Rebel Rebel

The scene has defined America: A strong-willed son confronts his parents, telling them he is moving west, striking off into the wilderness to seek his destiny, perhaps never to return. Yet never in the history of the republic has that scene been acted out like it was in October 1995, on a large family farm in Lancaster County, Pa. Floyd Landis, a thin young Mennonite with ginger hair and the thick hands of a bricklayer, informed his parents that he was off to California to chase his dream. What he wanted more than anything, Floyd told them, was to race bicycles. That was his destiny.

Paul and Arlene Landis had raised their boy to reject the trappings of the modern world. They believed that he was damning himself to the fires of hell, and told him so. He went anyway. "It wasn't easy to leave," Landis explains. "I loved them, and I didn't want to hurt them."

We are seated in a Barcelona cafe. His lunch is a 12-inch baguette and a large coffee with milk, both of which he is too polite to touch until the interview is over. Landis is famous in Europe. Passersby swivel their heads in recognition as he softly concludes the story: "I didn't leave because they were bad parents or I hated them. I left because I wanted something else."

This July 23, that "something else" may come to pass. A decade later after leaving home, Landis is a favorite to win the Tour de France, which begins Saturday. So far this year he has won the Tour of California, Paris-Nice and Tour de Georgia stage races.

At 30, he is coming into his competitive prime as an endurance athlete, and is the undisputed leader of the powerhouse Phonak team, sponsored by a Swiss hearing-aid company. If Landis can avoid crashing, mental letdown, media pressure, the predations of his European rivals and the common cold during the Tour's 2,237 miles and 21 days of racing, he may stand atop the podium in the Place de la Concorde sometime around 7 p.m. on that third Sunday in July.

"He had to come to California to get to where he is now," says his wife, Amber. "He couldn't do it there."

Many see a rebellious touch in Landis' choice of residences. "You've got one of the greatest cyclists in the world, a man who could buy a house anywhere he wants," marvels Matt Ford, owner of Rock N' Road Cyclery in Mission Viejo, "and he lives in the 909."