American Landis Gets Over the Mountain

"I kept fighting," Floyd Landis tells the crowd at the victory ceremony with the Arc de Triomphe as a backdrop. "I never stopped believing." Landis's win keeps the Tour title in American hands for the eighth consecutive year. (Bas Czerwinski - AP)

After Landis's victory, Armstrong, who watched the race on television as the bikers rode past his luxury hotel at Paris's Place de la Concorde, said: "I'm proud and happy for Floyd. . . . He proved he was the strongest, everybody wrote him off."

Landis described his abysmal day in the Alps last Wednesday -- when television cameras zoomed in as sweat dripped off his nose and his face was contorted in agony -- as "one of the most humiliating things that has ever happened to me."

"It took a long time after the race before I felt better and got my spirit back to keep fighting," he said.

Landis, who said he didn't feel well from the start of that day's race, blamed his poor performance in part on a failure to take time to eat during the rigorous stage.

"I didn't stay focused enough to eat," he said. "So, in the end, I was completely out of energy. . . . What may have looked like some kind of miraculous improvement was in fact just me going back to normal."

John Lelangue, the Phonak team manager, said the night Landis plummeted to 11th place was one of the toughest of the Tour.

"It was a very somber moment but we rallied together and after dinner we concluded that the race was not yet over and we had some fight left in us," Lelangue said. "We had to attack even if it was to end badly, but we refused to give in without a fight."

Early in Sunday's final leg of the Tour, the Phonak team car pulled alongside Landis and handed him a glass of champagne. The last stage is traditionally a formality, providing the leader a grand entrance into Paris, and this snaking 96-mile route from the French town of Sceaux-Antony to Paris often seemed like more of a romp for Landis than a race. Other riders repeatedly pulled up alongside him and offered him congratulatory handshakes -- miles before the finish line. He posed for television cameras and photographers. One of the official time keepers scooted past Floyd on the back of a motorcycle holding a blackboard sign declaring in French, " Impeccable Floyd ."

Although Landis's team finished in 10th place, they entered the Champs-Elysees together at the head of the pack as a wave of cheers and yells swelled, then echoed off the stone buildings lining one of the world's most famous boulevards.

But at the end of the race, Australian Robbie McEwen, who won the green jersey as the best sprinter, said, "This Tour was one of the toughest I've ever ridden.

"It was not just the heat and the conditions, but the way it was raced. It was really aggressive. There was no absolute control like in the Armstrong years and it made for a really hard race. Everyone suffered a lot and I think we're all glad it's over."

Researcher Corinne Gavard contributed to this story.