Sport - Cycling

It's 978 tough kms to the finish line

GAP (France): 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 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 2,679-km of racing, have all of Monday to rest their aching muscles, patch up scrapes and sores, and focus on the 978 kms that remain to the finish line in Paris next Sunday.

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 next 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.

Smart strategy

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

Landis believed that having the overall lead going into the rest day would have put too much pressure on his Phonak team. So the American relinquished it to Pereiro a couple of days before, letting the Illes Balears rival ride ahead and take the lead on 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 the climbs in the Alps.

``We'd like to have some other teams with some motivation to ride, other than us,'' Landis said on 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 works miracles and 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.''

Bigger worries

Given Pereiro's flaws, Landis' bigger worries are the other top contenders like him. Riders like Russian Denis Menchov, Australian Cadel Evans, Spaniard Carlos Sastre and German Andreas Kloeden. For the moment, they are all in Landis' rear view 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.''

The L'Alpe d'Huez climb, 21 switchbacks clinging to a mountain with a ski station on top, comes at the end of a long, hard day of riding on Tuesday. Riders will have ascended and descended two other mountains, including the brutal Izoard pass, before they reach the foot of the L'Alpe D'Huez, a legendary spot in cycling. — AP

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