Paris: Floyd Landis won the Tour de France on Sunday, keeping cycling's most prestigious title in American hands for the eighth straight year.
The 30-year-old Landis cruised to victory on the Champs-Elysées, a day after regaining the leader's yellow jersey and building an insurmountable lead in the final time trial.
Landis picked up where another American left off last year, when Lance Armstrong completed his seventh and final Tour triumph.
"I kept fighting, never stopped believing," Landis said, shortly after he received the winner's yellow jersey on the podium, joined by his daughter, Ryan.
With the victory, Landis becomes the third American -- joining Armstrong and three-time winner Greg LeMond -- to win the Tour.
"I'm proud and happy for Floyd," said Armstrong, who watched the finish on TV from a hotel room near the Champs-Elysées. "He proved he was the strongest, everybody wrote him off."
"I'm very proud that an American has won again."
Landis had a solemn expression on his face and held his cap in his hand as the "The Star-Spangled Banner" played. When the anthem was over, he broke into a smile and waved to the crowd.
Landis, who plans to undergo replacement surgery this fall on an arthritic right hip, said he hopes to be back next year.
"Right now that's the plan," Landis said.
He dedicated his win to Andy Rihs, owner of his Phonak team.
Without Armstrong's dominance, the Tour was blown even more wide open on the eve of the July 1 start when prerace favourites Ivan Basso and Jan Ullrich -- along with seven other riders -- were sent home after being implicated in a Spanish doping investigation. Ullrich was fired by his T-Mobile team last Friday.
Sunday's champagne and Landis' fifth yellow jersey of the Tour were possible thanks to a once-in-a-lifetime ride on Thursday in the Alps that put the Phonak team leader back in contention, one day after a disastrous ride dropped him from first to 11th, more than eight minutes back.
Oscar Pereiro of Spain finished second overall at 57 seconds back, and Germany's Andreas Kloeden was third, 1:29 behind Landis.
Norway's Thor Hushovd won the final stage on Sunday of the three-week race. He had also won the Tour prologue on July 1.
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Assured of victory, Landis hoisted a champagne glass handed to him from his Phonak team car early in the 154.5-kilometer (96-mile) route from Sceaux-Antony to the capital.
A day earlier, Landis placed third in the Tour's last time trial, taking the yellow jersey from former teammate Pereiro and securing a 59-second lead over the Spaniard.
The deficit was virtually impossible to overcome for Pereiro in the flat, short final stage because Landis and his team eyed the Spaniard closely to make sure he didn't try to break away.
Landis, a former mountain biker who toiled for three years as a US Postal Service team support rider for Armstrong, had sought to apply the Texan's meticulous strategy for winning -- until what Landis called "disaster" struck on Stage 16 in the Alps on Wednesday.
His plan to allow Pereiro to take the yellow jersey temporarily as the race left the Pyrenees at the end of week two appeared to backfire after Landis lost the jersey in a second Alpine stage at La Toussuire.
With a stunning stage win in the last Alpine stage on Thursday, Landis erased more than 7-1/2 minutes of his 8:08 deficit to Pereiro -- putting him in a prime position to win by outpacing the Spanish rider in the final time trial on Saturday.
For the finish on Sunday, Russia's Viatceslav Ekimov, 40, led the peloton -- or rider pack -- as it arrived for the first of eight laps on the famed Paris avenue to honour him as the Tour's oldest rider.
It was his 15th Tour -- one shy of Dutch cyclist Joop Zoetemelk's record.
Australia's Robbie McEwen won the green jersey given to the best sprinter for a third time, and Denmark's Mickael Rasmussen earned the polka-dot jersey awarded to the best climber for a second year. Italy's Damiano Cunego, 25, won the white jersey as the best young rider.
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