Floyd Landis is, for the first time in his cycling career, in the public eye. And you have to admit that it would have been pretty difficult for him to give interviews and show on the sports magazine's covers - like he will in the next few weeks - with Lance Armstrong in the Tour. Still, his time finally came and he is more than happy with his performance in this year's Tour.

Not a very long time ago, he wanted to retire from cycling. He didn't have enough money to continue competing in great competitions and was decided to work as a waiter in a San Diego restaurant. Still, he was convinced by John Wordin - his first team manager - not to give up. And he didn't. He went to US Postal and was Lance Armstrong's lieutenant for a while. He then decided to go on his own, at Phonak.

And, after 3 years of hard work, he managed to win Le Tour. Floyd Landis is not a man of many words, but explained his success with 3 words: hard work, will and luck. In an interview to Eurosport, he admitted that recovering that much time on the 20th of July - after losing 10 minutes on Alpe d'Huez - had a lot to do with luck.

"I wished and hoped that one day I would have the opportunity to be the leader of a team and to win the Yellow Jersey, but I know it takes a lot of hard work and a lot of sacrificing from a lot of people and some luck on top of that, so I feel lucky. The streak is mostly thanks to Lance as he won 7 in a row, so whether I am part of the streak I don't know. There is a lot of people in the race who want to win as much as me, and as I said, I feel lucky because the race is three weeks long and a lot of things can happen and a lot of people have put as much hard work into it as I have and on the right days we had the right luck", said Landis.

As for his former US Postal experience, he concluded: "I feel fortunate to have been there and racing the Tour with the objective of winning and believing that you can win. I wasn't there for the first four Tours so maybe it was smoother when I was there than at the beginning, but it was an experience than not many people have a chance to see a team working together and spending 100% of the time and energy believing that it is a possibility to win".