American Floyd Landis has caused a major upset to win the 17th stage of the Tour de France after 200.5km of racing on the final day in the Alps.

Spain's Oscar Pereiro, of the Caisse d'Epargne team, retained the race leader's yellow jersey ahead of the 18th stage, a 197km ride from Morzine to Macon in which the big favorites will look to save their energy for Saturday's 57km time trial.

Landis, who attacked the peloton 130km from the finish, relaunched his bid for the yellow jersey in spectacular style a day after he lost eight minutes to his rivals when he collapsed on the 18km climb to La Toussuire.

The American's daring solo raid allowed him to climb the fifth of the day's climbs, the unclassified Col de la Joux Plane, on his own and he came over the summit with a five-minute lead on Spaniard Carlos Sastre.

"I came here to win the Tour and I'm not finished yet," Landis said Thursday.

After the drama of Wednesday's hardest day in the Alps, the 16th stage bore witness to yet another spectacular day of racing.

But while Landis was expected to go out and attack to quell his hurt pride, no one really anticipated a feat of such proportions.

After initially attacking with still 140km and five climbs to negotiate, Landis left his only breakaway companion Patrik Sinkewitz of T-Mobile at the foot of the climb to Joux Plane - a mountain which can boast to have claimed more famous scalps in the peloton than any other.

Six minutes behind him, the peloton which included Pereiro, was soon to engage in its own battle.

Sastre, who began the day in second place at 1:50 behind his fellow countryman, attacked soon after his CSC teammate Franck Schleck had pulled ahead of the main bunch.

Sastre's cadence was smooth and sure, but behind him Pereiro, German Andreas Kloden and Russian Denis Menchov all failed to follow.

Frenchman Christophe Moreau, of the AG2R team, then followed suit. His attack took Evans with him, however the Australian climber soon dropped back to rejoin Kloden's group.

Pereiro's hold on the yellow jersey seemed to be loosening quickly as Sastre went on to build a lead of over a minute.

The Spaniard came over the summit of Joux Plane with a 5:08 deficit, while behind him, Evans and Menchov were trailing.

(AFP July 21, 2006)