American Flyers

While all eyes (and cameras) are locked on the Texan pedaling for a seventh crown, seven U.S. riders not named Lance will play key roles on the road-and some may challenge for the yellow jersey

>GEORGE HINCAPIE, DISCOVERY CHANNEL

Of all the attributes that Lance Armstrong looks for in a teammate-brains, talent, tenacity-he values one above all else: loyalty. Less "Lance is my best bud" loyalty than "I'll sacrifice everything to get Lance in yellow" loyalty. And that explains why George Hincapie is the only rider to pedal alongside Armstrong in all six of the Texan's Tour de France triumphs.

Actually, Hincapie usually can be found pedaling in front of Armstrong, ripping a pocket through the wind, protecting him in the peloton, pacing him up mountainsides. Yet Big George is also a monster one-day racer and could be one of the sport's big names if he focused on the Spring Classics and other major races. To punctuate the point, Hincapie finished second in April's Paris-Roubaix, the epic, cobblestone-studded, 160-mile crusher.

All of which has caused considerable wonder among cycling cognoscenti: why has Hincapie stayed with Armstrong? After all, a number of talented Armstrong lieutenants-Americans Bobby Julich, Tyler Hamilton, Levi Leipheimer, Kevin Livingston and Floyd Landishave bolted for more profitable pastures. Even the 32-year-old Hincapie says he's turned down lucrative offers from European teams hoping to pry him away. Insiders estimate that Hincapie earns about $750,000 a year and leaves another $150K on the table by sticking around. But he's stayed with Postal and Discovery (the new team sponsor) for two reasons: comfort and loyalty. "There is definitely a special relationship that I have with Lance," Hincapie says. "I couldn't imagine racing against him."

Hincapie is also a creature of habit. He's ridden for American teams throughout his 11-year pro career (Motorola, U.S. Postal, Discovery), and team managers have learned to trust his racing and training programs. He picks the races he wants to ride and, following the Spring Classics, he moves home to Greenville, S.C., for six weeks while his Discovery teammates train in Girona, Spain. "The team knows I train super hard," says Hincapie, "and when I come back to race in the Tour I'll be fine."

Ah, the Tour. Training to ride the mountainous three-week race has changed Hincapie. Once a pure sprinter who was loaded with muscle, he's now leaner (6'3'', 164 pounds) and has lost some of his finishing kick. On the plus side, he's a more dominating all-around rider: strong on the flats, in time trials and through the middle slopes of the mountains. In the crowded peloton, Hincapie acts as Armstrong's pulling guard. Spot Lance, and you'll see George six inches off his front wheel. "Sometimes you have to move guys out of the way," says Hamilton. That's Hincapie's role.

In addition to helping Armstrong win six times, Hincapie has mined the Tour for other bounty. He met his fiancée, Melanie, after the 2003 Tour prologue. She was one of those impossibly gorgeous podium girls, and after Hincapie spotted her, he returned to the team bus and declared, "I'm in love." It took several calls before she agreed to go out with him, but today they have an 8-month-old daughter, Julia Paris, and October marriage plans.

Back in the peloton, it's easy to debate Hincapie's would-have-been place in cycling's history. But the rider has answered for himself. "I wouldn't trade any of the Tour de France victories," he says. "I definitely feel a part of them, and I know Lance feels the same way."

That's why he's stayed. -BRION O'CONNOR

>CHRIS HORNER, SAUNIER DUVAL-PRODIR

Chris Horner has seen bike racing's brutal side. Before turning pro in 1995, he drove to races knowing he needed to win gas money for the drive home. He used credit cards to buy things so he could return them for cash. He baby-sat for his sister's kids in return for a room, and smuggled soda into fast-food joints (the only places he could afford to eat). "I'm not saying you can eat McDonald's seven days a week and still win races," says Horner. "I'm just telling you that I have."

Four times in his 10 years as a pro, the 33-year-old Horner has been the topranked rider in the U.S. But he's still hungry for the main meal: a ride in the Tour de France. He'll get his shot this year with the Spanish team Saunier Duval-Prodir.

To outsiders, Horner might have been forgiven had he said no when Saunier invited him to join the team last fall. "Most of my years in Europe have been frustrating," says Horner, who lived in France from 1997 to 1999 and rode for La Francaise des Jeux. He was scheduled to ride the Tour in 1998 but broke his wrist. His fortunes didn't improve over the next two years, and after a string of disappointing results, Horner returned to the U.S. That did the trick: he was a podium contender at nearly every one of the 30-or-so U.S. races he entered each year, and living back home gave him more time to see his three kids in Bend, Ore.

But just when it seemed that Horner's Tour time had passed, he finished a stunning eighth at the 2004 worlds. Impressed, Saunier called and Horner jumped, even though he wasn't guaranteed a Tour spot. He cracked his right femur in a March crash, which caused him to miss the Tour of Italy and the Tour de Georgia. But following a third-place finish at the June U.S. Pro in Philly and a mountaintop stage win in the Tour of Switzerland, Saunier handed him the keys to the Tour, where he will be a domestique for co-leaders Fabian Jeker and Juan Carlos Dominguez.

The timing, says Horner, is perfect: "I'm the freshest guy on the team." Not to mention the hungriest. -BONNIE DESIMONE

>BOBBY JULICH, CSC

You'd be hard-pressed to find a sweatier rider than Bobby Julich after a stage of Le Tour. But that doesn't mean the 33-year-old sweats it when he's off his bike. "I'm so over worrying about the fine details of the Tour," Julich says. "I wasted five years of my life stressing about that one race, and it gave me no pleasure. My knowledge of the Tour route is minimal."

Not that Julich, who has started seven Tours and finished six, lacks ambition. He wants to win his first Tour stage and wear the yellow jersey for at least a day. He just has realistic goals. "I'm not going there with the aspiration of winning the Tour," he says.

The bar was not always so middling for Julich. He grew up in Colorado and fell for cycling at 13, when he watched the now-defunct Coors Classic speed through his hometown of Glenwood Springs. He won the national junior championships two years after he started racing, and turned pro in 1992. He placed third in the 1998 Tour, making him the only American not named Armstrong or LeMond to stand on the podium.

But Julich's confidence dissolved over the next few years, as he spun his wheels with a series of ill-fitting European teams. By 2003, he was watching the Tour from his couch. That fall, he got the call from Bjarne Riis, director for Denmark-based CSC. Less than two months after gutting through a broken wrist to finish the 2004 Tour, Julich found himself with an Olympic bronze medal in the time trial. Two wins in Europe early this season have restored his swagger. And while his role at the Tour will be to help team leader Ivan Basso dethrone Armstrong, Julich's more modest goals are within reach.

"I didn't want to retire bitter and disgruntled," Julich says. "I decided I had to forget all my baggage and concentrate on having fun." No sweat. -B.D.

>LEVI LEIPHEIMER, GEROLSTEINER

Without question, Levi Leipheimer is one of the toughest, most talented U.S. cyclists in any peloton. But mention his heavy handle outside the thin-wheeled world, and Leipheimer has less name recognition than a Star Wars extra. Too bad, considering his pedaling pedigree:
-Third at the 2001 Tour of Spain, riding for U.S. Postal.
-Fourth in the time trial at the 2001 worlds.
-Top-10 finishes with Rabobank at the 2002 and 2004 Tour de France.
-Third at the 2005 Dauphiné Libéré, a pre-Tour tune-up.

With this riding résumé, it was no surprise that German team Gerolsteiner recruited the 31-year-old as its 2005 team leader. "I can see him being top-five, top-three," says Lance Armstrong, Leipheimer's former teammate. "I've spent more time this year training with Levi than I ever have before. I'm impressed by how hard he works. You can go on five-, six-, seven-hour rides, and he never complains, never whines."

Leipheimer grew up in Montana, where he was an accomplished downhill ski racer until he fractured several vertebrae in a 1991 wipeout. He switched to cycling, turning pro in 1997. But cycling has given him more than a career. At the 1997 U.S. championships, Leipheimer met Canadian racer Odessa Gunn (above). Coffee and a training ride followed, and two weeks later, Leipheimer sent Gunn a round-trip plane ticket to California. She never made the return flight. Now married, they split time between homes in Santa Rosa, Calif., and Girona, Spain.

Always a time-trial hammer, Leipheimer pounded himself into a Tour force by sharpening his already potent climbing power. And for the first time in his career, he has a pro team dedicated to driving him into Paris. He's done his part by placing all of his training bets in the Tour basket, spending more time riding the mountains, training at altitude and racing sparingly to sharpen his legs. "I feel as good as I ever have," he says. "Fresher mentally, and with a lot more motivation."

Sounds like somebody ready to make a name for himself. -B. D.

>FRED RODRIGUEZ, DAVITAMON-LOTTO

It's not surprising that a sprinter would be a caffeine freak. Take the 31-year-old Freddie Rodriguez. As a closer for the Belgian team Davitamon-Lotto, Rodriguez likes to cycle off the pace in a 150-mile race, staying tucked out of the wind to conserve energy. Then, with about 250 meters to the finish, the java kicks in and Rodriguez cranks his bike to 40 mph, banging helmets and bars with the world's fastest riders.

Rodriguez, who sells his own Fast Freddie Turbo Blend coffee on his website (fredrodriguez.com), pedals as fast as any rider in the world and has three U.S. pro championships since 2000 to prove it. He's also earned rides in the Tour de France, Tour of Italy and Tour of Spain, and he's one of only four U.S. riders to finish all three Grand Tours.

Both coffee and cycling are in his blood: Rodriguez was born in Colombia and his father raced there. The family moved to California when Rodriguez was 2, and Dad put Freddie on a bike as soon as his feet could reach the ground. But while climbing is supposed to be second nature for Colombian riders, Rodriguez preferred sprinting. And although he's started the Tour de France four times, he's finished just once (2000).

Rodriguez picked up his first Grand Tour stage during last year's Tour of Italy. Racing for Acqua e Sapone, he put his head down into a headwind on an uphill finish of Stage 9, got an early jump on Italy's Alessandro Petacchi and edged the world's greatest speedster at the line. After the season, Rodriguez changed gears and hopped to Davitamon-Lotto, his third move in three years.

Although Aussie Robbie McEwen is the top sprinter on Davitamon-Lotto, Rodriguez says their styles are different enough to give the team a contender in any sprint finish. McEwen likes to make his move in the last 50 to 100 yards, perfect for hyperspeed finishes, while Rodriguez comes from farther back, a style suited to uphill sprints or a headwind run. But Rodriguez has a full pot ready for either style of finish. "The past three years, I really haven't gone to the Tour with everything firing correctly," he says. "This year I should be more of a contender instead of a wild card."

And that's not the coffee talking. -B.D.

>FLOYD LANDIS, PHONAK

During Stage 17 of last year's Tour de France, the pace set by U.S. Postal's Floyd Landis destroyed the peloton in the Alps. One by one, riders dropped back, leaving Landis alone with teammate Lance Armstrong and rivals Jan Ullrich and Andreas Kloden of T-Mobile and Ivan Basso of CSC. At the top of the last climb, Armstrong urged Landis to break away for the stage win, telling him, "Run like you stole something."

Although Landis ultimately ran out of steam and lost the stage to Armstrong, he won big after the Tour when he signed a contract to jump from Postal to the Swiss-based Phonak team. Which means that in July, the Kid Rock look-alike ("He knows every word to every Kid Rock song ever made," says former teammate George Hincapie) will line up alongside Armstrong (below, left) again, this time as the leader of a rival team. It will cap an off-season in which Team Phonak was kicked out and then readmitted to the Tour after previous team leader Tyler Hamilton was suspended for alleged blood doping. "It's been pretty traumatic," says Landis. "There was never any certainty."

What is certain is that the 29-year-old Landis has had a strange ride from Lancaster County, Pa., to leader of a European bike racing team. The son of conservative Mennonites, Landis grew up without TV, forbidden by his religion to exercise on Sundays. He bought a mountain bike at 15 to pedal to local fishing holes, and later that summer entered his first race. He won. For the first couple of years, he wore modest baggy shorts when he rode, but by 1993 he had received permission from his Mennonite minister to wear tight Lycra shorts. By then he was a national mountain bike champ, and for the next six years he raced in the woods. He switched to skinny tires in 1999, riding for pro teams Mercury and U.S. Postal. He also moved outside the Mennonite religion and now lives in San Diego during cycling's off-season.

Thanks to his all-around riding skills, it looked as if Landis was being groomed to take over as leader of Discovery following Armstrong's retirement. So even Landis was stunned when the team presented him a lowball contract offer last summer. When Phonak called with a better deal, Landis didn't give DC a chance to counter. "I was angry," he says. "Obviously, the only way to put a value on something is with money."

Dressed in the green and yellow Phonak colors, Landis finished third in April's Tour de Georgia. Not even a rift with Armstrong, who reportedly is miffed at Landis for leaving, can dampen his enthusiasm. He says life in the pressurecooker atmosphere of Team Lance prepared him for his unexpected leadership role, and he looks forward to pedaling up the tall mountains with Armstrong in the 2005 Tour. This year, when he rides like he's stolen something, it might just be the yellow jersey. -B.O.

>DAVID ZABRISKIE, CSC

In May, Dave Zabriskie became only the third U.S. rider to win a time trial at the Tour of Italy. His reaction? "Rock and roll, dude!''

At the same race, the free-spirited Zabriskie realized he'd left a selfmade mix CD on the bus of U.S. Postal. Although he'd switched from Postal to CSC last fall, Zabriskie wanted his music back. So he barged onto the bus (now painted with Discovery Channel colors) and rifled through the CD collection until he found his disc.

All in a day's work for the 26-year-old Zabriskie, cycling's unofficial minister of entertainment. During lulls in the middle of a road race, he pedals up to competitors to conduct impromptu interviews. "Do you like Star Wars?" he asked Alessandro Petacchi at the Tour of Italy. "Do you consider yourself a superhero?" he asked Aussie sprint king Robbie McEwen. The answers are posted on his website (davezabriskie.com). Zabriskie, who grew up in Salt Lake City, started cycling after he broke his arm rollerblading in junior high. A strong all-around rider, he developed his cycling chops quickly, winning the national under-23 time trial championship in 2001. Postal signed him to his first pro contract later that fall.

But the biggest break of his career came last season, when he logged two remarkable late-season rides: a solo breakaway stage win in the Tour of Spain in September, and fifth place in the time trial at the world championships in October. Those finishes impressed CSC, which wooed him away from Postal.

Zabriskie will ride in his first Tour de France in 2005. His job: power the team on the flats and pull as far as he can into the mountains to help team leader Ivan Basso, one of Lance Armstrong's biggest threats for the yellow jersey. Zabriskie's personality can be jarring to teammates, but they've learned to work together. "I've grown up,'' Zabriskie says. "Maybe I did get out of hand with my humor." Whatever the cause, his affable modesty has won over his teammates and CSC director Bjarne Riis, who says he values Zabriskie's work ethic above all else. Says Zabriskie: "Bjarne understands I can be serious when I need to be serious."

July 2 would be a good day to start. -B.D.

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