Recently on Cyclingnews.com |
 Giro finale Photo ©: Bettini |
91st Tour de France - July 3-25, 2004
 |
Hangin’ In There: The Floyd Landis Tour Journal
During the Tour de France in 2002, Cyclingnews welcomed Floyd Landis as a reporter. The talented, gutsy, 28 year old former mountain biker had ridden his way to a start in the Tour as a key part of Lance Armstrong’s USPS squad, and Landis went on to distinguish himself as an important member of the now legendary “Blue Train” at Le Tour.
Floyd also endeared himself to Cyclingnews readers for his unique take on an American rookie’s life in the Tour De France peloton. 2004 has Floyd return with his exclusive journal “Hangin’ In There.”
Stage 6 - July 9: Bonneval - Angers, 196 km
Stage 7 - July 10: Chateaubriant - Saint Brieuc, 204.5 km
Stage 8 - July 11: Lamballe - Quimper, 168 km
I'm a bookworm
Hi everybody,
I decided to take a break after dinner to do my diary... I started to read a book to take my mind off the race. Some friends brought me a book to read; it's a Western, Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry. I think they made a movie out of it, but I never saw it. I usually don't read Westerns, but it's pretty good. It helps me get my mind off the race anyway and kind of reminds me of home... like in Temecula, where there are Indian reservations, but with casinos. I just need to get my mind away from the race - and French TV isn't going to do it.
Saturday's stage [Stage 7] was ridiculously fast at the beginning, then the break got away and then it settled down until the break got caught at the end. Brioche kept the break close in the middle and then the sprinters' teams like Quick.Step did a lot of the work at the end. It started raining and got really dangerous again when we started along the coast. All the stress from racing and a lot of guys are tired, along with the wind and rain, wasn't much fun. We had a pretty good idea that when the course hit the coast road, CSC would ride hard to break things up. It got ugly for a while but there wasn't enough wind to break things up. There was just too much tree cover along the road to make a difference.
When the inevitable split happened, all the GC contenders were there. Everyone was really nervous because the worst thing that can happen is a crash in a crosswind section, since it's twice as hard to get back on. On such a long stage, I was just hope it was going to end. My room-mate Jose went to see out team chiropractor, Jeff Spencer. Since no one crashed Saturday, Jeff probably didn't know what to do with himself! On Friday [Stage 6], he was really busy because a lot of guys crashed and it wasn't even raining; Lance, George... Eki had a big garbage bag of ice on his leg and Benjamin crashed about three times!
Note: Don't sprint for 35th place! That crash Friday was ridiculous. The guy Hasselbacher who crashed was in 35th place when he ran into the barriers. Don't do it... you just get injured! You're not going to win if you're that far back in a Tour stage sprint. I was pretty far back when the crash happened; I had been helping Lance all day keeping him out of the wind and then George takes over in the final. Another problem is that every team wants their leader up there in case there are splits in the final... anyway I was far enough back that it just bunched up in front of me. I saw Robbie McEwen afterwards and he was pretty well cut up. Earlier in on Saturday, he was trading a few punches with Phonak's Santos Gonzalez. I don't know why exactly; I wanted to stay out of it. They were wailing away at each other and then Robbie went back to complain to the commissaire. Hey, I got no beef with McEwen; he's a good sprinter.
Tonight, Willi whipped up some good pasta for dinner and then we had a fillet steak and some tasty apple pastry. I've decided that I'm not going to complain about the food anymore. There's just no point to it! And the food is actually better this year but I just get sick of the same race diet for three weeks... oops! So after a week, despite the hard racing and mostly lousy weather, things at the Tour are good. All we need now is a little sun. After another nervous fast stage Sunday across Brittany, we transfer to Limoges and rest day, which I am looking forward to, as all of the other riders are I imagine. OK time for bed so I'll sign off now. Thanks for reading!
Until Next Time,
Floyd
Results