“Je ne prétends pas être le meilleur grimpeur du monde, mais je peux me considérer comme tel sur ce Tour.” – Andy Schleck (L’Equipe) Lucien Van Impe won the mountains classification, le maillot à pois rouge, six times at the Tour de France (and the Tour itself in 1976), equalling the record set by Federico …
It was Roger Legeay, Greg LeMond’s directeur sportif who made the comment to journalist Sam Abt: “What we really want for Greg is for him to leave cycling.. like the great champion his is, with some good victories. We want him to leave by la grande porte.” Yes, what all cyclists presumably dream of, to …
Thus a day in the life of Gregory James LeMond. He’s 23 and the reigning world pro champion, the toast of the Continent, where bike racers are a form of royalty. And, of all things, he’s an American. No, no, more than that: the quintessential American, a true Innocent Abroad, open-faced and still full of …
A recent debate hosted by Cosmo Catalano on climbers in cycling raised two important questions: firstly, is there such a thing as a pure climber, a grimpeur; secondly, are pure climbers – assuming that there are such riders – becoming rare, due to better training by non-climbers and doping. To address the first question, your …
Ah, mais je vous reconnais: vous êtes celui qui a perdu le Tour de huit secondes! -Non, Monsieur, je suis celui qui en a gagné deux. Good news indeed that William Fotheringham has taken on the task of translating Laurent Fignon’s book Nous etions jeunes et insouciants, We were young and carefree. Seemingly the epitome …
The 1992 season for Greg LeMond was the beginning of his slow descent. But what we can now see with hindsight was not so evident at the time. “I can’t believe that a rider of his quality is finished at 31,” his director, Roger Legeay, had said. Before looking in detail at LeMond’s disastrous seasons …
This blog has already written on Ernest Hemingway’s interest in cycling, particularly the Italian riders Ottavio Bottecchia and Bartolomeo Aymo. “I have started many stories about bicycle racing but have never written one that is as good as the races are both on the indoor and outdoor tracks and on the roads,” he wrote in …
