“Greatest One Day Ride in Tour de France History” July 20, 2006
Posted by Steve in : Uncategorized, Weblog, Tour De France , trackbackFloyd Landis proved he has a guts and heart of a champion and wrote himself into the record books with the ‘greatest one day ride in the history of the 103-year Tour de France’. He attacked for more than 140 km attack on the peloton and the maillot jaune, and erased 7:38 of his time deficit IN ONE DAY! Only one day after he appeared to have no chance of winning. I sat glued for four hours to see this special performance by someone I had written off less than 24 hours earlier.
Many longtime devotees of professional cycling said they had never seen a performance — from Armstrong, from the legendary Eddy Merckx or from any other cyclist — like the one produced by Floyd Landis on Thursday in southeastern France. With a blistering 80-mile attack over three mammoth Alpine passes, Landis won the final mountain stage of this year’s Tour by nearly 6 minutes, regaining much of the time he lost when he suffered a near-total loss of energy on a steep, final climb on Wednesday.
No less an expert than the longtime Tour director, Jean-Marie LeBlanc, called Landis’ performance “the best stage I have ever followed.”
After bonking with 15 km to go, Landis fell from first place to 11th Wednesday. He won his first 2006 Tour stage and pulled to within 30 seconds of the leader, Spain`s Oscar Pereiro. Spain`s Carlos Sastre was in second place at the end of the day Thursday, 12 seconds behind Pereiro. This sets up Saturday’s 35 mile individual time trial as the decider of this year`s Tour de France. Saturday`s stage and Sunday`s finale are relatively flat stages that are expected to feature sprints to the finish among the top contenders.
See a writeup on Stage 17 at http://www.tdfblog.com/
Here is another great writeup from a sportwriter who was there
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[…] a scene reminsicent of Floyd Landis last year when he bonked, then experienced the “Greatest One Day Ride in the History of the Tour de France“, Alexander Vinokourov of Astana clinched his second victory of this year’s Tour de […]