Phonak!! Landis!!

Published on Thursday 20th of July, 2006 - Updated on 2006-07-21

Was that Floyd Landis or Eddy Merckx out there on Stage 17 of the TdF today?

Well, I cannot wait until some footage of todays amazing comeback by Floyd Landis make it into Youtube.

What an incredible man and an incredible ride! All I could think of was Merkx, and I wonder if Eddy, father of Floyd's teammate Axel, said anything to the team or to Floyd last night.

Maybe, maybe not. In the post race interview, Frankie Andreu was asking Floyd some questions and one of the answers was simply "I came here to win the Tour de France".

Phonak the butchers

Note: Pavel Padrnos is know as the butcher as he was used to tear the legs off the peleton when Disco needed him too. On stage 17, Phonak were the butchers!

The Phonak Butchers
Phonak lays it down hard and early. Photo © Fotoreporter Sirotti - http://www.ciclismovitamia.it

So as a result, we saw a ballsy early attack by the Phonak team that saw them tear the peloton into a lactic acid generating single file line at roughly 65k into the stage (see photo). Their green and white jerseys, single file and hammering away while riders were popping off the back. Miguel Angel Perdiguero of Phonak apparently did his huge turn at the front and then pulled off, sat up and stopped, pulling out of the race! I imagine he wouldn't have started the day if this ballsy move hadn't been planned.

So after Floyd's teammates had all popped off the front of the peloton, cooked from their efforts, he simply rode away from the whole of the remaining lot and stayed away until the end of the day, catching and passing an earlier break that had 6 minutes when he started his attack.

Brilliant, a most incredible ride!!

Update: One day later and the best report that I can find about yesterdays stage is by Phil Ligett and appears in the Telegraph. Amazingly most other reports don't do justice to the damage that the entire Phonak team did while launching Floyd's attack at the start of the stage.

Tags: ,

Comments and Feedback

There are 0 comments for this post. Subscribe to the RSS 2.0 comments feed or add your comment »

There are no comments for this post.

Discussion for this post is now closed. Comments are normally open for 15 days. If you have something to add to this conversation or to the author, send us a note via the contact page.