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2006 VeloNews Awards: North American Male Cyclist of the Year

A controversial winner

By Kip Mikler, VeloNews editor
Published: Dec. 25, 2006
Landis rides into Paris
Landis rides into Paris
Photo: AFP (file photo)

Yeah, we know.

This was a strange year to select some of the winners of the VeloNews Awards, and no category produced a more debatable outcome than top North American man. We chose Floyd Landis, the embattled former Phonak rider who stands accused of cheating his way to victory at the Tour de France. Here’s why.

It’s not about whether we believe Landis is guilty or innocent. Whatever the outcome of the yet-to-be-resolved charges that Landis used testosterone on stage 17 of the Tour, he outperformed his fellow Americans, including George Hincapie and Levi Leipheimer, throughout the rest of the season. Though the coverage wasn’t always positive, Landis landed on five VeloNews covers in 2006, a Lance Armstrong-like achievement.

Landis’s dramatic, roller-coaster season began in his home state, where in February he became the first winner of America’s inaugural high-profile stage race, the Amgen Tour of California. The difference at that race was Landis’s powerful early-season time-trialing strength, but the real story was his emerging leadership style. In California, the one-time Armstrong protégé displayed, for the first time, a solid command over his Phonak teammates. After taking the leader’s jersey in the stage 3 time trial at San Jose, Landis coolly led his team’s efforts to defend his lead. By the time the race finished in Redondo Beach, Landis’s teammates knew they had a winner to serve in 2006.

That notion was confirmed when Landis traveled to Europe in early March and pulled off a more surprising win at Paris-Nice, a weeklong stage race in France that was the opening event of the 2006 UCI ProTour. Landis’s February win on friendly home turf had been one thing, but his hard-fought victory against much tougher competition in France proved that the American was now an automatic contender at Europe’s most prestigious events, the Tour de France included.

Landis’s spring fling continued in April when he won the Tour de Georgia, a race he had lost in bitter fashion the year prior when Armstrong helped lead Discovery Channel rider Tom Danielson to victory over Phonak’s Landis.

For more on our 2006 awards, see the latest issue of VeloNews.
For more on our 2006 awards, see the latest issue of VeloNews.

Winning America’s top two stage races gave Landis an insurmountable lead in USA Cycling’s National Racing Calendar, but his focus lay elsewhere. After Georgia, he turned his attention toward the Tour, and the rest is history.

In the next few months, Landis will begin the process of attempting to prove he didn’t cheat to win the 2006 Tour de France. The eyes of the cycling world will be on Landis’s arbitration hearings, and while complicated arguments about scientific processes and procedures play out in public, the sad fact is that, no matter the outcome, the truth may never be known. What is known is that, for six months in 2006, Landis was the dominant North American in the pro peloton.

READERS’ CHOICE
Floyd Landis - 61.59%
George Hincapie - 27.91%
Levi Leipheimer - 10.49%
PREVIOUS WINNERS2005 Lance Armstrong2004 Chris Horner2003 Tyler Hamilton2002 Lance Armstrong2001 Roland Green2000 Marty Nothstein1999 Lance Armstrong1998 Lance Armstrong1997 Bobby Julich1996 Lance Armstrong1995 Lance Armstrong1994 Marty Nothstein1993 Lance Armstrong1992 Andy Hampsten1991 Mike Engleman1990 Greg LeMond1989 Greg Oravetz1988 Davis Phinney

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