With all commentators, including Floyd Landis, admitting that it would take a miracle for Floyd to get anywhere near the podium in Paris, it seemed this morning as if his race was over.

But Floyd Landis still had more tricks up his sleeve. Today’s Stage 17 was a 200 km event with two category 1s, a category 2, a category 3 and a beyond category climb.

Floyd attached at the 130 km mark. By the time he had climbed the find summit of the beyond category Col de Joux Plane, Floyd had a five minute lead over Carlos Sastre and was finaly able to win a stage of the tour de france over seven minutes ahead of Oscar Pereiro. With the time bonuses won by Sastre and Landis, Pereiro is holding on to the jersey by a very thin margin.

Whereas yesterday Floyd seemed to be out of the race in 11th place, today he is back in the hunt. Sastre is in second place in the GC , 12 seconds behin pereiro, with Landis in third just 30 seconds behind.

Floyd told interviewers “I have come here to win the Tour and I am not done fighting yet,”

“It does not look so bad for me at the moment and I am confident in my time trialling.

“I want to win the tour. If I had a bad day, I had to make up for it. Whoever wants to win this race has to earn it.”

So here is the general classification after Stage 17:
1. Oscar Pereiro (ESP) Caisse d’Epargne
2. Carlos Sastre (ESP) CSC at 0’12”
3. Floyd Landis (USA) Phonak at 0’30”
4. Andreas Kloeden (GER) T-Mobile at 2’29”
5. Cadel Evans (AUS) Davitamon – Lotto at 3’08”
6. Denis Menchov (RUS) Rabobank at 4’14”
7. Cyril Dessel (FRA) AG2R at 4’24”
8. Christophe Moreau (FRA) AG2R at 5’44”
9. Haimar Zubeldia (SPA) Euskaltel at 8’16”
10. Michael Rogers (AUS) T-Mobile at 12’13”