Selling the Yellow Jersey

by Eric Reed

  new colonies of the sport in virgin territories like the United States. In addition, the Tour welcomed professional cyclists from across the planet to compete in

  an effort to diversify and “globalize” the event’s profi le. To the consternation of the French racing public, however, French riders’ dominance of the Tour de

  France waned as more of the world came to France to compete. Breton Bernard

  Hinault won fi ve Tours between 1978 and 1985, which equaled the title record

  established by Jacques Anquetil in 1964 and matched by Eddie Merckx in 1974.

  No French rider has won the Tour since Hinault’s fi fth victory in 1985. By the late 1980s, Tour riders from outside the traditional Western European “core”

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  177

  competed on an equal footing with French riders. Between 1986 and 2012, cy-

  clists from Ireland, Australia, Britain, Denmark, and Germany captured yel-

  low jerseys, and riders from the United States and Spain won twenty Tours.*

  The rise of American riders seemed particularly threatening to the French

  School and its philosophies, given the New World nation’s symbolic meaning

  in France’s collective imagination. At the same time, the American victories

  validated the French School amid the decline of French riders’ competitive

  preeminence on the widening stage of world professional cycling. Although

  they were born in America, LeMond and Armstrong emerged from the

  French School of cycling to dominate the Tour. Their Tour triumphs trans-

  formed the New World champions into household names in America and

  elsewhere, which popularized the event even further on the global stage.

  In 1986, LeMond defeated fi ve- time Tour winner and teammate- rival

  Hinault to capture the Tour’s crown and became the fi rst non- European to

  win the world’s most prestigious race. LeMond had trained in the French

  School and the young American’s three Tour triumphs between 1986 and 1990

  confi rmed its position as the most important proving ground for the planet’s

  best cyclists. LeMond’s successes led him to enormous wealth and fame. In

  America, his star power popularized the Tour and helped spark a renaissance

  of professional road racing at the moment when the Tour’s leadership sought

  to colonize the New World in the name of cycling. The American star’s vic-

  tories and international star power confi rmed the ability of the Tour and the

  French School to forge new champions in the global television age.

  Greg LeMond rose to the head of a signifi cant cohort of American cy-

  clists who moved to Europe to race professionally beginning in the 1970s. The

  earliest ambassador of postwar American professional cycling was Jonathan

  Boyer. Boyer’s early life story and career history illustrate the makeshift, ad hoc process of becoming a competitive cyclist in the United States, as well as

  the role of the French School in developing promising talent from under-

  developed cycling regions like North America. Boyer was born in Moab, Utah,

  to Josie and Winston Boyer, who eked a hard living from prospecting for oil

  and uranium while living in a trailer in the high desert near Arches National

  Park. After his parents divorced, Boyer and his mother moved to Carmel,

  California. As a teenager, Boyer befriended Carmel cycling enthusiast George

  Farrier, who became a father fi gure and encouraged the fourteen- year- old

  to develop his racing talent. Farrier introduced Boyer to Remo d’Agliano, a

  local restaurant owner and retired professional cyclist who had served as a

  domestique for Jacques Anquetil in the early 1960s.

  * These totals do not include titles stripped from riders after victory due to doping violations.

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  c h a p t e r s e v e n

  Boyer and his brother, Winston, dominated junior amateur races in north-

  ern California in the early 1970s. In 1973, d’Agliano arranged for seventeen-

  year- old “Jock,” as Boyer was called, to spend fi ve months racing with a cy-

  cling club in southern France. The following year, Jock Boyer spent the entire

  racing season in France. For the next four years he attempted to make a living

  as a domestique for several second- tier French professional teams. In 1974, the penniless Boyer lived in the closet of his cycling club’s house. On the advice

  of his club’s sporting advisor, Boyer raced constantly and took an intensive

  course in French language. Between 1975 and 1979, Boyer turned professional,

  spent most of each year living and racing in France for second- tier French

  teams, moonlighted as a bicycle handlebar wrap salesman, married a Texan

  fencing champion, competed occasionally in American races such as the Red

  Zinger/Coors Classic, and established in Europe a reputation as a fearless,

  tireless, powerful support rider with a “capacity to endure, ignore and, if possible, to use a certain kind of pain” while competing.23

  Jock Boyer’s training and assimilation into the French School culminated

  with his selection to race in the Tour de France. Bernard Hinault’s Renault- Elf team hired Boyer as a domestique for the 1981 Tour de France. “Jacques” Boyer, as he was known in the French press, was the fi rst American to participate

  in the event. Boyer and four other Anglophone riders comprised what the

  French press dubbed a “Foreign Legion” of American, British, and Australian

  racers who participated in the 1981 Tour. All fi ve riders followed similar ca-

  reer paths and envisioned using the fame won in France to their advantage at

  home. Explained Australian Phil Anderson, “In Europe . . . I think I can earn

  enough money to live well. . . . When I’m done here, I hope to return home

  and capitalize on my reputation.”24 “I’m Jacques Boyer to these people, but I

  want to be known to Americans as Jonathan Boyer — BOY- yer,” asserted the

  American.25 “One of my goals,” explained Boyer later, “is to get cycling out of the underground in the United States, make it respectable.”26 Boyer enjoyed

  modest success and made a viable living as a journeyman professional racer

  in Europe. He competed in the Tour fi ve times between 1981 and 1987 and

  fi nished in a career- high twelfth place in 1983. In 1998, the US Bicycling Hall of Fame inducted Boyer and recognized his “leadership role in helping the

  next generation of Americans succeed” on the world bicycling stage.27

  The rapid rise of Greg LeMond, who won the world road racing champi-

  onship in 1983 at age twenty- two, overshadowed Boyer’s pioneering role. Greg

  LeMond literally and symbolically overtook Boyer as the leading American

  rider in Europe. As Boyer sprinted away from the peloton toward a possible

  victory in the last meters of the 1982 world road racing championship, young

  LeMond led the pack of racers that chased down and overtook the veteran

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  179

  American and claimed the silver medal for himself in the process. After his

  victory in the 1986 Tour de France, the Californian became the fi rst Ameri-

  can international cycling superstar since turn- of- the- century track champion Major Taylor. Although his emergence as a successful professional occurred

  much more rapidly than “Jacques” Boyer’s, LeMond followed the traditional

  French School training and professional accultur
ation regimen.

  LeMond was born in California and grew up near Reno, Nevada, the

  son of a real estate agent. Sports Illustrated wrote a feature story on LeMond in 1984. The piece described the young racer as a blond- haired, blue- eyed

  “Huck Finn with steel thighs,” an all- American youngster who craved Dairy

  Queen and consumed four liters of Coca- Cola for lunch. LeMond’s father,

  Robert, introduced his teenage son to cycling when, in an effort to eliminate

  his expanding “beer belly,” he purchased a racing bicycle and began riding

  in the canyons around Reno with Greg. Although the young LeMond had

  envisioned a career as a full- time skiing “hot dog,” the 1979 bicycling fi lm

  Breaking Away made him “insane” and fueled an ambition to become a pro-

  fessional cyclist in Europe.28

  LeMond dominated the American amateur ranks and set his sights on com-

  peting in the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. The Nevadan high schooler

  raced in Europe’s amateur circuit during his summer vacations in 1978 and 1979

  and won a gold medal in the 1979 junior world championship road race. His

  successes turned the heads of professional teams, which in 1980 engaged in a

  recruiting battle to sign eighteen- year- old LeMond to a professional contract.

  Renault team manager Cyrille Guimard and his star, reigning Tour de France

  and professional world champion Bernard Hinault, fl ew to Reno to court Le-

  Mond and signed him to a lucrative deal. The young professional spent the

  next six years riding for the best French teams as the protégé and heir apparent to fi ve- time Tour winner Hinault. LeMond raced most of the year in France.

  He lived with his wife, Kathy, in a small Belgian town, Kortrijk, which accepted Greg as their “king” and became the LeMonds’ “adopted hometown.”29

  Although he lived in Belgium, LeMond’s development followed the

  French School model in terms of his competitive demeanor and lifestyle. Be-

  tween 1980 and 1985, LeMond played the role of faithful apprentice to his

  “hero” and team leader, Hinault. The Breton declared “LeMond will ride

  over my body” to succeed him as the best rider in the world.30 During his

  fi rst Tours in 1984 and 1985, LeMond served as Hinault’s personal pacesetter

  in the mountains. The young rider placed on the podium in both Tours. Le-

  Mond may have been able to win the 1985 Tour but gave up his own chances

  to help his team leader. On orders from team coach Guimard, LeMond, who

  had joined a breakaway on the mountainous seventeenth stage when Hinault

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  c h a p t e r s e v e n

  faltered, abandoned his efforts to win to preserve Hinault’s overall lead. In

  return, the French champion promised to help LeMond win the Tour in 1986.

  The Nevadan took intensive French lessons early in his career and spoke the

  language fl uently by the time he emerged as a rising star in the early 1980s.

  By 1990, after eclipsing French rival Laurent Fignon, the young American

  was ready to become the peloton’s defi nitive patron (head of state) and had emerged as the French public’s “chosen champion” by combining his Californian “look clean” with the “charms of the French savoir- vivre that he inherited from his [French] education as a cyclist.”31

  American television noted LeMond’s rise, albeit more slowly than the

  American print press. American evening news shows broadcast numerous

  Tour de France updates in the 1980s during LeMond’s emergence in the top

  ranks of professional cycling. NBC Nightly News covered the participation of Greg LeMond in the men’s Tour and the American women’s cycling team in

  the fi rst- ever Women’s Tour de France in 1984. Both races were staged at the

  same time. A two- minute piece at the beginning of the Tour briefl y noted that LeMond was among the contenders for the men’s title, but devoted most of the

  air time to discussing the chances of the American women’s team and inter-

  viewing team captain Betsy King, who declared, “Over here, you need to show

  ’em that the women aren’t just dishwashers and diaper changers.” Clearly,

  the women’s Tour held the network’s interest, since reporter Jim Bitterman

  mispronounced LeMond’s name the two times he used it.* LeMond’s third-

  place fi nish and the victory of an American woman, Marianne Martin, in the

  women’s Tour spurred NBC to air a full report on the evening news. NBC’s

  July 22, 1984, evening news broadcast included nearly three minutes of high-

  lights and interviews with Boulder native Martin and Tour rookie LeMond.32

  LeMond’s growing fame and renown in Europe and America came

  through in an NBC Evening News report on the eve of the American’s fi rst Tour victory two years later. The piece contained three minutes of highlights

  of the 1986 contest and included a lengthy discussion of LeMond’s prolonged

  apprenticeship to Bernard Hinault and the burgeoning rivalry between the

  two. An NBC reporter, interviewing an English- speaking Frenchman on a

  Paris street, captured the sentiments of French cycling fans, who faced with

  anxiety the prospect of an American win in France’s national bicycle race.

  “There’s a big rumor on right now that if this young American wins . . . a

  hundred thousand Frenchmen will go back to New York and take back La

  Statue de la Liberté,” joked the man.33 “An American winning here is like

  * Bitterman pronounced it as one would pronounce the past tense of “lemon” if it were a verb.

  NBC Nightly News, July 6, 1984, VUTNA.

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  181

  a Frenchman winning baseball’s MVP,” explained LeMond after his victory

  three days later.34

  LeMond emerged as an international athletic superstar. After he won the

  Tour again in 1989 and 1990, as well as the world road racing championship

  in 1989, LeMond became the highest- paid cyclist in the world. Like Lance

  Armstrong, LeMond’s compelling personal story added luster to his fame

  in America after his Tour victory. A 1986 profi le in People magazine painted an athletic and personal portrait of LeMond that conveyed his moody dis-position and dwelled on the apprenticeship and personal rivalry between

  the young Tour winner and mentor Bernard Hinault. The article quoted an

  anonymous Tour “insider,” who lamented, “[LeMond] has the character of a

  pig.”35 A similar profi le in People three years later, following his second Tour victory, struck a different tone and characterized LeMond as “remarkable”

  and “driven.” Most of the article recounted LeMond’s return to cycling after

  a near- death experience in 1987. Just eight months after his fi rst Tour victory, LeMond’s brother- in- law shot him accidentally while the two hunted turkey

  near Sacramento. LeMond missed the entire 1987 cycling season, spent most

  of 1988 struggling to recover his health and form, and won the 1989 Tour

  on the last day of racing by a scant eight seconds even though he had thirty

  shotgun pellets still lodged in his body.36 Sports Illustrated named LeMond its

  “Sportsman of the Year” for 1989.37

  LeMond’s star power on both sides of the Atlantic made him a valuable

  commercial commodity in France and the United States. After his 1989 Tour

  victory, French clothing maker “Z” won the international bidding war for

  LeMond’s services b
y paying him nearly $2 million per year to lead their

  team, one of the best in cycling. LeMond’s business arrangement with the

  Z team included a deal to manufacture and market LeMond- brand bicycles

  and for the American champion to cosponsor, with Coors, a new profes-

  sional team that would race in America.38 Across the Pond, the New York

  Times credited LeMond with popularizing professional cycling in America since before his Tour victories news and results from other top- tier races like the Tour of Italy reached American shores only weeks or months late.39 North

  America’s nascent professional road racing structure depended on LeMond’s

  fame and commercial clout for ballast. The press called LeMond the “major

  attraction” of the Tours de Trump and pointed to LeMond’s failure to enter

  the 1989 inaugural race or win the event’s second edition as important rea-

  sons for the event’s lackluster reception by the American public and its dif-

  fi culty retaining corporate sponsors.40 LeMond’s lucrative, three- year apparel endorsement pact with DuPont in 1990, which included promises to enter

  DuPont- sponsored races, justifi ed the chemical giant’s decision to purchase,

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  c h a p t e r s e v e n

  rename, and stage the Tour de Trump in 1991 and generated enormous media

  attention and publicity. DuPont’s marketing head compared LeMond’s star

  power to that of world fi gure skating celebrity and East German Olympic

  gold medalist Katarina Witt, another DuPont- sponsored athlete.41 LeMond

  won the Tour DuPont in 1992. Less than eighteen months after LeMond’s

  1994 retirement, DuPont ended its sponsorship of its namesake cycling event,

  and the race ceased to exist.

  The retirement of Bernard Hinault and the decline of two- time Tour win-

  ner Laurent Fignon after 1989 left France with no top- rank cycling stars to

  vie for the Tour title. On the eve of the 1991 Tour, L’Humanité lamented that French cycling had fallen so low that even the newly crowned French national

  road race champion, Armand de Las Cuevas, failed to be selected by his team

  to compete in France’s most famous sporting event. De Las Cuevas’s “exile . . .

  deprives the French public of its champion . . . during the cycling calendar’s

  preeminent contest [and] demonstrates the attenuation of the French profes-