By Siegfried Mortkowitz Jul 17, 2006, 13:36 GMT
Paris dpa) - There is something familiar about a lanky American being touted as the favourite of the Tour de France leader as the race heads into its final week.
US Floyd Landis (Phonak Hearing Systems team) in the yellow jersey of the overall leader rides during the thirteenth stage of the Tour de France 2006 between Beziers and Montelimar, France, Saturday 15 July 2006. The thirteenth stage leads the riders over 230 kilometers. EPA/OLIVER WEIKEN
But this year the favoured American is smiling, not scowling, sporting a scraggly beard, not clean-shaven, lives in California, not Texas, and answers to the name of Floyd, not Lance.
No one will ever mistake Floyd Landis for his former boss, seven-time Tour champion Lance Armstrong, who was perceived as arrogant and aloof, and given the sobriquet 'The Boss' by French journalists.
But Landis, who was a support rider for Armstrong for three years before joining the Swiss Phonak team, does have something in common with his former boss: a physical ailment that makes his taking part in a physically punishing high-performance sport something of a miracle.
While Landis's story is not as dramatic as Armstrong's recovery from cancer, doctors familiar with his condition have expressed astonishment over that fact is that he is riding with a degenerative hip disease that causes him almost constant pain.
As a result of a crash on his bicycle in early 2003, Landis's right hip is afflicted with osteonecrosis, or bone death, a condition caused by a lack of blood supply to the affected area. Later this year, he will undergo hip replacement surgery, without knowing if he will be able to ride competitively again.
When he went public about his condition at the beginning of the Tour's second week, the 30-year-old Pennsylvania native described his discomfort.
'Sometimes it's a sharp pain. When I pedal and walk, it comes and goes, but mostly it's an ache, like an arthritis pain. It aches down my leg into my knee.... when I walk it hurts, when I ride it hurts.'
Despite the affliction, as the Tour heads into its third, and final, week, Landis ranks second in the overall standings, 1 minute 27 seconds behind Spaniard Oscar Pereiro Sio, who is not considered a contender for the title.
It is Landis who is generally viewed as the favourite to succeed Armstrong as Tour de France champion, and who has become, as Armstrong was, the rider to beat for the title.
The sporting director of the Danish Team CSC, David Gallopin, told the French daily L'Equipe, 'Landis will be very difficult to beat for the (Tour) victory. The American is very strong and steady. I don't think we can count on his weakening in the Alps.'
In addition, his ailment has him highly motivated, since he has admitted this could be the last Tour de France he will ever ride in.
When he took over the race leader's yellow jersey on Thursday, he brought up his condition again, saying, 'I realized my career won't go on forever. I guess I should have realized that anyway. So I'm honoured to be sitting here.'
A triumph in the world's most prestigious and taxing cycling event would be a fitting for a man whose entire life was drastically changed by the bicycle.
Landis was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, into a Mennonite family and community, and grew up not being allowed to dance, watch television or wear shorts in gym class.
'It wasn't all the rules that got me, so much as the fact that they didn't seem logical to me,' Landis told the New York Times. 'Does God really care if we wear shorts or not?'
He was also told that if he continued racing the mountain bike he had bought at the age of 15, he would go to hell.
'I love my parents, and they're good people,' he said. 'But that didn't make sense to me. So I knew I had to get out, and the bike was the way.'
When he was 19, he moved to California, where he tasted alcohol and caffeine for the first time in his life and saw his first motion picture.
Although he has since left the strictures of his upbringing far behind, Landis said that he still believes in the values he was raised with: labour, teamwork and humility.
All of these qualities were in plain view when Landis laboured to help Armstrong achieve three of his seven Tour titles. But there is no mistaking that, since moving to the Swiss Phonak team as its leader in 2004, he has added another: ambition.
'I came to win and that's all,' he said when the Tour started.
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