Landis wants to win Tour again

Floyd Landis, who is slowly recovering from hip surgery, will spend the Christmas holidays with his wife Amber and daughter Ryan at his home in Murrieta, Southern California. The Tour de France winner, discredited because of a positive doping test result for testosterone, hopes that the end of this rather turbulent year will bring him and his family some strength, in order to tackle the difficult months ahead. His hearing in front of the US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) is expected to take place in early 2007, possibly in March.

"Amber and I live from day to day now," said Landis in an interview with Sportwereld, published on Sunday. "We make the best of it. It's never going to be as it was before; the last few months have been a turning point in my life. The holidays will serve as mental rest."

Even though Landis told Belgian media recently that he didn't see himself as a bike racer any more, he has set his eyes on a possible come-back. "I want to be a professional cyclist again," he admitted. "I don't know when - next season or the year after. That goal keeps me sane. I hope that I will be called before the USADA in March, to prove to the world that this never happened. After that, I want to win the Tour again, so that I can get a real party."

The 31 year-old may be a long way away from doing just that, but his physical condition is improving together with his morale. "Each week, it gets batter," he continued. "I've been riding a bit more the last two weeks. Last week I rode during six hours to see how my hip would react. It was perfect. Mentally, it doesn't cost me a lot of energy anymore to step on the bike."

Landis has just accepted an invitation to race at the Leadville Trail, a mountainbike competition in Colorado on August 11, 2007. "I started my cycling career on mountainbike in 1993. I'm eager to go back to my roots. Training for Leadville will be an excellent preparation for a come-back at the Tour de France," he stated in a press release.