Tour de Floyd

Another thing I love about summer is the annual Tour de France, which fills July with some of the best bike racing in the world. Today, American rider Floyd Landis won the first Tour in the post-Armstrong era. He rides for team Phonak, but is a former teammate of Armstrong's, as he road for Postal (now Discovery) until last year.

Landis is an awesome rider, who now must undergo hip replacement surgery--that could end his career. Yeah, he rode this year's Tour (and won three other major races this year) needing hip replacement surgery. This guy is super-human.

I've been a cycling fan for nearly as long as I can remember. I don't know if it was the 1979 movie "Breaking Away" that did it, or the Coors International Bicycle Classic.

Breaking Away rocked. I fell in love with all things cycling, and Italy, too. It was a great coming-of-age story about "the Cutters"--a cycling team that enters the University of Indiana's Little 500 bike race--and wins. It's based on a true story and a real race. It's a bit dated, but it's still fun to watch.

The Coors International Bicycle Classic used to be the country's top annual Tour, and in the 1970s and 80s, Colorado was part of the race course. My parents used to pack us all in the car and take us to Boulder to watch some of the all-time greats of the sport including Davis Phinney, Connie Carpenter, Jonathan Boyer, Dennis Stetina, and many more.

Regardless of where and how it started, I love pro cycling and I eagerly anticipate each July. This year, there was a lot of speculation about how the Tour would play out, post-Lance. Favored to win was CSC's Italian rider Ivan Basso, but the day before the Tour opened, a number of riders, including long-time great Jan Ullrich of T-Mobile, were disqualified from the race due to suspicions of doping. Suddenly, an already wide-open field was opened even wider.

The United States has some awesome riders on a number of teams--not just Floyd Landis. Dave Zibriski, Levi Leipheimer, and George Hincape are certainly among them, as is Christian Vandervelde, who had an outstanding Tour.

Tomorrow is the final stage, where they all ride into Paris. Sure, someone could challenge and take the yellow jersey from Landis, but that's not expected to happen. There is a long-standing tradition in cycling that by the time they ride in to Paris, what's done is done. Oscar Pereiro, who is in second place, is a friend of Landis's and it's highly unlikely he would challenge at this point. Today was his last chance to do that--or actually, to hold on to his lead, as he was in yellow when today's time trial stage started--and he failed to do so.

Tomorrow is for the sprinters and for Floyd Landis to celebrate. Viva la Floyd! Viva la Tour!