Three Weeks, Eight Seconds

by Tassell, Nige;

  Punch-drunk and perplexed, Fignon’s reaction was, quite understandably, the polar opposite of LeMond’s. ‘I was afraid I would lose by just one second,’ the American gushed in the chaotic aftermath. ‘I could hear the speaker counting down the seconds. It was terrible. But today has been the greatest moment of my life.’ The smile was broader than the Seine, the eyes sparkled brighter than the stars.

  That night, and with just three other team-mates making it to Paris, the ADR celebrations weren’t overly flamboyant. The remains of the squad, plus Kathy and parents, went for a meal and took in a show at the Moulin Rouge. By midnight, the LeMonds were back on the Champs-Élysées, reliving the previous three tumultuous weeks over late-night ice cream. Super U still had their party (‘a good few litres of champagne,’ says Bjarne Riis), but when the first editions of the morning papers began to appear late in the night, someone sensibly decided to keep them out of Fignon’s eyeline.

  There were so many points in the race where, had things happened only slightly differently, the result would have taken a much different complexion. Certainly, with a victory of such a slender margin, it would have taken very little to produce a much-altered race. What if Pedro Delgado had remembered how to tell the time? What if the ADR team hadn’t performed so well in the team time trial? What if Cyrille Guimard’s car could have forced its way through to Fignon earlier up Alpe d’Huez? What if PDM hadn’t so enthusiastically pursued the yellow jersey into Villard-de-Lans? And what if Boone Lennon hadn’t applied the science of skiing to the beautiful sport of cycling?

  Ifs, buts and maybes. The language of the peloton.

  ‘Greg won because he was able to pull off an amazing time trial on the last day,’ Fignon generously reflected a few years later. ‘Me? I wasn’t able to go any faster. So there you have it. There’s no injustice.

  ‘It’s just that I lost the Tour by eight seconds. That’s all.’

  Stage 21

  1. Greg LeMond (ADR/USA) 26’57”

  2. Thierry Marie (Super U/France) +33”

  3. Laurent Fignon (Super U/France) +58”

  4. Jelle Nijdam (Superconfex/Netherlands) +1’07”

  5. Sean Yates (7-Eleven/GB) +1’10”

  Points competition

  1. Sean Kelly (PDM/Ireland) 277pts

  2. Etienne De Wilder (Histor/Belgium) 194pts

  3. Steven Rooks (PDM/Netherlands) 163pts

  King of the Mountains competition

  1. Gert-Jan Theunisse (PDM/Netherlands) 441pts

  2. Pedro Delgado (Reynolds/Spain) 311 pts

  3. Steven Rooks (PDM/Netherlands) 257pts

  Combined competition

  1. Steven Rooks (PDM/Netherlands) 15pts

  2. Laurent Fignon (Super U/France) 20pts

  3. Sean Kelly (PDM/Ireland) 22pts

  Team competition

  1. PDM (Netherlands) 263:19:48

  2. Reynolds (Spain) +1’19”

  3. Z-Peugeot (France) +44’22”

  Overall

  1. Greg LeMond (ADR/USA) 87:38:35

  2. Laurent Fignon (Super U/France) +8”

  3. Pedro Delgado (Reynolds/Spain) +3’34”

  4. Gert-Jan Theunisse (PDM/Netherlands) +7’30”

  5. Marino Lejarreta (Paternina/Spain) +9’39”

  6. Charly Mottet (RMO/France) +10’06”

  7. Steven Rooks (PDM/Netherlands) +11’10”

  8. Raúl Alcalá (PDM/Mexico) +14’21”

  9. Sean Kelly (PDM/Ireland) +18’25”

  10. Robert Millar (Z-Peugeot/GB) +18’46”

  EIGHTEEN

  THE AFTERMATH

  ‘Fignon never once set foot on the Champs-Élysées again’ – Kathy LeMond

  THE MORNING AFTER the afternoon before.

  If Greg and Kathy LeMond needed to reassure each other that the extraordinary events of the previous afternoon had indeed happened in exactly the dizzying, delirious manner they remembered, they were to only switch on a TV set or glance up at a newsstand for confirmation. In every direction they looked, there were images of LeMond’s astonished face breaking into that boy-next-door smile. Not that the coverage universally focused on his record-breaking ride and near-tragic back story. Laurent Fignon’s brave capitulation received equal billing. Perhaps France preferred this particular sportsman as humbled loser than cocksure winner. Sympathy for the old devil.

  LeMond’s impact wasn’t limited to the cycling-literate quarters of old Europe. When the United States woke up later in the day, it was to the story of a new sporting hero, a tale with many tick-boxing ingredients: a blond-haired, blue-eyed protagonist, slightly flawed at the edges, whose life had known lashings of triumph and adversity. An editor’s dream. And those American editors did LeMond justice; USA Today, the New York Times and the Washington Post all put this comparatively little-known athlete on their front pages. It didn’t end there. In their year-closing issue five months later, Sports Illustrated would anoint LeMond as their Sportsman of the Year, beating the likes of Joe Montana and Wayne Gretzky to the honour and being rewarded with the front cover and a 14-page interview.

  Not that the LeMonds were remotely ready for their lives being prised open for public consumption. After Greg raced a 37-mile exhibition race around the Normandy town of Lisieux just 24 hours after the time trial, the family sneaked away to nearby Deauville, going into hiding for a couple of days in one of the seaside resort’s many hotels. ‘We didn’t go back home to Belgium for two days because it was like a riot in our street,’ says Kathy. ‘There were thousands of people there. Our neighbours were calling us and saying, “Don’t come home. It’s just crazy.”’

  Over the weeks that followed, LeMond took part in nearly a dozen criterium races. Not only were these races pleasingly lucrative to the world-conquering but still unpaid cyclist, but tradition also dictated he be allowed to race in the yellow jersey he won in Paris. Time to bask in the golden glow the jersey emitted. As a fellow competitor in several of these races, the still-grieving Fignon found this difficult to stomach. ‘I gritted my teeth,’ he said. ‘My blood froze.’

  And it wasn’t just the criteriums. LeMond found his earning potential had gone through the roof, with offers from teams to lead their squads into the 1990 season flooding in. Not that the bidding war had broken out only after his coronation in Paris. Ever since he won the Rennes time trial during the first week of the Tour, teams that had previously refused to take a gamble on him – or, indeed, had refused to take his return remotely seriously – were now forming an orderly queue and expressing their desire to lure him away from ADR. In fact, one team boss – Roger Legeay from Z – had approached LeMond prior to the time trial, when the American had yet to prove himself at all.

  ‘Roger Legeay spoke to Greg before Greg had won anything,’ confirms Kathy. ‘He said, “You know what? I think you can do this.” He was very kind to Greg that day. And not a lot of people, not a lot of coaches, were kind to him during those couple of years. They were laughing at him.’

  Once victory at Rennes was confirmed, the feeding frenzy began. Len Pettyjohn, in France as the boss of sister team Coors Light but without a portfolio of specific duties on European soil, took it upon himself to become the unofficial deal-maker. He would be the man to meet and greet, and to be wined and dined by, LeMond’s many suitors. Pettyjohn’s first lunch date was with one of the team directors of a French squad.

  ‘Greg’s going to be available next year. What’s your interest?’

  ‘Well, what do you think in terms of salary? We know Greg might be expensive, but we’re very interested in having him on the team.’

  ‘You have to understand his salary is six, seven hundred thousand dollars. Clearly he’s worth that, which means you’re going to have to pay more than that.’

  ‘No problem, no problem. We can do seven.’

  The next day, Pettyjohn found himself having lunch with another team.

  ‘Greg’s going to be available…’

  ‘Oh yeah? How much?’ />
  ‘Well, it’s going to take at least seven-fifty, maybe eight.’

  ‘We can do that. No problem.’

  ‘The next day I had another lunch with somebody else. After about five lunches, we were at a million dollars. LeMond comes back to me. “Oh my God! Let’s have more lunches!”’

  Three teams in particular were under serious consideration. Joining Z in the thoughts of Pettyjohn and the LeMonds were Toshiba and 7-Eleven. The American team seemed the most obvious fit, even more so after the Tour ended and their existing leader Andy Hampsten had registered that disappointing 22nd place finish. Jim Ochowicz’s team appeared to be Bob LeMond’s preferred destination for his son, too; the ADR experience had singed LeMond Sr’s fingers, as well as leaving bank accounts somewhat lighter than they should have been. It was left to Pettyjohn to sound a note of caution.

  ‘Bob goes, “I don’t trust the Europeans now. Look at what they did to Greg before.” I said, “OK, Bob. Here’s the deal. Look at this report.” At that time, 7-Eleven were going public and they did a leverage buyout to sell the company. They were so much in debt. They were on the verge of bankruptcy. “So, whatever you think of the Europeans, and whatever you sign with 7-Eleven, the team is going to go away and they’re going to fail.” And after one more year, 7-Eleven went away. And that’s when Motorola came into the picture.

  ‘Ochowicz wasn’t going after any other riders at that time, either. He was convinced Greg was signing for him. But all the time behind the scenes, he was being out-negotiated. If he knew, he’d have pissed a shit-fit.’

  That Team LeMond drew back from discussions with 7-Eleven – which were quite advanced, with a contract having been drawn up – secretly pleased Hampsten. ‘It wasn’t a make-or-break situation. It would have been great for the team, but it wouldn’t have been my first choice. It would have meant I absolutely wouldn’t have been the leader. While it would have been really cool and fun to have helped Greg win the Tour, I’d rather be the captain.’

  That left Z and Toshiba at the negotiation table. The latter’s presence was surprising, given that they were the team that had callously served notice on LeMond distastefully soon after he was discharged from hospital after the hunting accident. The fact that they were the team offering the fattest contract – $6m over three years – might explain why they were still under consideration. Alternatively, LeMond might just have been stringing them along, a minor act of revenge after his treatment by them. ‘I wanted to screw Toshiba,’ he later admitted to Procycling magazine.

  Certainly LeMond would have enjoyed one particular approach they made to Len Pettyjohn a month after the Tour ended. ‘The night before the world championships in Chambéry, teams were still coming up to me – “Is it possible to still negotiate with Greg?” Teams were now desperate. I was having dinner with Alexi Grewal, who was on the American team for the world championships, when the director-general of Toshiba came over. There was no chair, so he got down on one knee and leaned against the table. “It is very important that we negotiate again with Greg.”

  ‘This was a man who, a few weeks before, would not acknowledge my presence. Now he’s so desperate that he’s almost begging. Alexi was shaking his head, laughing. “I told you. They’re all crazy here.”

  In truth, Roger Legeay and Z were always the preferred choice, thanks to that chat on the rest day ahead of the Rennes time trial. ‘There is something to be said for people who are with you when you’re not great,’ says Kathy. ‘You feel more comfortable. They seem more honest. It’s easy to jump on the bandwagon, but it’s pretty darned nice to have someone who believed in you before.’ An agreement was made on the morning of the world championships – a three-year deal worth $5.5m – although, at that point, nothing was signed.

  A spanner was tossed into the works that afternoon when, in the sheeting Chambéry rain, LeMond gloriously won the world title for the second time, brilliantly outsprinting Sean Kelly and the young Russian rider Dmitri Konyshev. ‘Roger Legeay came to our hotel that night,’ recalls Kathy. ‘He was just shaking. “I suppose you want something more now.” Greg said, “No, no, no. I already told you yes. We’re good.”’

  As well as the faith shown in him by Legeay, LeMond had been lured by the opportunity to lead a much stronger squad than the paper-thin one he inherited at ADR. At the 1990 Tour, in Robert Millar, Éric Boyer and Ronan Pensec alone, he had three riders with experience of finishing in the race’s top ten. Millar, of course, would also provide LeMond with formidable assistance in the mountains, an alien concept during his season at ADR. Plus, not only could he also take his close friend and colleague Johan Lammerts with him, the contract with Z determined that the team would ride LeMond bikes. This had been a potential deal-breaker.

  Not that extricating himself from his existing contract at ADR was without its complications. Despite not having paid LeMond his two blocks of wages for January and July, as well as his bonus for winning the Tour, François Lambert still believed he had a legitimate claim to LeMond’s services, even though a 30-day resignation notice had been served on him for violation of the contract.

  ‘Lambert no doubt thought that my Tour win would bring in sponsors and solve all the problems,’ LeMond told Procycling. ‘It didn’t matter. I’d already decided that I was leaving. I would only have stayed if there’d been a major new backer and if Lambert had left. He embarked on this vast PR campaign, telling everyone that I was betraying the team that had saved me. He even got my own agent to sue me for ten per cent of what I went on to earn at the Z team.’

  There’s a fantastic story that not only illustrates Lambert’s desperation to hang on to LeMond, but also his shaky grasp of matters legal. It’s a tale that has a different version according to whoever’s telling it. Details get changed or blurred – the when, the where, the who, the how much. But the fundamental ingredients include Lambert’s 6.9-litre Mercedes; a 200kph drive through the night; an alleyway in Luxembourg; a gunnysack filled with Belgian francs; several thousand dollars’ worth of speeding tickets; a kitchen table covered with cash; and a deflated team boss who’s just realised the redundancy of the whole endeavour.

  Essentially it’s the story of how François Lambert turned up at the LeMonds’ house in Belgium in the wee small hours, ready to pay them what he owed in outstanding wages. Greg and Kathy weren’t home, but Bob and Bertha LeMond were house-sitting. Having presented the cash, Lambert believed he’d righted his wrongs and that his team leader now had to honour the second and final year of his contract.

  However, the cash only covered the January amount. July’s money, plus the Tour win bonus, remained outstanding and Lambert was now outside the time period for making the payment, allowing LeMond to walk away. The next morning, Bob LeMond called his son, asking for advice. ‘Take it to a bank and wire it to America!’

  The announcement of the deal with Z was made at a press conference in a hotel ballroom in Paris in mid-September. There, LeMond expressed his delight in joining such a professional and experienced team (‘Z has the climbers I will need to help me win the Tour again’), while he also fended off questions as to why he hadn’t done the obvious thing and signed up with 7-Eleven. ‘It just didn’t work out,’ he defended. ‘There were some things they just couldn’t guarantee. We tried to work it out, but in the end Z was a better deal for me. I had to think of my career.’

  Not only had LeMond been a popular Tour winner in ’89 among the French population, but the decision to join his third French team, after Renault and La Vie Claire, further endeared him to the nation. ‘I think the French really appreciated Greg because he learned French,’ says Pettyjohn. ‘He made a clear gesture, a clear attempt, in his own charming, boyish way. They really embraced him.’ Having a French-sounding surname, one that suggested a rich lineage on his father’s side, possibly with an ancestral chateau or two lurking in some corner of the family tree, certainly did him no harm.

  Less than 12 months later, LeMond delighted Roger Legeay b
y securing a third Tour title. Although, at two minutes and 19 seconds, the margin of victory was somewhat more comfortable than in ’89, the race was far from a foregone conclusion. LeMond didn’t win a single stage and only took the yellow jersey from the emerging Italian rider Claudio Chiappucci on the penultimate day. True to form, he had taken the lead thanks to his performance on the race’s last time trial.

  His decision to join the well-organised Z team, with experience running throughout the entire squad, meant LeMond’s extraordinary record in the Tour had been maintained. Enhanced, even. Five starts, five podium finishes, including, now, a hat-trick of victories. He had also become the first rider to win the Tour with three different teams – La Vie Claire, ADR and Z.

  ‘Z got a great deal,’ says Pettyjohn. ‘They won the Tour. And most teams would be happy winning the Tour de France one time, no matter how much it cost. It’s much different in Europe than it is in the United States. The sport is so big in Europe – you can get patrons who will pay, whereas in the United States, it has to make business sense. It makes emotional sense to the European guys.’

  As cycling’s first non-European superstar, LeMond had helped transform the Tour into a global event, in the process improving the financial stability of the professional rider. ‘Everything came together for him. And, again, it was the second time that he impacted the sport in that way, that an athlete could command that kind of salary. When he first signed for Renault, that was an astronomical amount of money. That caused all kinds of headlines – and there were mostly critical headlines, because people looked at him as being so greedy. How could an athlete expect or demand or be worth that kind of money? But Greg turned the sport around.’

  ***

  As the world gathered around LeMond on that Sunday afternoon in late July to cheer, celebrate and sing his praises, to bathe him in the sunshine of popularity, Fignon entered a period of introspection, self-analysis and mourning. ‘I went home. Alone. Just sitting. Or wandering about with my eyes going nowhere.’