THIRTY MINUTES FROM IMMORTALITY
‘Eight seconds for 3,500 kilometres is not much, but that is the law of sport’ – Cyrille Guimard
THE LAST TWO gladiators prepare for battle.
4.12pm
Greg LeMond lifts his cherry-red Bottecchia bike up the metal steps of the time trial start house for the fourth and final time in the 1989 Tour de France. All three other occasions have been vital in getting him to this particular juncture, in keeping him just about within touching distance of Laurent Fignon, but this is the one that will matter. If he gets it right, this is the time trial that the world will remember forever.
He allows himself a quick glance up the boulevard that stretches into the distance before him. Just a glance, though. His eyes, encased in those Oakleys, look back down to his thighs. Spending the next 15 miles almost exclusively in the tuck position, this will be his view for the next half-hour. Or notably less, if things go to plan.
The fingers of the official’s right hand count down the last few seconds before departure and off he roars.
4.14pm
Fignon takes his place in the start house, electing not to wear a helmet or sunglasses. He’s not wearing the headband he wore for the mountain time trial either. The hair isn’t even all pulled back out of his eyes; what remains of his floppy fringe hangs and sprouts in different directions. He looks far from invincible. The pursed lips and occasional nervous glance confirm this.
4.15pm
LeMond is on the charge at an impressive lick, upholding his one tactic: to go as fast as he can for as long as he can, not unlike a 400m runner asked to run the 10,000 metres at their normal one-lap pace. Having already passed through the Porchefontaine neighbourhood, he flies under the railway viaduct in the suburb of Viroflay.
4.16pm
LeMond bears left onto the Avenue Roger Salengro. The Sunday afternoon crowds are thick here, raising their hands to shield squinting eyes from the sun.
Their hearts skip a beat when his bike momentarily, and inexplicably, wobbles. He’s immediately back on the straight and narrow, though. It will be the only time in the whole run that LeMond looks remotely human. The Guardian’s correspondent refers to him, in his crouched position, as ‘a praying mantis in search of the Fignon fly’.
4.18pm
Fignon now reaches the Avenue Roger Salengro, but the news is of concern. Despite having only been on the road for four minutes, he is already seven seconds down on LeMond. The psychological pressure just got upped by a notch or two.
LeMond motors on, past red-brick schools and tiny tabacs and mechanics’ garages and tatty petrol stations. This is not the Paris of the tourist brochure. That will come. For now, the Tour visits the Paris of ordinary Parisians.
4.20pm
Fignon looks up to his left, momentarily distracted. Perhaps he hears a radio with the commentary turned up loud. Or maybe it was a shout from a first-floor balcony, a fan offering an informal time check. Guimard brings his car closer for reassurance.
A mile or so up the road, LeMond bears right to follow the south bank of the Seine towards the centre of the capital. Out of the suburbs and into the city.
4.24pm
Near the offices of L’Equipe, LeMond crosses the Seine on the Pont d’Issy les Moulineaux, before sharply swinging right to follow the north bank of the river. He has eight more miles left to ride of this titanic race and, even though he himself is deliberately oblivious to it, the time split at this point excites the world. After seven miles, LeMond is comfortably outpacing everyone else who has passed here today. His time is 20 seconds faster than the next quickest, the Swiss rider Erich Maechler from the Carrera team. Even if he were getting the time checks, who and what has come before would be of no concern to the American and his team. Everything, absolutely everything, is about how his time compares to Fignon’s.
4.26pm
Fignon reaches the Pont d’Issy les Moulineaux. There’s a pause before his split is announced. And while his time is better than that of the current leader – his team-mate Thierry Marie – he nonetheless trails LeMond by 21 seconds and has yet to reach the halfway mark. Touch and go, touch and go.
Cyrille Guimard, in a possibly fate-tempting yellow shirt and with his elbow hanging out of the window, pulls the team car up to within shouting distance of Fignon. The news is delivered. Will it make him instinctively push harder or will some hastily applied mental arithmetic suggest he’ll be just about safe if he maintains his current speed?
The hazy appearance of the Eiffel Tower in the distance signals the race is approaching the end game.
4.28pm
LeMond passes under the Pont de Bir-Hakeim and is now level with the Eiffel Tower on the other bank of the river. José De Cauwer keeps his distance in the team car trailing him, obeying his rider’s orders. No information, no distractions.
At the finish line, Kathy LeMond – in her shades and polka-dot dress – sits nervously. Before her, two-year-old Scott is oblivious to the tension, sleeping through the time trial in his pushchair. As she watches events unfold on a TV screen, that last split time has given Kathy hope. She turns to her mother. ‘Oh my God. I think he might be able to do this.’
4.31pm
LeMond has now barrelled through the series of tunnels alongside the Seine, including the Pont d’Alma tunnel, scene of – eight years later – Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed’s fatal car crash. Back down the road, on the other side of the tunnels, Fignon has reached the Pont de Bir-Hakeim. The latest time split? The pair are now divided by 29 seconds.
4.32pm
Sixth-placed Charly Mottet completes his time trial and completes his race. Once he finds out how the duel behind is shaping up, and with LeMond imminently to arrive on the Champs-Élysées, he elects to hang around the finish area. A young lad asks for an autograph. He gets some advice from his hero, too. ‘Watch this. It will be historic.’
4.35pm
Fignon has now cut away from the river and is on the Rue de Rivoli, passing under the banner indicating that just four kilometres of this year’s Tour remain. He’ll soon be across the Place de la Concorde and into the lion’s den of the Champs-Élysées. LeMond is already more than halfway up the iconic boulevard, hugging the left-hand kerb to give him the most shelter.
4.37pm
LeMond takes the turn in front of the Arc de Triomphe, his arms coming off the aerobars for the first time since Versailles so that he can safely negotiate the hairpin. Once speed has been regained, it’s back into the tuck position that’s served him so well until now and a flat-out push downhill to the line. It’s the last effort after more than 2,000 miles and 87+ hours in the saddle. He’s a blur to the packed pavements, and the packed pavements are a blur to him.
4.38pm
All the vehicles trailing LeMond, save for a couple of official cars, are diverted away from the finish down a side road, meaning José De Cauwer is unable to watch the moment his team leader completes his Tour of duty. Race radio will have to suffice for now.
Beyond the finish line, LeMond’s beefy soigneur, Otto Jacome, hears the latest split. ‘48? Ooooh! Oh my God! Jesus Christ…’ This may just well be the crowning glory of the Mexican’s long association with LeMond, the man whose presence, says Kathy, ‘was like therapy for Greg. He had someone he could trust after the backstabbing of the ’86 Tour – to know his food was safe and his bike was right.’
4.39pm
LeMond crosses the line in a time of 26 minutes and 57 seconds – an astounding average speed of 34mph. It is the fastest stage in 86 years of the Tour de France. Sean Yates’s record has been smashed. Kathy hugs father-in-law Bob before her husband whooshes by, freewheeling through the finish area. In all the hubbub, he doesn’t hear her cries: ‘Greggggggg!’. Jacome rushes to greet his rider, attending to his immediate needs like that boxing trainer, instant praise in the ear of his fighter at the end of a bout. Then the pair are lost, swallowed by a media scrum. It is now a waiting game. Fignon must finish in less than 27 minutes and 47 seconds to take the title for the third time.
4.40pm
Fignon is struggling for momentum on the gentle rise towards the Arc de Triomphe, coming out of the saddle in a desperate search for rhythm – or, with that boil a constant thorn, in a desperate search for a pain-free riding style. He is nowhere near as fluid as LeMond was. To the naked eye, he looks like he’s continuing to lose time. When he reaches the hairpin, this is confirmed. The kerbside crowd winces and a nation grows fearful. Fignon is now 53 seconds behind, making LeMond champion as things stand. It’s no longer defence and preservation. He now needs to actually gain a few seconds on his rival before the finish line, less than two minutes away. If he doesn’t, the race will have slipped through his fingers.
In the finish area, LeMond, his ears cocooned in a chunky pair of Radio France headphones to eavesdrop on the station’s commentary, doesn’t dare to dream. In fact, he’s still in the dark, unable to hear anything because of all the noise around him.
4.41pm
The huge flotilla following Fignon down the Champs-Élysées – including around 20 motorbikes and, with the Frenchman being the last rider, the broom wagon – is waved off the course. Guimard disappears down the same side road as almost everyone else, leaving Fignon to face the last agonising minute alone, a vulnerable figure on this wide boulevard, a tiny boat in a giant ocean.
4.42pm
A side-wind slightly blows Fignon off course, but it’s inconsequential. It’s already over. The target time has gone. The unforgiving official clock – as Delgado found all those weeks back in Luxembourg – waits for no cyclist, regardless of the hue of his jersey. The margin of defeat is eight seconds. Eight. Seconds.
Fignon dramatically collapses to the ground, in front of a cordon of gendarmes protecting the finish area. Darkness descends on his world. The colours fly away. Then the tears come, great sobbing tears of despair. The glasses off, the guard down.
A few yards away, Kathy LeMond’s anxiety hasn’t abated. She searches for clarification from all around her. ‘Did he win or not?’ She spins around and Greg is trotting towards her, clip-clopping across the road in his cleats. His embrace and passionate kisses answer her question. She is married to the Tour de France champion once again.
***
Paris was stunned. Europe was stunned. The world was stunned.
Something very epic had just occurred. The words of Daniel Mangeas, the announcer on the Champs-Élysées who had embarked on an impromptu countdown over the PA system, had ensured the drama was high for all those gathered in the capital. ‘When Fignon was approaching the line,’ Mangeas told Cycling Weekly, ‘my colleague shouted at me that he had ten seconds left to save the Tour. I just started counting down like that. Ten, nine, eight, seven… I got to zero and that was it. Greg had won the Tour and, above all at that moment, I wanted Fignon not to have heard me counting down.’
Already back in his hotel room, Johan Lammerts had showered and lay on the bed. He couldn’t believe the performance that his room-mate had just put in. ‘It was so exciting, seeing Greg pedal with so much power.’ The French TV commentator, though, focused less on LeMond’s achievements and more on the self-destruction of the hometown boy: ‘Laurent Fignon a perdu le Tour de France’. His voice was a mixture of the sorrowful compatriot and the story-hunter journalist.
On the Reynolds bus, an undressing Pedro Delgado had been shaken by the roar from the finish line. ‘I heard an explosion. “What happened?” “Fignon lost.” “What?!” “Yes, by eight seconds.” Incredible.’
In the sponsors’ pavilion just a stone’s throw from the action, the Super U entourage had been in a cheery mood for much of the day. As Fignon rolled out from Versailles, his team-mate Bjarne Riis was basking in the glow of having finished his first Tour. That was before the time splits began filtering through, after which the pavilion grew increasingly quiet. ‘All the riders were standing there,’ Riis recalls, ‘watching the last couple of minutes. “Oh no, no, no!” We were thinking about the prize money we were losing that we’d been working for the whole race. But it wasn’t just the money. We felt so sorry for him. We had been so supportive but everything had fallen apart.’ The only sound breaking the shocked silence in the pavilion were the sobs of the wives and girlfriends gathered for the intended celebrations. Thierry Marie, who had finished second on the stage, couldn’t be comforted. ‘If only I could have swapped my time trial with Fignon’s…’
All had witnessed arguably the greatest comeback in sporting history. In comparison, even an occasion of the magnitude of the Rumble in the Jungle – where the 32-year-old Muhammad Ali regained the world heavyweight title having been stripped of it (and his boxing licence) seven years previously – had been cast into the shadows. This was now the biggest sports story of them all. The Tour de France had been won by a man who had cheated death, who had pellets still lodged in his body, who had been on the verge of quitting the sport the previous month, who had largely ridden solo because of the weakness of his team, and who had produced the fastest time trial in the race’s history, overturning a seemingly impossible time margin.
In the Channel 4 studio in London, pundit and two-time Olympic medallist Mick Bennett gave a from-the-heart appraisal of what he’d just seen: ‘The most exciting piece of television I think perhaps since JR got shot.’ The full drama of the occasion had been experienced by British viewers through the excitement and expertise of commentators Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen.
‘Oh, bloody hell,’ says Sherwen. ‘Phil and I will always talk about that being one of the greatest moments. We work as a team. I went to university and did a science degree. My background is mathematics. To this day, I’m always trying to work out the permutations. Back then, when I was working things out and passing information on to Phil, he trusted me incredibly – “This is what’s happening, this is the gap, it’s going this way, it’s going that way, blah blah blah”. Eventually, though, on the finish line, it wasn’t me who called it. Phil called it to perfection.’ In bringing the ’89 Tour to British viewers, they operated like a pair of election night broadcasters, Liggett calling the results and Sherwen offering the data-driven predictions. In place of a swingometer, though, was just some paper and a pen. And perhaps a pocket calculator.
An election only has one winner. The rest have to lose. And none lost as heavily as Fignon. The author Edward Pickering made an excellent attempt at inhabiting the Parisian’s head as he fulfilled his obligation to attend the podium presentation. ‘Imagine the confused sense of self-consciousness he must have felt with every movement, the stabbing jolt of adrenalin in his chest, the jelly weakness of his legs, the knowledge that if he could just do the day over again, there’s no way he’d lose the yellow jersey.’
‘Being on the podium with Fignon was terrible,’ says Delgado. ‘He had the Tour in his hands. I felt bad for him. For his sporting character, he was more deserving to be the winner. He was more aggressive, more athletic. I would have preferred to have lost to him, not LeMond.’ There were brave smiles on the podium – from Fignon himself and from the other two directed at him. But neither LeMond nor Delgado would have wanted to be standing in his shoes, caught in the collective gaze of a disappointed nation.
History was being made at the presentation. It was the first time that three previous winners stood together on the podium; they were also the respective winners of that season’s three Grand Tours to boot. Plus, with LeMond’s father-in-law handing over five-year-old Geoffrey to his dad (who promptly placed him on the top step of the podium), 1989 was the first time that the champion’s offspring joined in the celebrations, a practice revived in recent times by both Bradley Wiggins and Chris Froome. ‘They hadn’t seen each other in so long,’ says Kathy. ‘It was really sweet that my dad did that.’
The inquests had begun the moment Fignon collapsed in a heap on the tarmac from exhaustion and would be conducted long into the night. Had he been over-confident or eaten up with nerves and worry? Should he be chastised for not adopting aerobars or commended for his neo-purist stance? Or was he, despite riding his own fastest time trial ever, simply defeated by a remarkable, seemingly superhuman effort? The protagonists lined up to offer their diagnosis.
‘Fignon should have won,’ Marino Lejarreta told Cycling Weekly, ‘and I think if he’d really considered LeMond a threat, he would have gone all out in the first half of the race and wiped him out. Fignon paid a high price for underestimating him.’
José De Cauwer’s assessment was shot through with the insight of a directeur sportif. ‘Fignon is a proud man. He wanted to win the Tour in a certain style, by clenching his fist and shouting “I will win the Tour this way”. But he didn’t make the smartest decisions.’
‘He definitely regretted not using aerobars,’ concludes Bjarne Riis, ‘no doubt about that. The only reason he didn’t was because he was unsure of their potential and didn’t have enough time to test them out. He was probably a little stubborn, too. But at that point it was too late.’
Sean Yates puts it down to technology. ‘Physically, they were neck-and-neck. It was purely down to the aerodynamics. Ultimately the blame should be upon Guimard, although you can’t really blame him when the knowledge was not out there. Even my best friend – who’s got honours degrees in mathematics and physics and this, that and the other – could not see the advantage of tribars. This is a guy with degrees from Oxford. I’m a guy who’s never taken an exam in his life and to me it’s a no-brainer! When you study a downhill skier, they keep compact for a reason. It’s to make them go a lot faster. But back in those days, no one really had a grasp of how important aerodynamics were – having tribars or wearing a helmet. Or not having a ponytail…’
The inventor of those aerobars, Boone Lennon, modestly attributed it to LeMond’s superb fitness, which improved day after day on the Tour. ‘He probably could have done what he did anyway is the feeling I have. The handlebars were perhaps a replacement for a weak team. He didn’t have a team to help him through all the road stages, to do all the chasing down and the counterattacks and so on. The handlebars helped him out in the time trial as a replacement for that.’
Paul Sherwen believes Fignon’s wellbeing to have been crucial. ‘It was totally and utterly illogical that Greg won. But did we know the physical situation with Fignon? Did we know he was injured? Did we know he was as badly off as he was? And that’s where you still keep the suspense in the sport.’
And Fignon had kept the suspense, with no one outside his team knowing how serious his saddle sore was. That evening, in the aftermath of the time trial, he admitted he’d not slept well for two nights because of the pain. But then came an even more staggering disclosure. ‘If the race had gone on until Monday, I believe I would have abandoned.’ Ex-rider Sherwen knows how much such discomfort can affect performance. ‘If Fignon didn’t have the saddle boil that he had, it would have been a lot closer. And if the time trial had been 20 kilometres, he’d have won. That’s why the Tour de France organisation was so lucky with the design of the route.’
The anticlimax that might have been offered by an inconsequential final-day time trial had been averted. Instead, three weeks of fierce, guts-out, heart-on-the-sleeve racing was blessed by the high-drama denouement it truly deserved. That last final-day time trial in 1968, the one that had produced the narrowest margin of victory in the race’s history, hadn’t just been equalled, it had been eclipsed. ‘Fortune favoured them,’ agrees Yates. ‘They couldn’t have written the script any better. Well, I suppose the French guy could have won it by two seconds…’
Despite having left his Tour director role more than a year earlier, Jean-Francois Naquet-Radiguet could bask in the satisfaction that the final day he’d decreed had been rewarded with the brilliant finish. The greatest ever. ‘Of course,’ he told Daniel Friebe, ‘you could say Laurent Fignon lost the Tour because of me. I thought he was going to hunt me down and kill me! But that was the race. You either want sport, competition, a race, or you can have a procession. I thought we wanted sport.’
In his autobiography, Fignon describes, very vividly, what the minutes after the time trial felt like. ‘I walk like a boxer who’s concussed, in an improbable world of furious noise. The steps I take are robotic and aren’t directed at anything. I’ve no idea where I am going and who is making me go there. I feel arms supporting me, helping me to stand up. People make noise around me. Some shout. Some look haggard, groggy, wiped out. Others are celebrating.’
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”
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”