vintagerando

Man...check out the look on his face. Tough as nails.

georgiaboy

Greg LeMond visiting Whitehouse in 1986

canklecat

Yup. I'm 150 lbs now, near my welterweight fighting weight of my teens and 20s. But at age 61 now I'm in nowhere that same shape and never will be again. I've lost 15 lbs since last year and it really hasn't done much good. I'm not really any stronger. I'm faster over distance only because I'm lugging less weight up climbs. But my speeds over short distances still aren't any faster than 2017 when I first got my Ironman. I weighed 165 then and was stronger.

Some days I wonder why I bother keeping my weight down. Mostly it's from giving up beer. Can't metabolize alcohol anymore. Otherwise I'd be perfectly contented at 165.

LeMond looks like a normal guy our age now. Nothing wrong with that, especially if he's happy and doing well.

canklecat

Another difference in LeMond's generation, that's pretty much gone now, is tactics, including breaking up a field to reduce the risk of a field sprint boxing out guys who aren't the strongest sprinters.

Guys like LeMond were clever, wheelsucking their more dangerous opponents not merely to conserve energy but to rattle the opponents psychologically. Then pushing attacks and solo breakaways to split up chasers and wear 'em down to reduce the bunched sprints.

LeMond didn't always have a strong team but he had the engine and smarts to compensate. And he had just enough of a mean streak to get into an opponent's head. That's something many great champions of all sports can do -- turn on that mean streak just for the competition, then turn it off again afterward to rejoin the human race.

That 1989 World Championship extended finish remains one of the most exciting in road racing history, between LeMond, Konyshev, Kelly, Rooks, Claveyrolat and Fignon. Tactics, psychology, guts and grunt. I've rewatched the final 15 minutes of that race many times.

sheddle

Yeah, funny enough after reading/watching Slaying the Badger, I could see it from both points of view. LeMond went a bit paranoid because trying to win a three-week Grand Tour is extraordinarily stressful, and I figure Hinault probably got a case of the red mist and just decided to go nuts.

Best tour ever ran, even more than 1989. If there was something I didn't like about the documentary versus the book, it was the portrayal of Koechli, who comes off as a tough but tactically smart coach in the book, and as the story's quasi-villain in the documentary.

Also the best parts were the goofy side-stories and anecdotes- the poor ex-farm-boy La Vie Claire teammate who got kept up all night by Hinault asking him endless questions about how to run a farm/breed cattle/etc stuck in the memory.