Landis could have left rest with a mountain to climb

CYCLING/Tour de France Stage 15: Floyd Landis may not want the yellow jersey quite yet - he is worried about the strength of his team - but it came his way yesterday, once again by an infinitesimal margin, and if there is any truth in the old saying that the rider in yellow here will wear yellow in Paris, it may be his to keep.

Landis repeatedly used the word "conservative" yesterday to describe his tactics in this race and he was right. On Monday's rest day he was accompanied in his training ride by Eddy Merckx, whose son Axel is his Phonak team-mate, but none of "Big Ted's" imperious riding style seemed to have rubbed off on the American on this stage. He rode into yellow with all the bravado of a fieldmouse.

Where Merckx or Lance Armstrong would have tried to eliminate as many rivals as possible and take the psychological whip hand, Landis was content to follow the pace set yesterday by the German Andreas Kloden and said it would have been "just as well with him" if the Spaniard Oscar Pereiro had retained the race lead.

As a rallying cry, this was hardly the Battle Hymn of the Republic, and indeed the American rarely forced the pace in spite of the fact that three dangermen - Denis Menchov, Cadel Evans and Carlos Sastre - were struggling.

This was curious, and possibly a mistake, as they remained within reach of him last night, when Landis appeared to have the worst of both worlds - the yellow jersey is his, but not by a margin that could be called definitive. Pereiro, Saturday's hero, is only 10 seconds behind. Kloden, Evans, Sastre and Menchov remain within three minutes.

"I was content to follow, because it wasn't necessary to put time into the other guys," he explained, going against the conventional wisdom that in a stage race, you eliminate rivals when they are weak. Landis clearly could, and perhaps should, have done more.

After all, this was the Tour's toughest climb, partly because the slopes are unremitting for eight miles, but also because there is no run-in on the drags the French call "false flat" for the legs to adapt.

At the exit from the village of Bourg d'Oisans, the 21 hairpins go straight up the cliff-face above the river Romanche. The transition is sudden and merciless, and the dilemma obvious - if a rider attempts to hold the pace of the best, he may crack decisively; if he goes at his own pace he will be left too far behind to catch up.

Yesterday, the riders tackled the one-in-eight slopes cold, having travelled at up to 60mph down the descent from the Col du Lautaret - the 50-strong group containing Landis and the other favourites, plus a host of hopeful hangers-on, hit the first hairpins like a wave striking a rock and the effect was not dissimilar.

Within minutes the pattern was set as the Spaniard Pereiro slipped backwards, opting to limit his losses, and a lead group formed under the impulsion of Landis and Kloden. One by one Menchov, Evans and Sastre slipped back, but Landis never drove home his advantage, to the clear frustration of Kloden who would also have profited from their joint rivals losing time.

As is often the case here, there were two races going on yesterday - the tight marking between the contenders for the overall standings, and the battle for the stage win, contested by a massive escape of 25 men that took off before the climb of the Col d'Izoard.

This is one of the Tour's legendary battlegrounds, with its colossal scree slopes and Death Valley-style rock pinnacles, but while the 25 leaders forged on, behind them Landis and several others showed no respect for the history of the place and stopped to answer nature's call close to the summit.

Of the 25, two men of the future survived to fight out the stage win - the Italian Damiano Cunego, the blond starlet who dominated the 2004 Giro d'Italia but little since, and the Luxembourgois Franck Schleck, whose father rode the Tour in the 1960s and who has been tipped as a future Tour winner since taking the Amstel Gold Race single-day Classic in the spring.

Cunego looked the more aggressive of the two, but it was Schleck who sprang away as they approached the first ski chalets just before the flag indicating 2km to go. His climbing style is efficient, but distinctly knock-kneed, his legs seeming to bend in the middle with every pedal stroke.

There was little of Luxembourg's great climber, the late "Angel of the Mountains" Charly Gaul, about him - apart from the result, which puts him alongside the greats.

As ever, the Alpe was mountain mayhem, if not on the same scale as the time-trial stage two years ago when Armstrong won. There were actually a few gaps among the spectators perched on the roadsides and up the stone retaining walls. Once this was almost exclusively the mountain of the Dutch, but in recent years the Alpe has gone international.

LEADING POSITIONS

(stage 15 Gap - L'Alpe d'Huez: (187km)

1 Frank Schleck (Lux) Team CSC 4hrs 52mins 22secs, 2 Damiano Cunego (Ita) Lampre-Fondital at 0.11secs, 3 Stefano Garzelli (Ita) Liquigas at 1.10, 4 Floyd Landis (USA) Phonak, 5 Andreas Kloden (Ger) T-Mobile all at same time, 6 Ruben Lobato (Spa) Saunier Duval at 1.14, 7 Sylvain Chavanel (Fra) Cofidis at 1.18, 8 Eddy Mazzoleni (Ita) T-Mobile at 1.28, 9 Carlos Sastre (Spa) Team CSC at 1.35, 10 Levi Leipheimer (USA) Gerolsteiner at 1.49, 11 Denis Menchov (Rus) Rabobank at 2.21, 12 Michael Rasmussen (Den) Rabobank, 13 Pietro Caucchioli (Ita) Credit Agricole all at same time, 14 Oscar Pereiro (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne-Illes Balears at 2.49, 15 Michael Rogers (Aus) T-Mobile, 16 Cadel Evans (Aus) Davitamon-Lotto, 17 Ivan Ramiro Parra (Col) Cofidis all at same time, 18 Axel Merckx (Bel) Phonak at 2.56, 19 Cyril Dessel (Fra) AG2R-Prevoyance at 3.04, 20 Haimar Zubeldia (Spa) Euskaltel-Euskadi at same time.

General Classification (after Stage 15)

1 Floyd Landis (USA) Phonak 69hrs 00mins 05secs, 2 Oscar Pereiro (Spa) Caisse d'Epargne-Illes Balears at 0.10secs, 3 Cyril Dessel (Fra) AG2R-Prevoyance at 2.02, 4 Denis Menchov (Rus) Rabobank at 2.12, 5 Carlos Sastre (Spa) Team CSC at 2.17, 6 Andreas Kloden (Ger) T-Mobile at 2.29, 7 Cadel Evans (Aus) Davitamon-Lotto at 2.56, 8 Michael Rogers (Aus) T-Mobile at 5.01, 9 Levi Leipheimer (USA) Gerolsteiner at 6.18, 10 Haimar Zubeldia (Spa) Euskaltel-Euskadi at 6.20, 11 Christophe Moreau (Fra) AG2R-Prevoyance at 6.22, 12 Frank Schleck (Lux) Team CSC at 7.07, 13 Yaroslav Popovych (Ukr) Discovery Channel at 7.36, 14 Juan Miguel Mercado (Spa) Agritubel at 7.39, 15 Marcus Fothen (Ger) Gerolsteiner at 8.23, 16 Michael Boogerd (Ned) Rabobank at 9.15, 17 Sylvain Chavanel (Fra) Cofidis at 9.56, 18 Axel Merckx (Bel) Phonak at 10.25, 19 Ivan Ramiro Parra (Col) Cofidis at 10.43, 20 Georg Totschnig (Aut) Gerolsteiner at 10.53.