Matt Seaton
Thursday January 31, 2008
The Guardian
We know that it is not what came to Marcel's mind when he bit into the little madeleine cake, but for me, the January edition of Procycling magazine has a morsel of that poignant Proustian recall. The reason is that it is guest-edited by Greg LeMond.
When Lance Armstrong was still in short trousers, LeMond was the first truly great American cyclist. In the 1980s, he took a hidebound, introspective European sport by the scruff of the neck and shook it to its core. In 1983, at the age of 22, he became world champion and then went on to become the first non-European to win the Tour de France in 1986. But 1989 was his annus mirabilis. His second Tour victory was remarkable not only because, as an American, he won on the Champs Elysées on France's republican bicentennial by the narrowest margin in the history of the event (just eight seconds), but also because, two years earlier, he had been lucky to survive a hunting accident that had left his body riddled with lead shot. LeMond revolutionised the sport, not least in his earnings, becoming the first million-dollar contract cyclist.
Article continues
He retired in 1994, relatively young at 33, apparently suffering from a rare degenerative muscular disease. He now believes this was misdiagnosed - since, at 47, he is in pretty good shape for someone with "mitochondrial myopathy". My guess is that by the early 90s virtually everyone else in the peloton but he was taking EPO; he couldn't account for his underperformance, became depressed, and eventually found a diagnosis to fit the "symptoms" of his loss of form.
It is just a hunch, but an informed one. For the reason I felt nostalgic when reading Procycling was that, a few years ago, LeMond invited me to ghostwrite his autobiography. It didn't pan out. He changed his mind about doing the book; I think he felt his career had somehow been eclipsed by Armstrong's, who had, to boot, published a bestselling autobiography. I hope he does complete the book some day. He was the original pioneer.
We remained on good terms, though, and I, at any rate, gained by the experience, spending a spell as LeMond and his wife Kathy's guest at their house near Minneapolis. They are warm, generous and open-hearted people. Even if LeMond is, at times, erratic, exasperating and egocentric, you can't help but like him - and all those qualities were part of what helped him realise his potential.
Regrets? None, only I'd think twice about accepting a lift from him. He spent a couple of years racing cars after retiring from cycling, and it shows. There were moments when I thought my life would end upside down in a ditch in Minnesota, my corpse dragged from a smoking Audi by one of those people Garrison Keillor likes to call "Norwegian bachelor farmers".
But to go for a ride with LeMond again over that oceanic, frozen, black-earth prairie, oblivious to the bitter wind blowing down from Canada because the crazy energy of his talk, talk, talk is enough to carry you both along? You bet.
Thursday January 31, 2008
The Guardian
We know that it is not what came to Marcel's mind when he bit into the little madeleine cake, but for me, the January edition of Procycling magazine has a morsel of that poignant Proustian recall. The reason is that it is guest-edited by Greg LeMond.
When Lance Armstrong was still in short trousers, LeMond was the first truly great American cyclist. In the 1980s, he took a hidebound, introspective European sport by the scruff of the neck and shook it to its core. In 1983, at the age of 22, he became world champion and then went on to become the first non-European to win the Tour de France in 1986. But 1989 was his annus mirabilis. His second Tour victory was remarkable not only because, as an American, he won on the Champs Elysées on France's republican bicentennial by the narrowest margin in the history of the event (just eight seconds), but also because, two years earlier, he had been lucky to survive a hunting accident that had left his body riddled with lead shot. LeMond revolutionised the sport, not least in his earnings, becoming the first million-dollar contract cyclist.
Article continues
He retired in 1994, relatively young at 33, apparently suffering from a rare degenerative muscular disease. He now believes this was misdiagnosed - since, at 47, he is in pretty good shape for someone with "mitochondrial myopathy". My guess is that by the early 90s virtually everyone else in the peloton but he was taking EPO; he couldn't account for his underperformance, became depressed, and eventually found a diagnosis to fit the "symptoms" of his loss of form.
It is just a hunch, but an informed one. For the reason I felt nostalgic when reading Procycling was that, a few years ago, LeMond invited me to ghostwrite his autobiography. It didn't pan out. He changed his mind about doing the book; I think he felt his career had somehow been eclipsed by Armstrong's, who had, to boot, published a bestselling autobiography. I hope he does complete the book some day. He was the original pioneer.
We remained on good terms, though, and I, at any rate, gained by the experience, spending a spell as LeMond and his wife Kathy's guest at their house near Minneapolis. They are warm, generous and open-hearted people. Even if LeMond is, at times, erratic, exasperating and egocentric, you can't help but like him - and all those qualities were part of what helped him realise his potential.
Regrets? None, only I'd think twice about accepting a lift from him. He spent a couple of years racing cars after retiring from cycling, and it shows. There were moments when I thought my life would end upside down in a ditch in Minnesota, my corpse dragged from a smoking Audi by one of those people Garrison Keillor likes to call "Norwegian bachelor farmers".
But to go for a ride with LeMond again over that oceanic, frozen, black-earth prairie, oblivious to the bitter wind blowing down from Canada because the crazy energy of his talk, talk, talk is enough to carry you both along? You bet.
