You don’t want to see the green Irish national jersey of Sean Kelly in your rear view mirror when you are sprinting for the line in the World Championships. Greg Lemond led out this sprint extremely early as he was afraid if Kelly took off he would never catch him. Lemond barely gets an arm up in victory salute it’s so hard and fast. It’s a long, long power sprint from the front and he only knew he had earned his second rainbow jersey when he crossed the line.
Greg Lemond truly earned what must have been his greatest one day victory. His first World Championship title was monumental, it sent a shock wave reverberating around the world, and was the opening salvo for American cyclists racing and actually beating the best. And this victory was after he had been shot with a shotgun! He had to chase down Laurent Fignon, face the tactical disadvantage of Fignon having Claveyrolat as a teammate in the final and having to beat Sean Kelly in a sprint! It is testament to Lemond being a complete cyclist; the brains, the power and the heart.
Back when it took place only weeks after the Tour de France, the World Championship road race was the most prestigious one-day race of the year. It sat squarely in the middle of the racing season. There was no hiding from it. Everyone who raced in the Tour was praying their form who hold, or if they rode badly in the Tour they could claim to be peaking in a few weeks (instead of two months). If riders were not selected for the Tour they would kill themselves to do well enough in other June and July races to be selected for the Worlds.
The 1989 Worlds road race course was too many laps of an exhausting circuit in Chambery, France. Lemond had won the Tour de France weeks before, overcoming the insurmountable lead of Laurent Fignon on the dramatic final TT stage in Paris. Greg was not feeling fit and had to be talked into riding at Chambery. Each lap he wanted to pull off at the pit area and end the suffering, but he didn’t. Only a true professional would say he started to feel better (or “unblocked”, as Lemond put it) in the last third of a race this gruelling. With each hilly lap raced Greg was feeling better, and despite the rain and the climbs, he kept finding a reason not to abandon. This is the fact that stays with me; Greg was ready to drop out of the race as he felt weak (why race if you couldn’t win?) yet he stayed at it, one lap at a time and to his surprise he started to feel better. Better? Amazing to think that struggling to stay in the elite main field, on an extremely hilly circuit course like Chambery, that an athlete would start to feel stronger 200 km into it.
By the bell lap the small break (Steven Rooks: NDL, Dmtri Konyshev: USSR and Thierry Claveyrolat: FRA) was staying away and the decimated field was not going to catch them. The French team captain Fignon ripped off the front of the field, quickly bridging up towards a countryman in the break. He must have taken note of Lemond suffering throughout the day. This was Fignon’s revenge.
As Fignon was closing in on the break he turned and to his horror saw the once-struggling Lemond next to him. If Laurent had dared to even dream of a victory that day, a victory that would help to redeem his crushing loss in the Tour, this was the last man he wanted to see bridge up and join him in the break. But once they joined the break Laurent had a teammate and the tactical advantage went his way. The video tells the rest of the story.
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@john
It's funny how those things really come about. The guys who seemed to have an image so indelibly bound to their helmetless appearance seemed to be just fucking awful at picking out a helmet. I mean, here, check out Kelly's lid choice:
My God. You could go for a stroll in a forest and randomly pick up large mushrooms until you found one that fit on your noggin and end up with a better looking lid that that. If you couldn't find a mushroom, you could resort to rotten logs and still end up ahead.
Pantani had the same problem. No helmet, he exuded cool. With a helmet, he seemed awkward.
I remember that I raced that Sunday (some small race somewhere in New England, think I was still a "civilian" racer then) and when I got home my Dad yelled out to me, even before I had reached the house, that Lemond had won. One of those truly and honestly magical moments in my life that I will never forget: Coming home still sweaty from placing somewhere MOP in a civlian race, junior in high school, expected that my hero had lost after all (still with the image of him not being able to follow Fignon on the earlier mountain stage) and then finding out that he had won. Man, time stopped for me.
@mauibike
I seem to remember that the French Team were royally PISSED with Fignon for chasing down Claveyrolat one the last lap. Man, that finishing photo has to be the GREATEST cycling photo ever and has always been my favorite. I have shown it to my kids too many times to define what it is like to lay it all out and go for broke. The true "winners" photo! HARD F'ING CORE!!!
I saw my first TDF in 1957 in Colmar, France and many stages and other major cycle races since. Highlights - Roche on La Plagne in 1987 (I'm on the video!) and Chambery in 1989. What a day, even though Kelly failed again, as in 1982 at Goodwood, where Lemond had also been involved in the final phase.
My wife and I, on a cycletouring holiday in the Pyrenees, left the bikes at Tarbes railway station, trained to Geneve to see my brother, trained to Chambery, camped at Aix les Bains for 2 nights, hired 2 bikes from the campsite to watch the Saturdays amateurs and womens races, hitched to Chambery for the Pro race, watched the race on the climb, celebrated the day with a great meal before catching the sleeper back to Tarbes, collected the bikes, rode to Tarbes airport to catch a return Lourdes pilgrim flight back to Manchester (England) and home by train.
Those were the days - sadly racing is too controlled today and we shall never see again those magical breaks of my youth.
@mauibike
That "toestrap" is just a re-inforcing strap. Back in those days, the shoes weren't engineered to resist that unrestraining upward pulling caused by the use of clipless pedals. Over time, the shoes uppers would separate from the soles. Many riders wore velcro straps over the whole shoe (upper-and-lower sole).
I had a pair myself. They were sold by the mail-order bike gear suppliers at the time...
@frank
Kelly looks happy as he can see the big wad o' cash Brancale are waving at him.
Funny thing about Lemond's equipment in this beautiful sprint finish--he's NOT riding with toeclips (as your caption states). The prominent toe straps are tight around his Time shoes, which are attached to Time clipless pedals, as in many photos from Lemond's 1989 season. Why toe straps on clipless pedals? I assume because Lemond didn't like the amount of flex or stretch in his shoes. Those toe straps would eliminate any up-and-down foot motion in the shoe. Cool, that for all of Lemond's cutting edge technology and experimentation with equipment, he goes back to the simplest leather strap and steel buckle system of the toe strap, for a World Championship. (Same pedal/shoe/strap arrangement he used in time trials that year.) But this is all trivia compared to the motor powering that bike. The last 10 minutes of that race show so clearly who the most powerful (and persistent) cyclist in the world was.