Tour de Floyd

Hats off to Floyd Landis for winning this year's Tour de France.

With the retirement of seven-time winner Lance Armstrong, the exclusion of pre-race favourites Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich (last year's runners-up) for their involvement in a drug scandal, and the unfortunate circumstances surrounding yet another favourite Alexander Vinokourov (being with the wrong team at the wrong time - He was not involved in the scandal, but several of his team members were, which resulted in his team not having enough riders to start this year's Tour), this year's race is one of the most wide-open and unpredictable in recent years.

Thanks to Landis, a Pennsylvanian Mennonite, the yellow jersey remains in the United States for the eighth consecutive year.

This year's race saw 10 lead changes among seven riders, the most in many years, and the success of French riders who claimed three stage victories in total and a piece of the yellow jersey.

But the hero of the Tour is Landis.

This is a guy who is suffering from serious and painful arthritis in his hips who is scheduled for a hip replacement surgery shortly after the Tour.

And this is a guy who bounced back from a terrible day in the Alps when he lost over 10 minutes, to claim a glorious solo victory in the same treacherous mountains the very next day, when he reduced his time gap to the leader to a mere 30 seconds. In the end he managed to take over the lead in the final individual time trial by overtaking leader Oscar Pereiro.

And this came after he lost nearly 30 minutes to Pereiro in Stage 13, in farcical circumstances.

The final margin for his victory: 59 seconds.

59 seconds may appear to be a big margin, but in truth is nothing at all when you consider that the riders had spents nearly 100 hours on the saddle, and ridden for over 3,000 kilometres in France, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Belgium and Spain.

Unfortunately, whether Landis will defend his victory next year remains unknown. There is so much uncertainty surrounding hip replacement surgeries that no one can say anything for sure. Remember Bo Jackson?

Hopefully he will be back. This guy really deserves a shot to defend his title.