Discovering Le Tour

Greg LeMond - 1989 Final TT

As a child it was inevitable that I would get into sport. My dad has always been a keen and able sportsman throughout his life and I spent hours and hours of my childhood with him playing football, rugby, tennis, cricket, and of course riding our bikes. But it was as an eight year old I vividly remember sitting in front of my parents 15” JVC TV watching the final stage of the 1989 Tour de France which was an individual time trial finishing on the Champs Elysees. It was the year the Tour was decided by eight seconds. The American Greg LeMond beating the darling of France, Laurent Fignon, in one of the most dramatic finishes in race's long and illustrious history (the closest margin of victory to date). Fignon, wearing the Maillot Jaune had 50 seconds in hand on his rival and was favourite to add to his titles of 1983 and 1984. However, LeMond, using his – for the time – controversial and revolutionary tri bars on his time trial bike averaged over 34mph over a 15 mile course and stormed to victory taking 58 seconds out of Fignon and securing his second Maillot Jaune.

Laurent Fignon - 1989, Final TT

I remember the the grainy images of Fignon, with his body hunched over his bars, his blonde ponytail flailing in the wind and his bespectacled face contorted with pain as he propelled his bike towards the finish line in the desire to keep the golden fleece. The crackling live feed in which the voices of Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen gradually becoming more animated in the realisation they were witnessing one of the most dramatic finishes in Tour de France history. It was truly special and it stuck with me. The joy and glory for LeMond, the heartbreak and despair for Fignon, the magnificence and beauty of the event. As an eight year old I didn’t understand the sport as I do now and over time I learnt about the history, the intricacies, the tactics, the science and most of all the pain and suffering. However, I was old enough to understand that two supreme athletes were pushing their bodies to the limit to achieve a childhood dream. I had discovered my first cycling hero in Laurent Fignon and more importantly I had found a sport and a race that was brutal yet beautiful and had a romance for which no other sport could match. It was Le Tour, a special three weeks every July.

From then on the start of summer meant two things. The first was being able to play endless matches of football with my friends at the park at the end of our road.  More importantly it meant the start of the Tour de France was only weeks away and I would get to watch the half hour highlights package Channel 4 provided throughout the 1990s before the wall-to-wall coverage provided by Eurosport and now also ITV. As I got older I started to watch the two other three week grand tours, the Giro d’Italia and Vuelta a Espana and then the one day spring classics, such as Paris-Roubaix, the Tour of Flanders, Liege-Bastogne-Liege and many more beside. But it was the Tour de France, the biggest and most beautiful race in cycling which hooked me and it is still the one race that I and many other cycling fans look forward to more than any other.