With the high peaks of the Pyrénées behind them, the Tour’s remaining 165 riders set out Friday on three arduous stages across the south of France that will be made more grueling by temperatures in the 80s and 90s. The first of the trio is stage 12 from Luchon to Carcassonne. This hilly 211km stage looks made for breakaways — especially after Thursday’s savage race through the Pyrénées created huge time differences in the GC.

Besides the certainty of attacks from riders now buried in the overall standings — and that unexpectedly includes the whole of the Discovery Channel team — the other given is that Landis’s Phonak teammates will form the green-and-yellow pacing train they first showed on stage 8 through Brittany.

That performance last weekend seemed premature. After all, the T-Mobile squad was leading the Tour back then, with Sergei Gontchar in the yellow jersey, and there was no need for Phonak to ride at the front all day. What that did show was that Landis was confident of his chances in this Tour and he wanted to make a statement about how strongly his team would ride for him.

“Probably some people misjudged the strength of my team, to think that they’re all bad,” Landis said after taking the race lead at Pla-de-Beret on Thursday night. “But today was a gamble a little, and a couple of teams [T-Mobile and Rabobank] were very confident and did most of the work for us. Probably [we] can’t expect that to happen anymore, but we’ll take it.”

A look ahead: Back to the plains — and the heat

That won’t happen, at least not before the rest day coming up at Gap on Monday. With Landis in the driving seat, Phonak will be obliged to ride tempo every day, starting with Friday’s 211.5km stage — which will be another tough one.

The course parallels the main Pyrenean chain from west to east, featuring constant ups and down on winding roads for the opening 140km, including one Cat. 2 and three Cat. 4 climbs. The final 70km, from Pamiers, follow much straighter, rolling roads, with the final 20km made very fast by a strong tail wind. The finish is not near Carcassonne’s famed, medieval ramparts; the final 3km circle the less ancient parts of the city. There are seven turns in the last 1.5km before reaching the 300-meter-long finishing straight — the final sprint will be into the wind.

Now that only 17 riders are within eight minutes of race leader Landis, and only seven teams have any sort of hope of putting a man on the podium in Paris, the race for stage wins is wide open. Of the “beaten” 13 teams (and approximately 100 riders), it’s anyone’s guess who will shoot for the win on Friday.

However, Friday happens to be July 14, the French national holiday, which celebrates the storming of the Bastille during the French Revolution of 1789. French riders have traditionally made extra efforts to win on Bastille Day — including David Moncoutié at Digne-les-Bains last year — so the logical favorite would be any rider from the Bouygues Telecom or Française des Jeux teams, neither of which has gotten close to a stage win at this Tour.

Bouygues Telecom’s Thomas Voeckler made a long, vain solo attempt to join the early break on Thursday, so he won’t be ready to try again for a few days. More likely are attacks by his teammates Laurent Lefèvre or Jérôme Pineau. As for Française des Jeux, its best hopes lie with its non-French riders, Philippe Gilbert of Belgium or Tomas Lövkvist of Sweden.

Should either of these teams fail, then it might be a day for Discovery Channel, which needs to do something quickly to turn around its ailing fortunes. Perhaps that boost will come from Paolo Savoldelli, who won a similar stage as this one last year at Revel, just 50km from Carcassonne. Savoldelli currently lies in 41st place, 24 minutes back. Another possible stage winner is the French national champion Florent Brard who rides for the Spanish team sponsored by Caisse d’Épargne, a French bank.

Whoever gets in the Friday breakaway, Floyd and the Phonak gang will be happy to see it gain 10 minutes or so to make life at the head of the peloton as painless as possible.