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Landis hopes to get surgery done and over quickly

Published: Jul. 24, 2006
If his surgery goes as he expects, Landis may well be toasting another Tour win next July.
If his surgery goes as he expects, Landis may well be toasting another Tour win next July.
Photo: Graham Watson

Tour de France champion Floyd Landis said Monday he hopes to have his ailing right hip replaced within the next month so he can return to the sport with the possibility of defending his title next July.

Speaking with American reporters in a conference call from his hotel room in Paris, Landis said he remains confident that he can resume his racing career, despite the fact that he will become the first professional cyclist and only one of a small number of professional athletes to successfully undergo total hip replacement surgery.

Landis dismissed concerns regarding the very limited success of the hip replacement surgery performed on baseball and football great Bo Jackson, noting that cycling presents none of the high impact issues of either of Jackson’s two sports and that his surgery had taken place nearly two decades ago. Jackson needed follow-up surgery less than two years after his initial replacement and then retired from professional sports soon after.

The applicable technologies, said Landis, have improved significantly, noting that he is working with doctors in San Diego in effort to research his options and to schedule his surgery as soon as possible.

“I haven’t made a definite decision,” Landis said. “I would like to have it done within the next month, because the recovery period is six to eight weeks and then I should be able to train. Obviously, it won’t be at the level I am now, because I’ll have had a month-and-a-half off. If things go as they should, without complications, based on what other people have told me… by next spring, I probably won’t be in the same shape I was this spring, but I’ll be back racing without any trouble.”

Landis said credited his problem with giving added motivation to ride at a high level for most of the 2006 season. Landis won the Tour of California in February, followed that with a win at Paris-Nice and then took a victory in a third week-long stage race in April when he won the Tour of Georgia.

“I’ve kind of been racing every race like it’s the last one,” said Landis “I don’t know that otherwise I would have tried to be at the same level of fitness for six months.”

Contract talks and options
Landis said he plans to return to the U.S. soon after riding the traditional post-Tour criteriums in the Netherlands and expects to race in Chicago in mid-August.

Landis is also currently engaged in contract negotiations for the coming season and said he expects to have announcement regarding his plans for next year within two weeks.

“That’s still up in the air, but it should be settled within the next week or two,” he said. “I’m quite happy with my current situation and the most likely scenario is that I stay where I am.”

His former teammate, seven-time Tour winner Lance Armstrong, who is a part owner of the Discovery Channel cycling team was quoted this week as saying he would welcome Landis’s return to the U.S. team, a possibility Landis did not dismiss.

“I have spoken with them, over the past few months, even before the Tour,” Landis said. “There was never a formal offer one way or the other. Whether I would or wouldn’t, I don’t have any kind of problem with going back. I’ve been in communication with Lance. I saw him at the race – on the Alpe d’Huez stage – and we’ve sent messages back-and-forth in the meantime... but there haven’t been any formal contract talks.

“Right now I’m trying to sort things out with my current team,” Landis said. “I’m happy here and I think we have a formula that works. Again, nothing against (Discovery) but I’m proud of the team I’m on.”

Media Wars?
Unlike his former team leader, who seemed constantly engaged in an ongoing battle with French newspapers, Landis said he’s had a fairly productive relationship with the media at the Tour.

Landis noted Monday that even the most obnoxious headline - Maillot Jaune sans panache - which appeared the morning after he won back the yellow jersey on Stage 15 to l’Alpe d’Huez, still fell into the category of “fair” in his mind.

“They were fair with me,” Landis said. “I try not to get offended by that sort of thing. Probably from their perspective, I’d think the same thing. Up to that point, I’d raced conservatively and didn’t attack at all. I was happy to not win stages and to just maintain my overall position, without going over and above at the risk of having a bad day.”

“I’ve been quoted since then that (the headline) was part of my motivation for what I did that day,” he said. “The reality is that I didn’t have any other choice. I had lost eight minutes and there was only one mountain stage left, so I kinda had to attack first and the only way I was going to win the race is if I made it to the end that day. I’m not sure it was some kind of statement to show them that they had misjudged who I was. In general, I’d say, they’ve been fair, they’ve been really fair to me.”

That bad day
That headline happened to appear on the same day that Landis suffered on stage 16’s final climb to La Toussuire, costing him the yellow jersey and dropping him from first to 11th place.

Landis said it was a combination of factors that led to his implosion on that day’s final climb, but dismissed suggestions that dehydration had been a factor.

“No, I think it mainly had to do with the lack of food,” he said. “I started that stage not feeling too well, and a lot of those stages were multiple mountains… What I needed that day was just a half-hour section of flat road where I get myself to eat some food and get focused…. I just couldn’t get it together and I didn’t eat enough all day because I wasn’t feeling alright and I should have been more focused on that. On the last climb, once you’re at the point where blood-sugar is so low, it’s too late to fix it in the race, you just have to get through it and recover afterwards.”

Landis said that his implosion on stage 16 wasn’t a particularly unusual event for a professional cyclist – “you have good days and bad over three weeks” – but noted that his problems received so much attention, because he just happened to be in the yellow jersey that day.

“Had I been down in 15th place, no one would have noticed,” he added.

From NORBA races to the Tour
Landis, who began his career as a 15-year-old mountain-bike racer was long known as a solid bike handler and quite adept at popping wheelies on his road bike in later years.

Asked if he had followed points jersey winner Robbie McEwen’s lead on Sunday and ridden a wheelie down the famed cobbles of the Champs Élysées, the 30-year-old Landis demurred.

“No,” he said. “One broken hip is enough.”