Riders rest today; mountains loom
American Floyd Landis poised to gain on overall leader Honchar
Lorient, France ? Tour de France riders get to put their feet up today, their first rest day. They’ll need it.
Looming ahead are brutal ascents in the Pyrenees, which American Floyd Landis will need to climb strongly to confirm his status as favorite to succeed his former teammate, seven-time winner Lance Armstrong.
Landis is exactly 1 minute behind overall race leader Serhiy Honchar after nine days of racing in the three-week race. But the Ukrainian may have trouble holding onto the leader’s yellow jersey when the roads start heading sharply uphill.
As a teammate to Armstrong, who retired last year, Landis showed that he could climb, particularly when he came close to winning the hardest Alpine stage of the 2004 Tour.
But whether the Pennsylvania native, now leader of the Swiss squad Phonak, can truly impose himself on the steep gradients of the Pyrenees and Alps will be one of the big questions of weeks two and three.
“The mountains will tell us more, but so far, it’s fine. I have a good team, and so far we’ve been fortunate – we haven’t had any bad incidents. Till now, everything’s good,” Landis said Sunday at the start of stage eight, which he finished safely in the middle of the trailing pack in 37th place.
Honchar finished 100th on Sunday, but also was in that pack – which was 2 minutes, 15 seconds behind stage winner Sylvain Calzati.
French rider Calzati won the stage with a solo effort, giving France reason to celebrate a few hours before its World Cup soccer final against Italy. (Though Calzati, whose father is Italian, confessed he was rooting for Italy.)
After the rest day, when sleep, massages and a light ride are in order, the Tour gets going again with a flat and likely fast stage from Bordeaux to Dax in the southwest. Then, on Wednesday, comes the first of two hard climbing days in the Pyrenees.
For riders who fared poorly – and there were many – in the first long time trial of the Tour on Saturday, the mountains could offer a chance to make amends.