Landis prepares for long road ahead The Tour de France victor has yet to rest after his comeback

Back in his hotel room after seeing his overall lead evaporate like an ice cream cone in July, a depressed Floyd Landis rebuilt his energy and redesigned his Tour de France strategy.

Wednesday morning in the cycling race's mountainous 16th stage, an undernourished Landis looked to have blown his chances, not just relinquishing his advantage but falling more than eight minutes behind new leader Oscar Pereiro of Spain.

"Once I got something to eat and got my head together, I realized I couldn't change what happened," the 30-year-old Lancaster County native said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I knew that for me, [the 17th stage] was going to be a Hail Mary pass, that's all."

Landis, ironically less weary than his competitors because he had raced so slowly the previous day, completed the last-minute bomb. His astounding comeback in Stage 17 on Thursday -- when he made up all but 30 seconds of the deficit -- set the stage for him to become just the third American to capture cycling's premier event.

He won the event's final Alpine stage by a resounding 5 minutes, 42 seconds. Landis captured the Tour de France title on Sunday.

"It was a bit of a roller coaster," Landis said from his Paris hotel room, a day after receiving the victor's yellow jersey on the Champs-Elysees. "I was as down after a race as I've ever been after Stage 16. And then after Stage 17, it was as happy as I'd ever been."

The highs and lows "usually don't come and go that quickly," he said. "I'm happy it went that way because being down in a bike race is no fun. But the way the race went wasn't quite like I had pictured it in my mind. I'd just as soon have won a race that was boring to watch on television."

Landis said he had spent much of the last 24 hours doing interviews and hiding out in his hotel, though the non-practicing son of Mennonite parents admitted he had "stayed out a lot longer than I wished I would have" Sunday night.

The red-haired cyclist said more interviews and TV appearances -- on both coasts -- will await him when he returns to the United States next week.

Before that, he said, he plans to race in a few 1 1/2-hour Netherlands events.

And while he never admitted as much, Landis understood that those minor events could be the last in a cycling career that began 15 years ago after he purchased a mountain bike at a bike shop near his parents' Farmersville, Pa., home.

Sometime after he returns to his current home in a San Diego suburb, he will undergo hip-replacement surgery. It could be as early as next month.

"Yeah, I'm a little nervous," he said. "It would be really sad if it were over now. But having won the Tour, I'm a little more calm about it."

Ideally, the cyclist, who said he had two cortisone injections in his deteriorating right hip not long before the Tour began three weeks ago, will recover for six to eight weeks and then begin training and rehabbing the rebuilt joint. He could be ready for next summer's Tour and, if the artificial hip holds up, the 2008 Olympics in Beijing.

"By next spring, I probably won't be in the shape I was in this spring, but I should be back racing with no trouble," he said.

Before the operation, Landis plans to return to Pennsylvania. The city of Lancaster, he was told, is in the process of planning a parade in his honor.

In the meantime, he will decide whether he is going to return to his Phonak team or move elsewhere. Seven-time Tour champion Lance Armstrong told reporters last week that he would welcome his former teammate back to his Discovery Channel team.

"I'm quite happy where I am," Landis said. "I have spoken with [Discovery] in the past few months, even before the Tour. But there were never any offers or decisions one way or the other."

Whatever happens in Landis' future, the remarkable manner in which he accomplished his victory has already gained legendary status among Tour devotees.

"The reality was I didn't have any choice," he said of his rally. "I was down eight minutes and there was only one mountain stage left, and it was the only way I was going to win the race... . I guess it looked like some kind of miraculous improvement, but it was just that I was so bad the day before."