The 1989 Tour de France is widely rated as the best ever modern-day edition of the race, featuring the narrowest of victories for Greg LeMond on the Champs Elysées ahead of Laurent Fignon in the final time trial.
LeMond’s victory, his second in the Tour, also represented an incredible turnaround for the American after his near-fatal hunting accident in 1987 and two rollercoaster seasons that followed.
In this moving memoir of her and Greg’s experiences, from The Road Book Blue Series, and history both on and off the bike in that period, Kathy LeMond provides an acute and warmhearted insight into how LeMond first found his way to Europe and conquered the biggest bike race in the world in a tumultuous year and when it looked like it was far from possible to achieve.
How it all began
The first time I ever saw Greg, he was sitting with his parents in a coffee shop. I was visiting a friend who was also a cyclist, and I saw him and his family happily talking together. I think it was because he had such a great relationship with his mom and dad that he wanted me to travel with him to races. There was something about how close they were. They could talk about anything and they always respected his opinion. It wasn’t like they were just parents telling him what to do; that never was the case. They were just supportive, extraordinary people. His mom is gone now, but his dad is still alive.
You see, when we got married he was 19 and I was just 20. We were so crazily in love. We really didn’t have anybody else. I don’t even know how to describe it. It was just, you know, how it is when you first fall in love. We had been together a year and a half when we got married, and I just couldn’t even imagine living without him.
Cyrille Guimard got him a ride when Renault offered him a contract. He, Bernard Hinault and Jean-Marie LeBlanc came to visit Greg at his parents’ house in Reno. I mean, at 19, Greg was very young to turn pro. They were concerned about how it would work out because Americans often struggled in France; they could be lonely, unable to speak the language, although we both spoke a high-school level standard of French. And Greg was already making $35,000 a year in America, but only $12,000 in Europe.
Cyrille arranged a place for us to live only 15 miles from his house. It was meant in a supportive way, and not in any way negative. He made sure that I could also come to France with Greg because he felt he had signed a real diamond. He put his arms around us and…
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