|
Current Biography Excerpts: Bicycling
LEMOND, GREG LEMOND, GREG
June 26, 1961- Cyclist.
In the summer of 1989 Greg LeMond rode to a dramatic
eight-second victory in the world's most difficult and glamorous bicycle race, the Tour de
France. In so doing he overcame far more than the 2,000-mile course and his 197 opponents.
The victory capped his comeback from a baroque series of mishaps, illnesses, and
injuries--including a broken wrist, an appendectomy, and shotgun wounds that left him near
death.His slow return to form after his misfortunes, which began in 1987, had led many
observers to conclude that he was finished as a cyclist, but their doubts just gave him
"more incentive to prove them wrong,"he told one interviewer. As LeMond battled
for the lead in the 1989 Tour de France, a rival team's manager declared that the American
cyclist was "incredible" for having come back to "a level 99 percent of
these guys never reach." LeMond first arrived indisputably at that level in 1986,
when he survived a "fratricidal" war with his mentor and teammate, the French
cycling idol Bernard Hinault, to become the first American ever to win the Tour de France.
Copyright © 1996 by The H. W. Wilson Co.
The complete article can be found on the Current Biography
CD-ROM and in the 1989 Current Biography Yearbook.
Search for another athlete
|
