Yellow fever

Twitter is obviously a load of shite.

But it does cut out the middle man between sport’s superstars and the rest of us.

Lance Armstrong was tweeting earlier – explaining he’s making good progress on the road to recovery after injury. One example: “Just off the bike. 6 hrs. Amazing ride. Harder than hell tho. Oh wait, that’s the way I like it”. Hell yeah!

The seven-times Tour de France winner broke his collarbone in a race in Spain last month and has been training in the US in a bid to be fit for what would be his first Giro d’Italia in May.

If that happens, he’ll be expected to race in July’s Tour de France but French authorities may yet ban him because of a disagreement over his behavior at a doping test in March; he took a shower before giving his sample.

Whatever your views on Armstrong, yellow wristbands, doping allegations, jerseys yellow and otherwise – it’s certainly true that Armstrong’s reputation is on the line if he’s refused admisssion to the Tour. This will clearly hurt his cancer charity. A lot, maybe.

I interviewed Greg Lemond relatively recently. If you’re not up on your plotlines in the forever pedalling soap opera that is professional cycling, then you need to know this:  LeMond does not where a Livestrong bracelet.

A blur of energy even now, LeMond has ADHD and punctuated the conversation with apologies for his ‘brain farts’ as he freewheeled off on another tangent. I wonder what he reckons of Armstrong’s ego-trip back to the European spotlight.

Incidentally, Lance will be in Ireland this summer according to his schedule. Let’s hope he doesn’t run into Paul Kimmage again. That’s some good YouTubing, let me tell ya.

In an attempt to ‘digitise’ everything I’ve ever written like the City Council belching rent books onto a hard drive, I’ve crowbarred in the LeMond piece below. But he has lived a page-turner: glory, betrayal, drugs, sexual abuse, guns, infidelity, money, no money and back again.

His perspective on the world varied. He enjoyed the unique loneliness only felt in the yellow jersey. He endured, through a veil of sweat and, he admits, tears, the unfamiliar view from the rear of the peloton. And when at last he folded away the bike, he got in the saddle to face down problems steeper than any feared Alpine climb. But Greg Lemond refuses to linger in the rear view mirror, a winner prefers to crane his neck at the next climb.

Gregory James Lemond is born in California in 1961. His father is a real-estate broker. His mother is an American mom in a home shared with two sisters, where Greg enjoys the outdoor life; fly-fishing; hunting, trapshooting and backpacking in summer months; downhill skiing in winter. Then he discovers cycling, and starts out on an incredible journey that would see him mark the sport rather than him be marked by it; he wins the Tour de France three times – twice with shotgun pellets in his body.

After a superb junior career, Lemond made swift, incremental progress in the pros, almost taking the Tour title in ’85 – where he says he was ordered not to win by his team – before eventually becoming the first American to take le maillot jaune in 1986. The era and this race in particular was marked by a fierce rivalry between Lemond and team-mate and bete noire Bernard Hinault, the last truly great French cyclist – who won his fifth title in ’85.

A year later, Hinault and Lemond were co-leaders of the La Vie Claire team, with Hinault publicly promising to ride in support of LeMond in gratitude for Lemond’s sacrifice in 1985. By stage 12, Hinault had built up a five-minute lead over his American colleague, claiming he was trying to draw out Lemond’s rivals, but he cracked in the mountains the next day and soon Lemond was in the lead. Although the two crested the Alpe d’Huez together to win the stage in a show of unity, it was clear that Hinault had been riding aggressively against his team mate. LeMond ultimately took the yellow jersey that year but felt betrayed by Hinault.
“He was my hero, a father figure; but the deception was really hard. But he was under a lot of pressure. He was going for his 6th tour; my argument was you wouldn’t have had a fifth without me. I had to race against him and pretend we were teammates. It really killed me psychologically.”

But at last he’d reached the pinnacle, and in the most difficult of circumstances – he thought. His next two Tour wins were to be in the face of far greater adversity. In April of 1987, while out turkey hunting, his brother-in-law discharged a shot-gun into Lemond’s back. Dramatic emergency surgery saved his life, but his career and life was shattered.

“The fightback was very, very rough; no one explained how hurt I was,” says Lemond, “I had 30 bullets still left in me, I lost 70% of my blood volume and I lost 40lbs of muscle mass. But I assumed it just took training. I had way too quick of expectations, everything was a do-or-die race. When I look back, it was a pretty quick recovery but for me it was an eternity.”

He returned in 1989, but he was no longer the swash-buckling champion leading from the front. Like a stroke victim frustrated when they can’t articulate what they know they know, he was in turmoil.
“The physical talent was there, but it was broken down so greatly. And it was psychologically very difficult because part of my problem was that I was used to being in the front, and when I couldn’t keep up I nearly blew up. It was probably more damaging physically but it was tough mentally too.

“You’re the last placed guy instead of the first. I remember the Tour of Italy in 89, first day I lost eight minutes in the mountains, I see Stephen Roche leading the group and I’m last and I finish 15 minutes behind them, and I’m like ‘God I cant believe I used to be that good. I’m never gonna be that good again’.

“I was gonna quit that day, but my wife said ‘Greg, wait till the end of the year. Don’t put any pressure’, and I stated going my own pace and I slowly felt better and I started to improve.”

Remarkably, Lemond found himself in the shadow of the Champs Elysees that July, as the Star Spangled Banner heralded his triumph despite 37 shotgun pellets in his chest, including some in the lining of his heart, beating Frenchman Laurent Fignon by just eight seconds, the narrowest margin in the history of the race. But, amazingly, he’d returned to the pinnacle again.

Though usually feeling that nagging hunger genuine winners endure even in victory, Lemond admits he was sated that day. “89 was the most satisfying win, because I was literally on the podium thinking ‘two months ago I was gonna quit’ but that’s where I always felt is where I belonged. ’89 I was satisfied,” he reaffirms.

The following year, Lemond retained the title, becoming one of the few cyclists to win the Tour without taking a stage. He eventually endured “a painful” divorce from the sport in 1994, after establishing himself as one of the truly great cyclists – but he was to wobble on the pedestal many had placed him on.

IT’S 1999 and a proud Lemond is close to tears watching a young American rider win the Tour, his first of seven in a row. Fast forward to July 2001, Lemond is about to see his position as America’s pre-eminent rider taken by Lance Armstrong. Lemond finds himself at the centre of a storm however when he learns that the young superstar is working with Michele Ferrari, an Italian doctor who is about to stand trial for doping charges (he’s cleared). But Lemond criticises Armstrong for associating with him, sparking an angry and ugly spat between the two.

The pressure on Lemond is unbearable; former fans spit abuse onto the internet, business interests coldly warn him to not rock the boat. Lemond, through tears, issues an apology, identifying Armstrong as “a great champion”.

But the 47-year-old refuses to freewheel on the subject of the ubiquitous doping which courses through the sport he loves. Floyd Landis, a former team-mate of Armstrong’s on the US Postal teams wins the tour in 2006, only to be found to be using banned substances. In a private telephone conversation, Lemond pleads with Landis to come clean in an effort to save the sport before admitting he’d been abused by a family friend as a child, a secret that had haunted him throughout his life, and again urged Landis to confess.

Lemond later received a call – the night before he was to testify against Landis – from someone claiming to be his abuser and threatening to disclose Lemond’s secret if he turned up the next day. Shaking with rage, he traced the call on his Balckberry to Landis’ manager Will Geoghan. The ugly affair shook Lemond badly, but he fought on.

“If that’s not rock bottom over the last couple of years then I’m giving up. I think it the sport has hit rock bottom, but there’s a huge shift and a rethinking in the whole doping problem, which I’ve been pushing. It has to be independent and transparent and the ability to go after the doctors and managers who supply it,” he says.

“These riders might be adults but they’re still kids who are passionate about the sport. And you have to be passionate about the sport to go that far. To be faced with giving up or being convinced that it’s not gonna really hurt you, that’s what happens. But it does hurt because they know it’s not right, and there’s a big cost psychologically and health wise. I think most riders want it to be clean.”

Earlier, classes were disrupted at a school on the southside of Limerick city as Sports Illustrated magazine’s Sportsman of the Year 1989, bounces through the gates. Attempting to persuade the children on the importance of cycling safety, Lemond agrees to pull up his shirt to reveal the scars of a gunshot wound. No longer haunted by the past, he’s happy to peer over his shoulder, with the world, to take in the lows he’s plumbed as well as the range of Alpine peaks he’s scaled.