Friday, June 30 - Nathan Dahlberg was eating dinner after returning home from a race. The year was 1988. Riding for 7-Eleven, the New Zealand neophyte had not made the team’s nine-man roster for the Tour de France.

But that all changed in a matter of minutes. The phone rang. 7-Eleven Team Director Jim Ochowicz was calling from Paris. They would need Dahlberg. Pronto. One of the team’s riders had been hit by a car the day before prologue time trial.

So Dahlberg, who had just raced a 100 km+ race earlier that day, hastily packed up his bike and gear and drove five hours through the night to join his teammates at the start.

That last-minute “call-up” is not unusual. It happened in 2000 when US Postal Service rider Christian Vande Velde was bitten by a spider just days before the Tour and Steffen Kjaergaard from Norway was named his replacement.

But the practice of removing riders – or entire teams – is rare. On Friday, instead of reading a pre-race article about the favorites preparing for the prologue time trial, we received a nearly hour-by-hour account of who was in – and out – of this year’s race.

The American Impact
Twenty-five years ago, Jonathan Boyer became the first American to ride the Tour. Five short years later, another American, Greg LeMond, was one of the favorites to win cycling’s most prestigious race. Flash-forward 20 years to Friday and suddenly it’s not one, but three (or even four) Americans who are being tabbed as favorites (Floyd Landis, George Hincapie, Levi Leipheimer and Bobby Julich, in no particular order).

Whenever there is no “patron” of the peloton (i.e. Lance Armstrong, Miguel Indurain, Greg LeMond, Bernard Hinault, etc.), the Tour is hard. Very hard. Protocol flies out the window as lesser-known riders and teams seize their chance – launching attacks and keeping the pace high in hopes of snatching a stage win or one of the jerseys.

In 1987, Greg LeMond was recovering from a hunting accident. Bernard Hinault had retired. And Laurent Fignon had yet to regain the form that had won him the 1983 and 1984 Tours. And so it went – each day the riders broke from the drop of the flag, chasing madly across the countryside at a pace half-an-hour faster than the fastest schedule in the race guide. It even rained three days straight and the hellbent pace never wavered.

Who emerged from the carnage that year? None other than Irishman Stephen Roche. His victory over Pedro Delgado led up to a World road race title later that year. Roche finished second in a 55-mile (yes, you are reading that correctly – 55 miles) time trial, survived a stage in which he had to be administered oxygen at the top of a mountain after chasing down Delgado, and he didn’t overcome the Spaniard’s lead until the final time trial, one day before the finish in Paris. That’s called winning it the hard way.

So could it be that this year we see another American mounting the top step of the podium in Paris? It’s highly likely. The prediction here is “yes” (Landis). And before the Tour is over, I’ll have a behind-the-scenes story to share about another one of the American favorites.

Sean Weide is an accomplished sports journalist who has been avidly following the Tour de France since 1981. He has been involved in cycling as a competitor, race promoter, team director and USCF official. His "real job" is public relations director for Envoy, Inc., an Omaha, Neb.-based advertising agency. He will be filing daily reports about the 2006 Tour de France.