(Update: On Thursday, Floyd Landis attacks on the first climb of the day and wins the stage. What did Mark Twain once say? “The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”)
From 1st place to 11th place in 15 kilometers or less. That's the tale of the tape for Floyd Landis at the 2006 Tour de France.
Everyone knows Landis cracked on the final climb of Stage 16, struggling uphill as every rival passed him by. What happened?
One theory comes from Chris Carmichael, Lance Armstrong's coach who writes a column at Paceline, the Discovery fan site.
Citing the apparent weakness of the Phonak team, Carmichael notes that Landis had just one teammate with him on the two climbs before the end. There was no supply chain delivering food and water up to Landis, his tank emptied, and he bonked.
Dr. Allen Lim, Landis' coach, tries to put all the conjecture to rest. He writes at the Bicycle website that Landis didn't bonk, he wasn't dehydrated, and his hip didn't bother him.
“Long story short, he didn't feel good from the get go. Yesterday was a big effort and no matter what you do, sometimes a big effort means the next day isn't going to be so pretty. There's no amount of eating, sleep, magic potion mixing, or aromatherapy that is going to fix that in under 18 hours, especially after 2 weeks of racing. … He felt awful and spent most of the day in damage control.”
Landis himself is quoted at Eurosport:
“I had a bad day, a wrong day. The team were going really well but I suffered from the start. I tried to hide it. Sometimes you don't feel well and today was one of those days.”
Landis' interview with the press is posted at Procycling.com. Although he admits that he doesn't expect to win the Tour, he says he'll keep fighting.
Lance Armstrong, visiting the Tour this week, told VeloNews he was riding in the Discovery team car when it passed Landis struggling up the final climb.
“It just takes one bad day, just one bad climb. You could lose the Tour in just two or three kilometers. It was sad. I can't explain… When we passed him, I wanted to jump out of the car… Even though we had had our history, I wanted the guy to win.”
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