Where Were You When Greg Lemond Came Back to Win the Tour? by CHARLES HOWE JULY, 1999
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Where were you when Greg LeMond came back to win the Tour? BY CHARLES HOWE JULY, 1999 Popular psychologists and social commentators call them “flashbulb memories” – events which, in this age of mass-media saturation, achieve nearly instantaneous and universal dramatic impact. All of them, it seems, involve violent tragedy; where were you when this charismatic world leader/celebrity was killed, when that hightechnogizmo blew up in the heavens, etc. Cyclists who recollect it, however, can cherish and draw inspiration from a moment of unqualified, triumphant joy: where were you, that twenty-third day of July in 1989, when Greg LeMond culminated a long comeback from the near-fatal gunshot wounds he suffered in April of 1987, to overtake Laurent Fignon and win the Tour de France? My own experience was perhaps typical, as I had been on a Sunday morning ride with a local club. “Well, let’s go home and see if he took back 20 seconds from Fignon, or if he was able to manage something more like 40,” I said sardonically when we had finished, referring to television coverage of the final-day time trial due to air later in the afternoon. Nobody expected anything more than that. And the initial (though erroneous) report I received upon arriving home wasn’t even that good: I was told that he had won the stage from Fignon by only 8 seconds. You had to hand it to the Frenchman, I thought, he rode a great race. But hours later as I tuned in, the tone and manner of announcer Al Trautwig and commentator Sam Posey made it immediately clear that something extraordinary had happened. It scarcely seemed possible as it unfolded then, and it all comes back so easily now . The 76th Tour de France kicked off in Luxembourg on July 1 with defending champion Pedro Delgado missing his start for the prologue time trial by 2:40, and remaining so unsettled that he was dropped during the team time trial two days later. In last place on the overall classification, more than 6:30 down, he would later attack in the mountains and literally climb back into contention, but got no closer to the lead than 1:55. Suddenly, LeMond won an early (stage 5) time trial, and claimed the yellow jersey. “Daddy won the race!” blurted his 5-year-old son Geoffrey excitedly during a segment taped in Kortrijk, Belgium, where wife Kathy, pregnant with their third child, had stayed home with the rest of the family. And indeed, the sight was stunning. After all, Greg had shown poor form in the spring, and although he had finished the Giro strongly after being diagnosed with anemia and receiving iron injections, the mere mention of the name “LeMond” elicited peals of laughter at a gathering of cycling journalists as they discussed their pre-race picks. Now he seemed to have a real chance; when the race started, he said he would be happy with a top- 20 finish, but as it progressed, he kept revising his expectations: “maybe top-10, maybe top-5, STUNNING SIGHT – After a near-fatal hunting accident and maybe top-3, maybe top-1!” would satisfy two years of recovery, even LeMond was surprised by his him, he joked. return to top form. He held his ground in the Pyrénées and began a duel with Fignon that would see them trade the lead back and forth no less than five times over the course of the race. With virtually no team support, LeMond was forced shackle his trademark attacking style and follow wheels, prompting Fignon to accuse him of not riding like a champion. “The Yankee is a genius wise guy who plays the role of weak chicken,” he groused, but even Fignon’s team manager, Cyrille Guimard, admitted that LeMond had no other choice. ALPINE STRUGGLES – Shown here nearing the finish of stage 17 at l’Alpe d’Huez, LeMond conceded a total of 1 minute, 43 seconds to Fignon on this and the following day, which equaled his gains on the Frenchman in the Tour’s two long time trials exactly. Fignon struck a heavy blow during the final climb of stage 17, to the top of l’Alpe d’Huez. Acting on instructions from Guimard, who had seen LeMond’s shoulders begin to rock and recognized it as a sign of fatigue, Fignon attacked with 4 km to go and dropped LeMond, who cracked badly and trailed in 1:19 in arrears; LeMond’s directeur sportif Jose De Cauwer was able to block Guimard’s Super U team car several times but ultimately could not stop it from getting up to Fignon and giving the decisive order. Fignon seemed to sew the race up the next day with an audacious 24 km solo win at Villard-de-Lans, where LeMond’s attempts to chase were hampered by his ex-PDM team-mates, Gert-Jan Theunisse and Steven Rooks. Still, LeMond was able to joke to his wife afterwards: “It’s not over yet. It’ll only be a better story when I win.” Not even he could possibly have dreamt just how prophetic this remark would become. Nearly everyone did anticipate that LeMond would gain time in the last-stage time trial from Versailles to Paris, but the distance of 24.5 kilometers was surely not long enough to make up any more than perhaps 35 seconds, at best, of the 50 he needed. “He can gain a second per kilometer, perhaps a second-and-a-half, but two seconds? Impossible!” snorted Paul Koechli, directeur sportif for one of LeMond’s former teams, and Fignon’s declaration that “He cannot win because I am too strong in the mind and the legs” seemed more like justifiable confidence than arrogant boast. 2 The rest has passed into rather familiar legend. Shunning any time splits so as to maintain his concentration (“I didn’t think. I just rode.”), LeMond used a pair of bolt-on Scott time trial bars and a Giro Aerohead helmet (the “tail” of which was bobbed to conform with UCI regulations) that helped him take a remarkable 58 seconds from Fignon, who might well have won had he donned an aero helmet himself, instead of letting his ponytail flap in the wind (it is often overlooked that, but for the stage 2 TTT, where LeMond’s ADR team conceded 0:51 to Fignon’s Super U squad, the final-stage drama would never have occurred.) Scenes of the aftermath remain indelible: Fignon collapsing on the ground in agony from saddle sores after finishing, as yet unaware he had lost; Kathy LeMond screaming “GRREGGG!” like a teenager as he crossed the finish line; LeMond running over to embrace her and Fred Mengoni, the New York real-estate developer who has supported so many young riders of promise, and who would declare the day to be the happiest of his life (“Don’t have a heart attack,” LeMond urged him); LeMond putting Geoffrey on the top spot of the podium before taking it himself; and the playing of the national anthem, with a final embrace between the top three finishers. As he so often does, LeMond perfectly cap- IRRESISTABLE – Framed by the Arc de Triomphe after a tured the moment on the podium with Fignon: “U”-turn on to the Champs Élysées, LeMond is just seconds “What could I possibly say to him? What from a seemingly miraculous win in the final-stage time trial. could he possibly say to me?” What, indeed. * * * * * * * * * American public interest in cycling began to rekindle in the early 1970s, when quality lightweight European- style (“10-speed”) road bicycles were “discovered” and began selling in record numbers, with a boost from record-high gasoline prices. Not surprisingly, road racing began to emerge from decades of obscurity and move forward at this time in a number of ways. A numerical rider categorization system, based on the European model, was adopted in 1973, and the racing rulebook was extensively revised in 1979 to conform more closely to European standards and practices. In 1976, the national governing body for competitive cycling changed its name from the Amateur Bicycle League of America to the United States Cycling Federation, after the former was judged to be outmoded and inaccurate. The first national team was selected in 1973, and the ’78 squad became the first to tour Europe, competing in the Tour l’Avenir, a stage race billed as the amateur version of the Tour de France. The USCF began assembling a full-time staff in 1978, most notably when Eddy Borysewicz, formerly a top amateur rider from Poland, was chosen as the first-ever national coaching director, while David Prouty was named as its first executive director in 1983. 3 All of this began to pay dividends. The number of licensed riders increased from 5,035 in 1972, to 11,642 at the end of 1981. Riders such as Mike Neel, George Mount, and Jonathan Boyer competed with distinction for European professional road teams, and American stage races, including the Tour of the Sierras and Red Zinger Classic (later the Coors Classic) presented courses as challenging as what Europe could offer, while attracting increased media attention. Excepting the performance of the men’s teams at the 1978 and ’79 Junior World Championships, it was female riders, however, who provided the U.S. with its best results in World Championship competition; after a drought that saw just three podium finishes since 1912, riders including Audrey McElmury, Sue Novara, Sheila Young, Connie Carpenter, and Beth Heiden garnered no less than 14 medals on the road and track from 1969-79.