Tour de France

[langostino]

if Floyd wins his case ...

I can't really envision that it would be better for him to sit out the season doing some minor US races.

A guy like Armstrong, because of his cancer story and his persona, business management team (and personal skills in that area), etc. might have been able to sit out the Tour in 2004 or 2005 and gotten a series of very big appearance fees to do stuff domestically. But, to put it mildly, Floyd is no Lance. And the people surrounding Floyd resemble a version of the Keystone cops more than the sort of polished machine of pros that Lance, Bill Stapleton and Thom Weisel assembled.

So far as I know, there are no family issues that would be any different than in any other year, and as for his health, Floyd is fine. In fact, he's better than fine, and by Tour time, he may very well be even stronger in 2007 than he was in 2006. Remember, he was only off the bike for a month, plus reduced workload post-Tour for another month. Here we are in mid-December and I guarantee you his training workload is heavier than probably the majority of guys in the pro peloton, with plans to really begin to ramp it up in January. I believe he'll be carrying a very heavy workload by February -- probably a bigger workload this coming year than last year!

Remember, this guy averaged 371 watts output for the big 8 mile climb on his normal training grounds three weeks ago. That's even a bit higher than what he averaged on the climbs in the infamous Stage 17 of the Tour last summer.