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Summary
Summary
In July 1986, Greg LeMond stunned the sporting world by becoming the first American to win the Tour de France, the world's pre-eminent bicycle race, defeating French cycling legend Bernard Hinault. Nine months later, LeMond lay in a hospital bed, his life in peril after a hunting accident, his career as a bicycle racer seemingly over. And yet, barely two years after this crisis, LeMond mounted a comeback almost without parallel in professional sports. In summer 1989, he again won the Tour--arguably the world's most grueling athletic contest--by the almost impossibly narrow margin of 8 seconds over another French legend, Laurent Fignon. It remains the closest Tour de France in history.
The Comeback chronicles the life of one of America's greatest athletes, from his roots in Nevada and California to the heights of global fame, to a falling out with his own family and a calamitous confrontation with Lance Armstrong over allegations the latter was doping--a campaign LeMond would wage on principle for more than a decade before Armstrong was finally stripped of his own Tour titles. With the kind of narrative drive that propels books like Moneyball , and a fierce attention to detail, Daniel de Visé reveals the dramatic, ultra-competitive inner world of a sport rarely glimpsed up close, and builds a compelling case for LeMond as its great American hero.
Author Notes
Daniel de Visé is an author and journalist. A graduate of Wesleyan and Northwestern universities, he has worked at the Washington Post and Miami Herald , among other newspapers. He shared a 2001 Pulitzer Prize and has garnered more than two dozen national and regional journalism awards. He is the author of the critically acclaimed Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show and coauthor of I Forgot To Remember: A Memoir of Amnesia . He lives in Maryland with his wife and children.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this thorough biography, De Visé (Andy and Don) uses Greg Lemond's razor-thin victory over Frenchman Laurent Fignon in the 1989 Tour de France as a framing device to tell the life story of the first great American road cyclist of the modern era. De Visé describes LeMond's childhood in California with a supportive family, which was clouded by years of sexual abuse by a neighbor. He picked up cycling at age 14 in 1974, and by the time he was 17, the international cycling world began taking notice. In 1986, he became the first American to win the Tour de France, defeating Frenchman Bernard Hinault. His opportunity to repeat that feat was cut short when he was accidentally shot by his brother-in-law while hunting in 1987. Two years after his injury, LeMond made his comeback, and De Visé brings that race vividly to life as LeMond and Fignon go neck and neck to the finish line. In LeMond's later career and retirement, he became the "conscience of professional cycling" as the most vocal critic of the sport's doping scandals and Lance Armstrong, whose malice toward LeMond extended for years until his comeuppance. De Visé offers a thrilling read and exciting history for cycling and noncycling fans alike. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
"It's not the bicycleit's the legs": a sprint through a big swatch of bicycling history, focusing on racer Greg LeMond's triumphant return from disaster.Veteran journalist de Vis (Andy and Don: The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show, 2015, etc.) takes on a big story with that of LeMond, who, in the mid-1970s, came roaring out of a bicycle racing scene that "resembled Grateful Dead concerts, albeit on a smaller stage." Nicknamed "Lemonster," the determined young man came along at just the time that the U.S. bicycling scene was emerging from its backwater doldrums, a flowering celebrated in the contemporary film Breaking Away. LeMond famously went on to become the first American to win the storied Tour de France competition in 1986. The following year, while recuperating from an injury, he was accidentally shot while hunting and nearly bled to death, necessitating a long program of recovery. He survived to win twice more, in 1989 and 1990, when he "seemedmore nervous about his chances now than in 1989, when his odds were indeed slim, and more fearful of some mishap than in 1986, when the Tour director himself had fretted for Greg's safety." The author, who sometimes writes with the techno-geekery of the bicycle acolyte and sometimes with the breeziness of a practiced sportscaster, makes clear that LeMond accomplished all this largely through sheer determination. His opposite in all this, apart from a few diabolical French opponents, is Lance Armstrong, who "possessed the raw talent to become an elite athlete" but exhibited all the arrogance and weakness of character that would later lead to his expulsion from the sport for doping. In that matter, LeMond, now in his late 50s, has emerged as an advocate for racing reforms that include ending the practice of allowing cyclists to change bikes midrace.It's a pleasure to ride in the peloton alongside LeMond, who emerges from this account as America's once-and-future cycling great. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist de Visé (Andy and Don) pens a thoroughly well--researched work about Greg -LeMond's cycling exploits from childhood races, impressive pro career, postcareer life, and business pursuits. Some of LeMond's lasting contributions to the sport include incorporating new cycling technologies, demanding higher salary compensation for racers, and igniting biking interest in the United States. De Visé's work details -LeMond's numerous entrepreneurial pursuits as well as his feuds with Lance -Armstrong, but differs from similar titles such as Sam Abt's LeMond: The Incredible Comeback of an American Hero, as it documents LeMond's entire career, not just his heroic comeback from a near fatal hunting accident. Another comparison might be drawn to Guy Andrews's Greg LeMond: Yellow Jersey Racer, with its wealth of images plus direct commentary by LeMond and his contemporaries. A library with a comprehensive sports collection would ideally own all three titles. -VERDICT De Visé's account stands out owing to its depth of coverage, captivating prose, and variety of historical and contemporary news sources. An impressive read for anyone interested in cycling.-John N. Jax, Univ. of -Wisconsin Lib., La Crosse © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
On a small patch of unoccupied blacktop in a crowded plaza near the grand palace of Versailles, two riders pedaled bicycles in a warm-up exercise around a tiny oval, riding counterclockwise at opposite poles, like horses on a carousel. Their eyes never met. The two figures were almost mirror images--blond-haired, muscular and taut. After twenty days and three thousand kilometers of racing, Greg LeMond and Laurent Fignon were fifty seconds apart in the standings of the 1989 Tour de France. They had traded savage attacks over the three previous weeks, neither man ever leading the other by more than mere seconds. The lead had changed hands three times. Greg had worn the maillot jaune , the race leader's yellow jersey, for seven days; Laurent had worn it for nine. Now, the jersey hung on Laurent's back. Greg sat in second place. By day's end, the Tour would be decided. And no matter who won, this would likely be the closest finish in the seventy-six-year history of le Tour . On this July afternoon, the circling cyclists readied for a final twenty-five-kilometer dash downhill from the royal château to the finish line on the Champs-Élysées in Paris. This was the time trial, cycling's Race of Truth, in French the contre la montre --literally, "against the watch." Savvy observers had surveyed the course and reckoned a middling rider could complete it in about twenty-nine minutes. A great one might win it in twenty-eight. Greg needed to reclaim those fifty seconds from his French rival on this final day of racing, to pull back two seconds for every kilometer raced, in order to win the Tour. Both Greg and Laurent were men of twenty-eight--young adults in the broad scheme of life, yet aging journeymen in the brief and brutal career of cycling. Each had conquered le Tour before, Laurent in 1983 and 1984, Greg in 1986, each, in turn, enjoying a brief reign atop the precarious pecking order of professional cycling. Then each cyclist had abruptly lost his "form," a term invoked by cycling writers to describe a rider at his peak. Both had dwelt for years in cycling's wilderness, missing races, abandoning them, or finishing at the back of the pack. Now, at the signature event of the 1989 cycling season, each man had miraculously recovered his form. Greg and Laurent were back on top--both of them, at exactly the same time, a most inconvenient coincidence. Neither knew how long the second wind might last. If there was to be another victory at the Tour for either of them, the time was now. As the clock wound down to Greg's 4:12 p.m. start, television commentators interviewed cycling experts and one another, all asking the same question: Could LeMond catch Fignon? "It will be close," predicted Paul Sherwen, a former professional cyclist turned broadcaster, speaking on the live ITV transmission in Britain. "But I think, logically, it's got to be Fignon." Excerpted from The Comeback: Greg Lemond, 30 Shotgun Pellets, and the World's Greatest Bicycle Race by Daniel de Vise All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Prologue | p. 1 |
| The Gift | p. 5 |
| The Wheelmen | p. 15 |
| LeMonster | p. 20 |
| The Pilgrimage | p. 32 |
| Le Parisien | p. 50 |
| L'Américain | p. 62 |
| Le Tour | p. 85 |
| Le Grand Blond | p. 91 |
| The Deal | p. 118 |
| The Betrayal | p. 133 |
| Twenty Minutes | p. 150 |
| The Comeback | p. 172 |
| The Battle | p. 188 |
| Eight Seconds | p. 211 |
| The Sequel | p. 224 |
| The Decline | p. 238 |
| The Texan | p. 263 |
| The Feud | p. 285 |
| The Last Breath | p. 299 |
| Amends | p. 311 |
| Author's Note | p. 329 |
| Photo Credits | p. 337 |
| Notes | p. 339 |
| Index | p. 361 |
