In this excerpt from How Bad Do You Want It?, pioneering American cyclist Greg LeMond races against the clock—and his rival Laurent Fignon—in an individual time trial stage of the Tour de France.
Greg LeMond awoke in Paris on Sunday, July 23, the final day of the 1989 Tour de France, and wondered what the next 12 hours held in store. The previous evening he had told his soigneur, Otto Jacome, that he thought he could do
Herrara, the little bird, is set free. Now he is flying up l’Alpe d’Huez, while Hinault labors, and a little lower down the mountain, Laurent Fignon, in the tricolore of French champion, sets off in pursuit.
Hinault keeps a wary eye on his former protégé, Laurent Fignon, as the two go head-to-head in the 1984 Tour.
Team 7-Eleven’s sprinter Davis Phinney has dropped out of the Tour after crashing heavily on today’s Stage 15. This leaves the team relying on Phinney’s usual lead-out man Ron Kiefel to contest the sprints. Fortunately, Kiefel has shown that he has the legs for the Tour, narrowly missing a stage win to Peeters on stage 7.
Was it his failure to mount disk wheels, the accumulated fatigue from riding 1,000km at the front of the bunch, or simply “un jour sans,” as a French report has suggested?
Hinault’s attack on the road to Cherbourg only served to make Greg LeMond even more uncertain and edgy. They have barely left the blocks, but already the pledge that Hinault made to help the American seems as believable as Santa Claus.
Finally a massive field sprint after days of breakaways!
Saturday afternoon’s stage is a 56-km team time trial, an event La Vie Claire dominated in 1985, winning by over a minute. But now, in 1986 on the road from Meudon to Saint Quentin, something very, very odd happened.
Frenchman Thierry Marie (Systeme U) won today’s opening stage of the Tour de France, a 4 kilometer individual time trial snaking through Boulogne-Billancourt.
Felix Magowan of Velo-news offers this preview of the 1986 Tour de France