside kick, the midcourt shot at the buzzer. Landis knew most of his rivals were so conditioned by cycling convention that they would assume what he was trying to do was impossible, rather than trying to prevent it from happening.

``It's always harder to follow somebody," Landis said last week. ``It's always better if you just do it yourself." He was talking about the solo attack that put him back in the favorite's saddle, but he could have been talking about his life.

``There are so many people he seeks counsel and advice from, but he makes all his own choices," said physiologist Allen Lim, a key person in Landis's brain trust. ``Nobody tells Floyd what to do."

The three American Tour champions are very different, but there is an unmistakable similarity about their instinct for the jugular. Landis's stage victory at Morzine held the faint echo of Greg LeMond's last-day time-trial coup in 1989, where he aimed his bike at Paris and made up 50 seconds when no one thought it could be done, and harkened back to Armstrong's anger-fueled ride to Luz-Ardiden in 2003 after he accidentally tangled with a spectator's bag and crashed.

Physical travails link them as well. LeMond returned from a near-fatal hunting accident, Armstrong survived life-threatening cancer, and Landis only recently revealed he will have hip replacement surgery within the next few months to alleviate the chronic pain he suffers from avascular necrosis.

The condition, triggered by a training crash three years ago, results when the bone is deprived of blood supply and begins to dry out and collapse. Landis has had two surgeries following the original operation to try to reduce the inevitable friction in the joint.

He disguised his limp by adopting a rolling swagger and altered the angle of his time-trial position to try to minimize his discomfort. Adrenaline keeps him from dwelling on the pain during a race, but sleeping, walking, and any other weight-bearing activities are difficult. ``If I had my way, we would have had this fixed yesterday," Amber Landis said.

After seven straight years of Armstrong's iron grip on the race, the 93d Tour seemed to have a screw loose from the beginning. Seven men wore the overall leader's yellow jersey and the race lead changed 11 times, tossed from rider to rider like a hot potato.

US television ratings sank and the roadside crowds in France were clearly smaller. Those who didn't tune in or turn out, however, missed a fascinating race.

Chaos marked the first weekend as prerace favorites Jan Ullrich of Germany and Ivan Basso of Italy were among nine riders suspended by their teams on the eve of the Tour for links to a Spanish doping investigation. Contender Alexander Vinokourov of Kazakhstan also was forced to withdraw when the majority of the riders on his Astana-Wurth team were implicated.

Landis was considered a podium candidate even before the entry list got scrambled, but his Tour also began somewhat inauspiciously, as he had mechanical problems in the prologue and the first individual time trial.

He assumed the race lead for the first time in the Pyrenees but opted to give it up to spare his team's energy. In a much-discussed move, Phonak and the other teams with top contenders allowed a breakaway group that included opportunistic Spanish rider Oscar Pereiro to gain 30 minutes, putting Pereiro into the yellow jersey.

Landis took it back at Alpe d'Huez on the first of three wild days in the Alps, lost it when he crumbled on the climb to La Toussuire, and then made his improbable comeback at Morzine.

Five-time Tour winner Eddy Merckx, the most aggressive rider of his or perhaps any era, ``was one of the only people who thought it was possible," Landis said. Afterward, Merckx paid Landis the highest compliment of all when he said the American who rides with Merckx's son reminds him of himself.

Landis plans to compete in a few minor races in Europe and the United States -- the Tour champion's victory lap -- but he has finished his last major event for a while. There is no precedent for a cyclist at his level making a full recovery from hip replacement surgery, but he bats away the prospect of retirement. ``I think if I'm given a little time with the hip, it'll be OK," he said.

He also said he hopes the mantle of Tour winner doesn't weigh him down. ``I hope my life doesn't change too much, because I'm a pretty happy guy," he said.