An interview with Floyd Landis: Making the best of the situation

Floyd Landis - determined to have a solid 2005 (Image credit: Chris Henry)

As Christmas week began, Cyclingnews finally caught up with a busy Floyd Landis, who has definitively decided to stay with Team Phonak Hearing Systems for 2005. Landis just returned from Switzerland a week ago, where he attended Phonak team meetings to discuss the difficult situation on the team going into 2005. Although constructed to be a major ProTour team, Phonak's ProTour license application was not accepted by the UCI's Professional Cycling Council in November, nor accepted on appeal early in December. Since then, Phonak riders and staff have scrambled to figure out what 2005 will have in store for the Swiss squad.

Since his return from snowy Switzerland, Landis has been training in the sunny 80 degree Fahrenheit weather in southern California. Floyd was at the Trek Superstore in San Diego this Saturday for a personal appearance where 200 fans showed up, but we missed him there and Cyclingnews finally caught up with Landis when he had just finished an early morning ride with his friend and former Mercury teammate Mike Sayers, who was travelling from his home in Arizona to see his parents for Christmas in his hometown of Sacramento, CA.

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Floyd Landis: I've been back for a week and I have decided to stay with the Phonak team. I want to make the best of the situation; I was at the team meetings near Zurich and saw the other riders and went over everything with the team management. Sure, I had some other opportunities but I decided to stay. It was not an easy decision, but I'm happy with it. In many ways, it wasn't Phonak's fault that they didn't get into the ProTour in 2005 and I still believe that they have good intentions. Things should work out...and it's sad for cycling if a guy like Andy Rihs is out. He cares a lot about the sport and his team.

FL: We did a lot of talking before on the phone, so when I got on the plane I had already made up my mind to stay. The purpose of the meetings were to have a clearer picture of what is happening on the team. When I got there, I spent time with everybody. My soigneur [from US Postal], Freddy Viane, was there and Victor Hugo Pena; Robbie Hunter was there and he's a nice guy. So I found that everyone was pretty much in the same situation as me. It seemed like the general consensus was that we would all stay and make the best of the situation on the team next season.

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