Breaking Away

Early on, Floyd Landis Learned the Last Shall Be First. Then Came the Tour de France.

In the eyes of the Mennonites -- a community defined by its uncompromising work ethic -- the servant shall be exalted in time. Cyclist Floyd Landis, who has made a career out of servanthood, believes that his time has come. In fact, the onetime Mennonite has the date and place for his reward precisely fixed: the afternoon of July 23, when he hopes to roll into Paris as the winner of the Tour de France.

Landis's chances of achieving this goal soared Friday when more than a dozen cyclists, including virtually all the race favorites -- Italy's Ivan Basso, Germany's Jan Ullrich and Spain's Francisco Mancebo -- were tossed out of the competition after being implicated in a doping scandal. Landis, a former teammate of seven-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong, had been widely viewed as a sure bet for a podium finish, especially after his impressive victories in three major week-long races this spring.

Now, observers of the sport rate him the top prospect to win -- and, exactly 20 years after Greg LeMond's historic victory, to continue the American domination of what had once been a decidedly European sport.

Reacting to the news that his chief rivals won't be in the lineup, Landis sounded characteristically modest. "At this point, I have to be fair and open-minded; we all do," he said Friday by phone from Strasbourg, France. "I'm actually disappointed that those guys aren't racing."

Landis is something of a local hero. He started racing near Frederick, Md., and local cyclists still remember the brash teenager who pulled outrageous wheelies and then beat the field by huge margins. But his roots extend farther north to Pennsylvania's Lancaster County, and while he may have distanced himself from the religion he grew up with there, he still holds to many of its principles. He swears by plain old hard work -- a useful value when training for the world's most grueling endurance contest, a three-week event that started yesterday and will cover more than 2,000 miles and two mountain ranges.

He also believes in being humble, in teamwork and in finding strength through suffering -- though he's too humble to call what he experiences on the bike "suffering."

" 'Suffering' I think we should save for people who are being tortured," he says on a recent afternoon at his home in Murrieta, Calif., north of San Diego, a few days before he was to head to Spain, where he trains during the racing season.

He also believes in willingness to serve. Up to a point.

Landis, 30, toiled for three years as Armstrong's underling. He joined Armstrong's U.S. Postal Service team in 2002, using his mix of physical strength and dependability to help power the Texan to the last three of his Tour victories.

Then Landis decided he was sick of serving. He had outserved everyone else on the team; he was Armstrong's chief escort on the mountain climbs, biking in front of the champion so Armstrong had an easier ride with less wind resistance. On the flat roads, Landis was frequently at the head of the line of cyclists, pedaling at an infernal pace to wear down any followers who had the slightest hopes of usurping Armstrong's crown.

But Landis wanted more than to be forever a domestique , the snooty French term (it's also used for a maid or a cook) designating the eight teammates without whom no single man could win a test like the Tour de France. The domestiques are the links in the chain that pulls their team leader along the route day after day. On the fast-moving flat stages, they surround him in the peloton, as the group of riders is called, to protect him from collisions. They fetch him water and food from the team cars that follow. They even give up one of their own wheels if the leader gets a flat.

Yet unlike in other team sports, where victory is recognized as a collective effort, in cycling only the team leader steps onto the podium; he alone gets the magazine covers and the book deals.