Flutterby™! : Landis wins 2006-07-23 19:38:12.083537+00

Landis wins

2006-07-23 19:38:12.083537+00 by Dan Lyke 4 comments

I'm not one for celebrity or sports, but the whole biking thing has me keeping an eye on bicycle racing just so I'm not totally lost in the post-ride discussions (not that I've been a part of a post-ride discussion for quite a while, given work, but the theory is nice).

So: Floyd Landis won the Tour de France. For those of you following along at home, Landis will be getting surgery to get a hip replacement in a month or two, because he's been grinding bone on bone for this ride.

You've gotta love a guy who's described by his wife as "one tough bitch":

"He's in every aspect the toughest man, ever," Amber says seriously. "Physically tough, mentally tough, he's just," now she can't help herself, "he's just one tough bitch."

In the original story that broke the news about the hip replacement, he talks about visualizing the ball of his hip digging a groove into the socket, and how that made the pain more tolerable. And then there's this -- I'm curious to see what the backlash on that one is going to be...

My respect and admiration for Landis just keeps right on growing. I think anyone who watched his incredible ride in Stage 17 must be in awe of what he accomplished. To say it was "impressive" is to understate the case and likely to not understand the difficulty with which a lone rider powers up three mountains in the Alps with no one to pace him, a day after dehydrating, at the end of three grueling weeks. While unable to mount his bike from the right side, a month before a hip replacement. And follows with a blistering time trial to seal the deal. There is no doubt Landis's Tour will go down in history. He deserves this sweet victory. (PS: Letting Eki lead the peloton onto the Champs-Elysees was a class act on everyone's part.)

Oooookay, now I have to take a step back here and pause: news today is that Landis reportedly failed a doping test during the Tour, after the unbelieveable Stage 17, in fact. We'll have to watch and see, but... perhaps it really *WAS* too good to be true. Sigh...

Awaiting 'B' test results, and it seems it's about a ratio of various hormones, rather complex. I'm hoping it's 100% natural, maybe his body compensating for the pain in his hip..