Penultimacy

Today's stage in the Tour de France was a mostly flat run out of the Alps. Italian Matteo Tosatto won today but the overall standings look just as they did after Floyd Landis finished his astounding ride back into contention yesterday, with Oscar Pereiro in first, 12 seconds up on Carlos Sastre and 30 up on Landis. Fourth place is more than two minutes out, an insurmountable deficit with just one meaningful stage, Saturday's time trial, to go. (The Sunday ride into Paris is traditionally never contested for the overall.)

Poking around half-literately on the website of the French sports paper L'Equipe, I discovered two things. First, the paper, which covers the Tour as a matter of national interest and pride, called Landis's ride yesterday the "ride of the century." Second, the French word for "time trial" is "contre-le-montre" - a much better name for the event.

In the English-language press, the best thing I read was this facetious inquiry into just what kind of beer Landis drank the night after his nightmare ride. Clearly, it was special stuff. After all, the next day,
Landis chased down an 11-man breakaway, killed them and ate them, built a new bicycle out of their bones, and roared away in a pillar of fire to win the stage to Morzine and jump back to within 30 seconds of the yellow jersey.

That's good stuff! (Turns out, though, it was just one Amstel.) And on top of that, I recommend this interview with Landis just after the win into Morzine. A choice quote, from a section when Landis is describing other riders' pre-stage reactions to his plans to attack:

The only chance we had of winning the Tour was to go from the beginning... Somehow or another, word got around the peloton that we were going to do that and a couple people came and told me it was crazy and I should please don't do it. Anyway, I told them, "Go drink some Coke, because we're leaving on the first climb if you want to come along."

Hell, yeah! Landis's ride becomes all the more incredible for resulting not from a surprise, but a premeditated attack which everyone knew was coming when and where it did. Another quote: his cell phone rings, and one of the journos asks, "Is that Bush?" and Floyd drawls, "I doubt it. I'll hang up on him." Double hell yeah!