Calzati wins Tour de France stage 8

Lorient (France): Tour de France riders get to put their feet up Monday, their first rest day.

They'll need it. Looming ahead are brutal ascents in the Pyrenees, which American Floyd Landis will need to climb strongly to confirm his status as favourite to succeed his former teammate, seven-time winner Lance Armstrong.

Landis is exactly one minute behind overall race leader Serhiy Honchar after nine days of racing in the three-week race.

But the Ukrainian may have trouble holding onto the leader's yellow jersey when the roads start heading sharply uphill.

As a teammate to Armstrong, who retired last year, Landis showed that he can climb, particularly when he came close to winning the hardest Alpine stage of the 2004 Tour.

But whether the Pennsylvania native, now leader of the Swiss squad Phonak, can truly impose himself on the steep gradients of the Pyrenees and Alps will be one of the big questions of weeks two and three.

"The mountains will tell us more, but so far, it's fine. I have a good team, and so far we've been fortunate - we haven't had any bad incidents. Till now, everything's good," Landis said on Sunday at the start of stage eight, which he finished safely in the middle of the trailing pack in 37th place.

Honchar finished 100th on Sunday, but also was in that pack - which was two minutes, 15 seconds behind stage winner Sylvain Calzati.

French rider Calzati won the stage with a solo effort, giving France reason to celebrate a few hours before its World Cup soccer final against Italy. (Though Calzati, whose father is Italian, confessed he was rooting for Italy.)

After the rest day, when sleep, massages and a light ride are in order, the Tour gets going again with a flat and likely fast stage from Bordeaux to Dax in the southwest.

Then, on Wednesday, comes the first of two hard climbing days in the Pyrenees.

For riders who fared poorly - and there were many - in the first long time trial of the Tour on Saturday, the mountains could offer a chance to make amends.

American George Hincapie and other riders from Discovery Channel, which was Armstrong's squad, as well as American Levi Leipheimer of Gerolsteiner, are among those who need to make up time they lost in the against-the-clock race.

"We are definitely not in the position we want to be," said Discovery race manager Johan Bruyneel.

"But a bad day, you have to put it behind as soon as you can and look to the opportunities you have. We actually have a lot of people who have the same interest as us, which means being aggressive, especially in the Pyrenees."

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Hincapie is 2:30 - a sizeable margin in the Tour - behind Honchar, a time-trial expert who dominated the field in Saturday's stage.

Discovery's best-placed rider is Paolo Savoldelli, a two-time winner of the Tour of Italy, who is 2:10 behind Honchar.

The Ukrainian, the first rider from his country to wear the yellow jersey, has eight top-10 finishes in the Italian tour and was runner-up in 2004.

But while that race has hard climbs, the Tour de France is a level above, with greater pressure and tougher competition.

The trouble for Landis is that Honchar is just one ace in a strong hand held by the German T-Mobile squad, which is surprisingly solid despite the withdrawal of its leader, 1997 Tour winner Jan Ullrich, and another rider because of allegations linking them to a doping ring in Spain.

T-Mobile, thanks to standout rides in the time trial, has four racers in the top six overall. They include Andreas Kloeden, runner-up to Armstrong in 2004.

"We have to be extremely careful because, with the team that they have, they are capable of creating diversions. They are in a position of strength from which to maneuver," said Landis' race manager, Jacques Michaud. "We have to be totally vigilant."

Calzati was the second French rider to win a Tour stage this year, after Jimmy Casper took stage one. The rider for the AG2R squad broke into tears after he crossed the line.

"I feel like I'm living a dream," said Calzati, who moved up to 37th overall. "It's really magic."

He was part of a group of five riders who broke ahead of the main pack about an hour into the 112-mile hilly stage from Saint-Meen-le-Grand to Lorient on the Atlantic coast of Brittany in northwest France.

With about 20 miles left, Calzati shook off the other riders in his small group and rode alone to the finish.

As he neared the line, he gave a high-five to a member of his team who pulled alongside in a car.

He finished 2:05 ahead of Kjell Carlstrom of Finland, a rider for the Liquigas squad.

Another French rider, Patrice Halgand of Credit Agricole, was third in the same time. The pack followed them, 10 seconds behind.