Landis Faces Big Workweek

L’Alpe d’Huez, the Izoard and Galibier passes. Hard climbs, legendary climbs, climbs that decide the Tour de France.

One bad day, even one bad hour, on those punishing ascents in the Alps this week could end U.S. rider Floyd Landis’ bid for the Tour title. After two weeks of racing and little separating Landis from the other top riders, the Tour is perfectly poised for a thrilling finale.

Landis and the 155 other cyclists who have made it this far, surviving crashes, scorching heat and 1,664 miles of racing, have all of today to rest their aching muscles, patch up scrapes and sores and focus on the 607 miles that remain to the finish line in Paris on Sunday.

Distance-wise, it may seem that most of the work is done.

Think again.

Tuesday brings the first of three make-or-break days in the Alps. And if those towering mountains don’t sift out a winner, then the Tour could be decided in the last long time trial Saturday, when the riders race alone against the clock.

“Three big days in the Alps, one big time trial, anything can happen,” said Landis’ Dutch teammate, Koos Moerenhout.

After Sunday’s 14th stage, won by Frenchman Pierrick Fedrigo, Landis was still where he says he wants to be: second overall, 1 minute 29 seconds behind Oscar Pereiro of Spain.

Landis figured that having the overall lead going into the rest day would have put too much pressure on his Phonak team. So he relinquished it to Pereiro a couple of days before, letting the Illes Balears rival take the lead Saturday.

Landis is hoping that Illes Balears will try to keep Pereiro in the lead by racing up at the front of the pack -- where cyclists expend the most energy -- sparing the need for his Phonak teammates to do so. Landis wants to keep his team of support riders as fresh as possible so they can help him up in the Alps.

“We’d like to have some other teams with some motivation to ride, other than us,” the Pennsylvania native said Sunday.

At some point before Paris, of course, Landis will need to get back the lead if he is to be the successor to seven-time winner Lance Armstrong. And he is betting that Pereiro, when it really counts, won’t be able to stop him.

Pereiro struggled in the Pyrenees last week and was slower than Landis in the first long time trial at the end of week one. So even if he holds off Landis and the rest of the field in the Alps, which even Pereiro thinks is unlikely, Phonak is betting that he’ll succumb eventually in the final time trial.

“He’s not going to give it up easily,” said Levi Leipheimer, a U.S. rider on the Gerolsteiner squad. “But I think Floyd’s right, I thing he’s going to crack.”

Given Pereiro’s flaws, Landis’ bigger worries are the other top contenders, riders such as Russian Denis Menchov, Australian Cadel Evans, Spaniard Carlos Sastre or German Andreas Kloeden. For the moment, they are all in Landis’ rearview mirror, trailing him by significant but perhaps not insurmountable amounts of time. In order to win, Landis will need to make sure that it stays that way in the Alps -- no easy task.

“In the Alps, you can easily lose 20 minutes in one day,” Moerenhout said. If Landis “has one bad day, it’s over.”

Normally, at this stage, Armstrong had the race locked up. But after his retirement last year, and without top riders Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich -- sent home on the eve of the Tour because of allegations they were linked to a doping ring in Spain -- there is a sense that anything could still happen, even if Landis is the favorite.

“It’s a different race without a big leader,” Moerenhout said. “Everybody thinks, ‘Maybe we can win.’ ”

Sunday’s 112-mile Stage 14 from Montelimar to Gap, in the foothills of the Alps, was marked by a spectacular crash involving David Canada and Rik Verbrugghe. The scorching sun melted the roads, and the riders lost control of their bikes on a right-hand turn. German rider Matthias Kessler plowed into Canada and cartwheeled over a safety barrier on the side of the road.

Kessler remounted and finished. But Verbrugghe, a Belgian riding for Cofidis, broke his left leg and opened a bad cut on his left arm. Canada, a Spanish rider with Saunier Duval, broke his right collarbone.