Pain Train To Paris

Floyd Landis is your average, Kid-Rock-loving ex-Mennonite who just might win the Tour De France. Win or lose, though, his journey to cycling's pinnacle has already produced plenty of payback

It would have been so much easier to stay. Yes, Floyd Landis could have lived a nice life out here among the rolling hills and helpful neighbors of Pennsylvania dutch country. He could have conformed to the Mennonite ethic and lived a simple, rich life of family and faith: work hard, live right, slide into middle age with a half-dozen kids and a clear conscience. There are worse ways to live.

Very few choose otherwise. In this world, leaving is discouraged and obedience prized, so that explains that. The 141 white pages listings for "Landis" in and around Ephrata attest to the stability of the culture. They stay and live the religious life—Amish or Mennonite or any number of subsets of both—with varying degrees of passion. Like Landis' brother and four sisters, they stay, they conform, they witness.

But what if you don't belong? What if your life revolves around a religion you don't understand and an ethic you can't embrace? The literature of adolescence insists there's a place for everyone—geeks, stoners, jocks, brains, zealots. But what if nowhere feels right? What if, in a miracle that just might confirm the existence of God, you found an escape? What if it was something as simple as a bicycle, and what if it took you to places that were all yours, places no one else in your world even knew existed? Chances are, you'd ride that bike with the kind of passion you couldn't summon for religion. You would ride it until oxygen deprivation vaporized everything but the bike and the road.

That's what Floyd Landis did, anyway. And when he rides in this year's Tour de France (July 1-23) as one of the favorites, it'll be because he found that escape. Trading one obsession for another, Landis rode that bicycle through blinding snow and on pitchblack nights, rode it often enough and hard enough to make obsession seem normal.

As a kid, Landis worked at a grocery store after school, riding the ribbonlike back roads of Lancaster County at night, without a light. At 15, he won the first race he ever entered, the beginner's flight of a mountain bike race sponsored by a Lancaster bike shop. Since his religion discourages shorts, he wore sweats cut off below the knee. He didn't care what anyone thought; he was already the only guy in his high school gym class wearing jeans. Remembering those days now, he just shrugs and says, "If you want to be teased, be that guy."

His parents supported his passion while warning of its folly. Politely, Paul Landis told his son that riding a bicycle was a frivolous pursuit, and who could argue? Of course it was. "They told me it was pointless," Floyd says. "I couldn't fault them for that. Odds were, they were right." That only made him push harder. He kept pedaling, riding faster and farther away, and the bike is still taking him places no one else goes. He's been one of the world's best cyclists this year, and yet he can honestly say, "I still don't fit in anywhere, and never really have."

Landis won three of the stage races he entered this spring: Tour of California, Paris-Nice and Tour de Georgia. His coach, Robbie Ventura, calls it "one of the best spring campaigns for a stage racer ever." Asked if it's fair to classify him as a favorite in the Tour, Landis says with refreshing but typical candor, "I consider myself a favorite, yeah."

He is a fascinating study in seemingly incompatible—even competing—forces. Landis is a 30-year-old ex-Mennonite who relates to rocker/ rapper/countryer Kid Rock because "he doesn't really know what he wants to be either." He is an incredibly fit athlete who finishes a discussion about the benefits of a no-refined-sugar diet by saying, "I'm going to try that later. For now, I'm drinking Monsters." He's a motocross fan who gave one of the bikes he rode in Georgia—from arguably the biggest win of his career—to friend and neighbor Ernesto Fonseca, who was paralyzed in a motocross accident in March.

Landis is big for a cyclist, roughly 5'10" and 155 pounds, with reddish-brown hair, wide-set ears and close-set eyes that intensify his intensity. There's a permanent look of mischief to him, as if he's always thinking something he shouldn't say. Sometimes he even says it (see page 82).

So if Landis wins the Tour, the question is this: Can we handle it? Is the sports world ready to embrace an off-center star with a scathing wit who hides a competitive fury born of years of isolation? Is the larger world ready to replace Saint Lance with an ex-Mennonite who harbors a deepseated, maybe even pathological, tendency to train in a way best described as self-torture?

Landis was one of Lance Armstrong's trusted lieutenants for three years (and three Tour wins) on U.S. Postal before leaving to ride for Phonak after the 2004 season, in support of Tyler Hamilton. Although Phonak offered Landis a significant pay hike, his departure didn't sit well with Armstrong, whose "us vs. them" worldview immediately labeled Landis part of "them." Their friendship has since been repaired, but Landis didn't have time to worry about hurt feelings. In January 2005, after Hamilton was suspended for doping, Landis became team leader. He responded by finishing ninth in last year's Tour, one of three Americans in the top 10.

Ventura calls Landis "a complete one-off." What does he mean, exactly? Consider: When Landis—who spends much of the racing season in Spain—churns out 100-mile (or more) training rides through the mountains near his home in Murrieta, Calif., he's accompanied by his wife's 18-year-old brother, Max Basile. Max follows in a small SUV, and next to him sit the tools of his trade: a can of Mace and a stun gun. These are meant to protect Landis in case someone on these back roads, maybe a redneck type with spandex issues, messes with him.

But wouldn't just one weapon of mass deterrence suffice? "No," Landis says, as if the idea borders on blasphemy. "We need 'em both. That way we can blind 'em before we shock 'em."

THE MENNONITES could be classified as the progressive Amish. They use electricity and cars but not television or radio, although the Landises own a 13-inch TV/VCR that receives no outside channels and is used only to watch home movies. They believe in the Bible as a literal document and attend church or prayer services as often as four times a week. The women wear long, plain skirts and small white bonnets over hair buns.

Paul drives a truck, hauling stone for a local quarry. Arlene, Floyd's mom, doesn't work outside the home. When Paul goes about his work, the radio in his truck is either off or tuned to the station of his favorite preacher. Husband and wife avoid news reports but occasionally hear about events from friends or while shopping. They couldn't identify Ryan Seacrest on a bet. Most important, they believe they are missing nothing. As they sit on their front porch on a warm evening in late May, the silence is broken only by the occasional clipclop of a horse and buggy passing the house.

Not that they aren't proud. Signs of Floyd's success are everywhere in the home: scrapbooks and magazine covers and boxes of Beta tapes of their boy's races, shot by Paul. Now that Floyd is a star, cyclists routinely stop at the house to pose for photos in front of the mailbox that bears the family name. Arlene fills their water bottles and tells stories about her son. Floyd, along with wife Amber and 9-year-old daughter Ryan, generally spends one week a year in Ephrata, usually over Thanksgiving.

He left home at 19, moving to San Diego to become a pro mountain biker, with only a couple of minor sponsorships to sustain him. The decision was both inevitable and heart-wrenching. Both parents objected to their son's career choice—no pushy sports parents in Ephrata—but it was Paul who gave the dissent its voice. He told Floyd that he needed to get a job, needed to get his life together. "This isn't going to work out," he said repeatedly.

But Floyd left, and his departure was like a tide that went out and never came back, a subject that sits there, awkward and unwieldy.

Asked about Floyd's leaving, Arlene says only, "I pray he can remain a man of integrity." And when Floyd talks about that time, he is unusually careful with his words: "Riding was an escape from the beginning, and I don't know when it changed into something else. This is hard to explain without making my parents look bad, and that's not right. They're great parents. They love me, and I love them. They just believe in something I don't. I don't have any interest in trying to change their opinions, but I just couldn't make sense of it. My only choice was to leave and ignore it all."

Time and success have rounded the edges, and the strain appears to be gone. Paul can't tell enough stories about Floyd. Like the time a blizzard blew so hard it was nearly impossible to see across the driveway. The neighbor's house, 15 feet away, was a rumor. Floyd rode anyway. He donned a plastic garbage bag and set out, an indistinguishable gray shadow passing through the white nothing.

Sitting on the porch swing with his wife, with another Mennonite family picking asparagus in a nearby field, Paul says, "That was Floyd. Nothing could keep him off that bike." It's the Mennonite way. The Landises may not have approved of their son's cycling, but they supported him, driving to races, shooting video. The way of their religion is not to judge others and not to worry if others judge you.

Floyd never made much of a mark as a mountain bike pro. The sport's free-spirited culture wasn't his culture; his training preferences were far too structured and serious. In the winter of 1998, he found himself with no sponsor and little money. So he decided to become a road racer, a sport that fit his ethic, and he promptly embarked on a bodyravaging regimen that no sane trainer would ever consider: eight hours a day for 30 consecutive days. "He kicked his own ass every day, then got up the next morning to do it again," Ventura says. "There are maybe five people in the world in the kind of shape to do that. You would never recommend it, but it's the basis of his success."

Insane, maybe, but ask yourself this: What was the alternative? The alternative was failure, and a possible return to Ephrata and a life that he saw as benign acceptance. For years, Landis had ridden in the dark, after work or in a blizzard, with a garbage bag draped over his body. He won races in cutoff sweats. Why not 150 miles a day for 30 days?

And there was something else, a voice he heard whenever he rode, his father's voice.

This isn't going to work out.

Eight hours a day for 30 days was a promise and a purge. As hard as it was to leave, it would have been so much harder to go back. Landis punished himself to give his guilt shape and texture. In a sense, he redefined it to overcome it.

Success followed. Coincidence? Landis thinks for a while—again, the right words are vital—then says, "I think that's true. It truly was as hard on me as it was on them. I didn't know at the time whether I was right or not. I still don't. I mean, when you're told you're going to hell, that's not funny either. It'll stick with you."

So he left the religion, but it's easy to find its remnants. What were they teaching, after all? Selfsacrifice, discipline, hard work, the strength to pursue your beliefs regardless of outside influence. Where would he be without those qualities?

And where would the family be without Floyd? Cycling has expanded their world, too. Even before he became a star, Floyd was a regular on the amateur mountain bike circuit, winning a junior national championship at 17. His family traveled with him to those events in a van pulling a popup trailer. They looked as out of place as, well, Mennonites at a mountain bike race (their license plate holder read "Prayer Changes Things"). Later, two of his sisters attended the Tour of California, and his parents joined them at the Tour de Georgia. Paul and Arlene even went to France two years ago for the Tour.

They won't be there this year, though. "We need so much help over there, it's not fair to everybody else," Arlene says, laughing. Sister Priscilla, a pretty and composed 20-year-old, adds, "We're probably better off here." And so during the 21-day Tour, the Landises will walk every day to the house of a non-Mennonite, non-Amish friend who has cable. "People ask me why it took me so long to win races," Landis says. "But it took me a long time just to adjust to living in normal society. It wasn't an easy process."

His success is a testament to persistence, dedication and ignorance. That last word should not be shortchanged. Landis didn't know what the hell he was doing when he got on that bike day after day, mile after mile. He didn't know why he was doing it. He only knew that something was driving him, a force that allowed him to become something, and someone, else. He didn't know he was riding away to get closer to himself, but he does now. He didn't know he was trading obsessions, but he does now.

PAUL AND Arlene sit in front of their tiny television, going through home movies. On the screen, Floyd is winning a long-ago mountain bike race in Vermont. Paul is narrating, and as Floyd nears the finish line, you can hear his dad say, "Here he is, a great bike rider, a fine competitor and a terrific son." He's not overly sentimental, but it's obvious that Paul has retreated to another place as he watches his son and hears himself. Silent, it's as if he were watching it for the first time.

Across the country, Floyd sits in the fancy Southern California house he owns, struggling to find the words to convey complicated feelings. How does a man turn his back on everything his family holds sacred yet still express gratitude and love? Nobody, not Floyd or Paul or especially Arlene, wants to hurt anyone else's feelings. There are rough days and tough words in their past, but they seem to have reached a comfortable angle of repose.

Floyd rode his bicycle until it took him away, and now people stop at the driveway as if the house were a shrine. Arlene fills water bottles and regales them with stories. The third day of the Tour de Georgia, as Floyd was winning the time trial, Paul stood next to an elderly man who was rooting so hard for Floyd that there were tears in his eyes.

Where can a bicycle take you? The Landises—the simple, devout, friendly Landises—have traveled to unknown lands to watch their son and brother race. Even now, they're preparing for their shorter Tour pilgrimage, when they will walk to a neighbor's and permit the outside world to flicker into their lives.

There are times when a frivolous pursuit carries with it a wonderful power. A bicycle took their son away. Then, in a way that words can't convey, a bicycle brought him back.

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