On the tender age of 14, Greg LeMond began biking in Nevada simply to “get in form for snowboarding”. After solely a fortnight he received his first race, however his selection of outfit attracted some soiled appears to be like. “I confirmed as much as my first race [in 1976] using a yellow Cinelli bike and in a yellow jersey,” the American tells me by cellphone. “In my second race, my good friend checked out me with such disgust, and I used to be questioning why. Ten days later I beat him, it broke the ice, and he stated: ‘I gotta let you know: you don’t put on the yellow jersey’. When he defined why, I responded, ‘What’s the Tour de France?’”
A decade later, LeMond not solely knew the Tour de France intimately however justified that early yellow jersey. As the primary American and non-European to win the yellow jersey, LeMond would win two extra maillots jaunes, together with one in 1989 by a margin of eight seconds.
He’s deserving of Biking Weekly’s 2024 Lifetime Achievement Award for a large number of causes. He has set many data via his profession – and never solely in biking; in 1991 he discovered himself on this planet file books for catching a four-pound smallmouth bass throughout a fly fishing journey. He’s additionally famed for astonishing comebacks, radical modifications and improvements which have formed bike design, and common outspoken tirades towards what he believes was a doping tradition that denied him much more Excursions.
Tour goals
“Three or 4 occasions a yr, I nonetheless dream about using the Tour. I get up and say to myself, ‘What am I considering? I’m 63 and double the burden of the professionals’,” he laughs. “I can’t think about some other sport that has the identical pace, depth and competitiveness of biking. I’ve a love-hate relationship with it due to the medicine and the closed-minded tradition, however what’s extra thrilling than racing the Tour de France? I’m so glad I discovered biking.”
LeMond’s first forays into biking have been a breeze. “I received just about each race I entered as a junior, 11 in a row,” he says. He was moved up an age class, however nonetheless issues have been too simple. The USA’s nationwide staff coach, Eddie Boryseicz, discovered himself working with “a diamond, a transparent diamond” who was brimming with a youthful naivety that supercharged his ambitions. “I didn’t know something concerning the sport,” says LeMond. “I used to be discovering a lot, together with the Tour de France which was apparently this legendary race. Folks have been telling me that Eddy Merckx was the God, however all of them had this concept that People weren’t adequate.” In 1979, aged 18, LeMond turned junior world champion, and with attribute optimism requested his teammates: “Why can’t I win the Tour?”
Renault-Elf-Gitane, the staff of two-time Tour winner Bernaud Hinault, gave a 19-year-old LeMond his first skilled contract in 1981, and inside six months he completed third on the Critérium du Dauphiné. A yr on, he completed second within the World Championships and received the Tour de l’Avenir by 10 minutes. He was the entire package deal: he might climb, time trial, dash, and he recovered quick. Europe was getting excited concerning the younger man they’d later coin LeMonster. In 1983, he upgraded silver to gold within the Worlds, turning into the primary American male to put on the rainbow bands on the street. He was solely 22.
(Picture credit score: Future/Richard Butcher)
Although his aspirations soared, it was his teammates Hinault and Laurent Fignon who received the following 4 Excursions. Tensions rose – LeMond was hungry for Tour success, as he had demonstrated by ending third and successful the younger rider classification in his debut in 1984. “We had a number of leaders at Renault and it meant sacrificing my very own private objectives and ambitions to assist the staff,” he says. “Earlier than I turned professional, I wished to win each race, so once I couldn’t do this and was working for an additional man, it was regular to search for one other method.”
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LeMond was satisfied to affix La Vie Claire in 1985, the staff that wore one in all biking’s most iconic jersey designs and which was the house of his former teammate Hinault. The formidable rising star would get his personal probability to win the Tour, however first he had to assist Hinault win his fifth. The sweetener? LeMond turned the primary bicycle owner to signal one million greenback contract. He helped The Badger win his cinquième Tour, whereas feeling assured he might have received the race himself. “I used to be method too loyal as a teammate in that 1985 Tour,” he remembers. “I ought to have been extra egocentric and fewer naïve,” – a reference to how his staff prevented him from attacking an injured and weakened Hinault within the remaining week.
Hinault promised to repay LeMond and assist him win his maiden Tour in 1986, however by the twelfth stage the Frenchman’s lead over the American stood at 5:25. Remarkably, and regardless of bitter infighting, LeMond overturned the deficit to beat Hinault by greater than three minutes. Historical past was made. France, in love with L’Americain, courted and chased the forthcoming American consideration and greenback. With one win, he had modified biking without end. “Bodily, I used to be at my prime in ‘85 and ‘86,” he says. The game was getting into the LeMond period. Till it wasn’t.
Overcoming adversity
Within the spring of 1987, LeMond was by chance shot by his brother-in-law with round 60 pellets whereas they have been turkey searching in California. The Tour champion misplaced 70% of his blood, was 20 minutes away from bleeding to demise, and suffered lead poisoning that “left me mainly anaemic” and which he later blamed for his non-life-threatening leukaemia analysis in 2022.
He made a stuttering return to biking on the finish of 1987, convincing nobody, not even himself, that he might return to Tour-winning type. “I went from the easiest to one of many very worst,” he says. He departed Dutch staff PDM after just one yr, having grow to be conscious of teammates doping.
“It’s by no means actually been written what my spouse Kathy and I went via after I bought shot,” LeMond says. “The struggling, the shortage of hope, the darkish days, each race saying I’m going to come back again however then cracking, two PDM riders testing constructive. It was our worst nightmare.” The one staff providing to salvage his profession was ADR, who he describes as “an incredible staff, however the lowest price range ever seen in biking – nobody bought paid”. However that wouldn’t matter, as what he did in 1989 is the stuff of legend.
A month after disappointing on the Giro d’Italia – “I had huge allergy symptoms and didn’t assume I’d ever get again to the place I used to be in ‘86,” he says – he arrived on the Tour with no expectation of using for the GC. But he shocked the world with a fascinating, nail-biting and flip-flopping battle with former teammate Fignon.
(Picture credit score: The Final Rider promotional materials)
Finally LeMond erased the Frenchman’s 50-second benefit in a final-day time trial to improbably win by eight seconds. “To go from the lows of the Giro to successful the Tour in six weeks is about as enjoyable as you will get,” LeMond smiles.
His final-stage triumph, which spawned numerous books and movies, was partly attributed to LeMond’s aero tri-bars, rear disc wheel, aero helmet and aerodynamic place honed within the wind tunnel. The American was forward of his time, a pioneer, the primary man to win the Tour on a carbon fibre body bike; it was no shock he based his personal bike model, LeMond Bicycles.
“Coming from exterior the game, I had a variety of totally different concepts,” he says. “The best way they did issues was set in stone, however I questioned the whole lot and was very open-minded. I do consider I performed a giant function in altering the outdated, conventional a part of biking and bringing it into the fashionable period.” He additionally devoured coaching literature and was one of many first to make use of an influence meter. “A part of my DNA was understanding coaching physiologically,” he says, although this isn’t to recommend he discovered shortcuts – as he famously quipped, “it by no means will get simpler; you simply get sooner.”
LeMond adopted up that memorable 1989 Tour win along with his second rainbow jersey after which his third Tour the yr after. His reign on the prime was coming to an finish, nevertheless. In 1991, the Spaniard Miguel Induráin received his first Tour, and would dominate the race for the following 4 years. LeMond retired in 1994, however is satisfied he might have received extra had it not been for infiltration of blood doping into the game. “A part of my coronary heart aches that I didn’t get to have a profession that wasn’t much less hampered by accidents and the start of the EPO period,” he says.
(Picture credit score: Future/Richard Butcher)
The American insists he by no means doped, and he has constantly railed towards using efficiency enhancing medicine, together with a prolonged public spat with Lance Armstrong. Why did he place himself as biking’s Mr Anti-Doping? “I simply needed to get into that place,” he says. “It actually blew my thoughts that the Armstrong period was even worse than the late-Nineties.” His disappointment concerning the darkish actuality of the game performed on his thoughts whereas working as a commentator on Eurosport. “I liked it, but it surely was arduous to be enthusiastic for sure individuals who I had inside information on. It was painful.”
Reflecting on his personal racing achievements, LeMond says he has “combined feelings” over a nagging sense he might have achieved extra. “I used to be the primary American to win the Tour however I had an accident that took me out of my prime,” he says. “I additionally dreamt of successful 5 Excursions, which logically I ought to have. I really consider with out EPO I might have received in 1991 and 1992.”
Imponderables apart, the LeMond of at this time, a person who essentially altered a lot in biking, has not misplaced his ardour for professional racing. “It’s a magical sport and I’ll by no means get out of it as a result of it’s in my blood.”