The Mennonite Menace

So after Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich were pulled out prior to this year's start for doping allegations, and with the retirement of Lance Armstrong, I thought this was going to be a rather dull Tour de France. Boy, was I wrong.

Now we've got Floyd Landis revealing he's had degenerative osteoarthritis since fracturing his hip many years ago, and has been racing with all sorts of pain from his bum hip this whole time. What is it with American cyclists and stories of pain and redemption? If that wasn't inspiring enough, he's now within 30 seconds off the lead. After a major bonk two days ago on La Toussuire and falling 8 minutes behind the current maillot jaune wearer, he managed to stage an attack riding solo for almost 120 km to make up all that time back. Unbelievable! Unless these odd problems that have plagued his last two time trial starts continue, he's a shoe-in now to win the entire Tour. Then again, as weird as this Tour de France has been, it's probably not so inconceivable that someone would launch an attack in Paris on the final race day that's normally pretty relaxed.