The Comeback: Greg LeMond, the True King of American Cycling, and a Legendary Tour de France - Softcover

Vise, Daniel De

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0802147186 ISBN 13: 9780802147189

Publisher: Grove Press, 2019

Synopsis

A true American hero, Greg LeMond’s career was punctuated by dramatic fame, devastation, and ultimately redemption. In July 1986, LeMond stunned the sporting world by becoming the first American to win the Tour de France, the world’s pre-eminent bicycle race, defeating French cycling legend Bernard Hinault. Nine months later, LeMond lay in a hospital bed, his life in peril after a hunting accident, his career as a bicycle racer seemingly over. And yet, barely two years after this crisis, LeMond mounted a comeback almost without parallel in professional sports, again winning the 1989 Tour―arguably the world’s most grueling athletic contest―by the almost impossibly narrow margin of 8 seconds over another French legend, Laurent Fignon. It remains the closest Tour de France in history. From the heights of global fame, LeMond would then crash during a calamitous confrontation with Lance Armstrong over allegations the latter was doping. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Daniel de Visé reveals the dramatic, ultra-competitive inner world of a sport rarely glimpsed up close, and builds a compelling case for LeMond as its great American hero.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel de Visé is an author and journalist. A graduate of Wesleyan and Northwestern universities, he has worked at the Washington Post and Miami Herald, among other newspapers. He shared a 2001 Pulitzer Prize and has garnered more than two dozen national and regional journalism awards. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show and coauthor of I Forgot To Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia. He lives in Maryland with his wife and children.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

On a small patch of unoccupied blacktop in a crowded plaza near the grand palace of Versailles, two riders pedaled bicycles in a warm-up exercise around a tiny oval, riding counterclockwise at opposite poles, like horses on a carousel. Their eyes never met. The two figures were almost mirror images―blond-haired, muscular and taut. After twenty days and three thousand kilometers of racing, Greg LeMond and Laurent Fignon were fifty seconds apart in the standings of the 1989 Tour de France. They had traded savage attacks over the three previous weeks, neither man ever leading the other by more than mere seconds. The lead had changed hands three times. Greg had worn the maillot jaune, the race leader’s yellow jersey, for seven days; Laurent had worn it for nine. Now, the jersey hung on Laurent’s back. Greg sat in second place. By day’s end, the Tour would be decided. And no matter who won, this would likely be the closest finish in the seventy-six-year history of le Tour.

On this July afternoon, the circling cyclists readied for a final twenty-five-kilometer dash downhill from the royal château to the finish line on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. This was the time trial, cycling’s Race of Truth, in French the contre la montre―literally, “against the watch.” Savvy observers had surveyed the course and reckoned a middling rider could complete it in about twenty-nine minutes. A great one might win it in twenty-eight. Greg needed to reclaim those fifty seconds from his French rival on this final day of racing, to pull back two seconds for every kilometer raced, in order to win the Tour.

Both Greg and Laurent were men of twenty-eight―young adults in the broad scheme of life, yet aging journeymen in the brief and brutal career of cycling. Each had conquered le Tour before, Laurent in 1983 and 1984, Greg in 1986, each, in turn, enjoying a brief reign atop the precarious pecking order of professional cycling. Then each cyclist had abruptly lost his “form,” a term invoked by cycling writers to describe a rider at his peak. Both had dwelt for years in cycling’s wilderness, missing races, abandoning them, or finishing at the back of the pack. Now, at the signature event of the 1989 cycling season, each man had miraculously recovered his form. Greg and Laurent were back on top―both of them, at exactly the same time, a most inconvenient coincidence. Neither knew how long the second wind might last. If there was to be another victory at the Tour for either of them, the time was now.

As the clock wound down to Greg’s 4:12 p.m. start, television commentators interviewed cycling experts and one another, all asking the same question: Could LeMond catch Fignon?

“It will be close,” predicted Paul Sherwen, a former professional cyclist turned broadcaster, speaking on the live ITV transmission in Britain. “But I think, logically, it’s got to be Fignon.”

About this edition

• Publisher: Grove Press
• Publication date: 2019
• ISBN 10: 0802147186
• ISBN 13: 9780802147189
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384