The Last Rider: The Greg LeMond Comeback Story

Cycling's greatest showpiece event has lost seven years of its history. With that in mind, Greg LeMond’s final 1990 Tour de France victory does not seem quite as long ago. That was the last time an American won the Tour, fair and square. However, LeMond’s 1989 Tour de France was more dramatic and more hard-fought. Alex Holmes chronicles LeMond’s career, placing special focus on the 1989 Tour de France in the documentary, The Last Rider, which opens this Friday in New York.

Greg LeMond was the great American cycling hope, at a time when most Americans hardly spared a thought for the sport. The young cyclist’s talent was so evident, he was recruited for the legendary Bernard Hinault’s team. After helping Hinault win his fifth Tour de France, LeMond was promised 1986 would be his turn. However, he was betrayed by his team, his coach, and his mentor. John Dower’s excellent documentary Slaying the Badger covered that race stage-by-stage, whereas Holmes gives the broad strokes, saving the fine detail for the 1989 Tour. In between, LeMond suffered a life-threatening hunting accident that temporarily shattered his body and his confidence.

Nobody expected LeMond to be in contention when he returned to the Tour de France in 1989. Most of the attention was on Pedro Delgado (one of the film’s other primary talking heads) and Laurent Fignon, who died in 2010. Each rider had his highs and lows. However, Fignon’s nasty behavior in the media does not exactly burnish his reputation.

Holmes previously featured Greg LeMond and his wife Kathy at great length in Lance Armstrong: Stop at Nothing, an expose of Armstrong’s criminal enterprise and his attempts to smear critics, like the LeMonds. Holmes’s two cycling docs and Dower’s film together provide a comprehensive portrait of LeMond. However, each film individually fully establishes the cyclist as a sympathetic underdog champion, of tremendous resilience and integrity. Obviously, he is a much more worthy role model than Armstrong ever was.

Lance Armstrong Stop at Nothing: It’s Worse than You Think

In 1998, Greg LeMond was the last American to win the Tour de France. In 2012, LeMond once again became the last American to win the Tour. He had not staged a comeback. The US Anti-Doping Agency had stripped Lance Armstrong of his Yellow Jerseys. Everyone (including Armstrong, to some extent) now concedes the cyclist lied and cheated. However, his former fans will be shocked by the systematic deceit and vindictiveness exposed in Alex Holmes’ Lance Armstrong: Stop at Nothing (trailer here), which airs on Showtime this Friday.

In a matter of seconds, Holmes conclusively proves Armstrong perjured himself. In a videotaped deposition, he flatly denies taking the illegal performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) he later copped to during his Oprah confessional, while readily acknowledging he was under oath. Holmes then rewinds to chronicle the unvarnished story of Armstrong’s rise and fall. Once, he was a clean and promising talent, but he was already cutting shady deals with competing cyclists—or so they allege with accounts of Panettone tins full of cash.

Ironically, Stop at Nothing implies the first Tour might have been legit, but soon thereafter, Armstrong commenced a professional relationship with Michele Ferrari, a notorious sports physician with a reputation for crossing over the line. We know from Armstrong’s own lips he consumed a whole battery of enhancers. According to teammate Frankie Andreu and his wife Betsy, Armstrong also admitted it to his cancer doctors, in their presence, during the early stages of his treatment. That conversation would become the focus of a pitched legal battle.

Arguably, the heroic protagonist of Stop at Nothing is Betsy Andreu. Alarmed by the obvious risks of PED abuse, Andreu forced her husband to stay largely clear of them, which ultimately cost him his place on the US Postal Service Team. Knowing what they knew, Armstrong and his surrogates did their best to pressure the Andreus into silence, but they stuck to their guns when subpoenaed.  

The other heroes of Stop at Nothing are Greg and Kathy LeMond, who were vilified in the media when the former Tour champion diplomatically cautioned colleagues not to lash U.S. Cycling’s wagon so tightly to Armstrong’s star. Former Armstrong Foundation executive director Steve Whisnant explicitly regrets not heeding LeMond’s advice. For his common sense, LeMond was rewarded with canceled endorsements and wild rumors of alcohol and heroin addiction.

At times, Stop at Nothing resembles a gangster movie, where whistleblowers are routinely intimidated and ostracized. Yet, other times, it plays like a spy film, documenting the elaborate means by which Ferrari’s treatments were smuggled to Armstrong’s team. It is all completely gripping and absolutely scandalizing in the tradition of the best true crime books.

There is a general sense Armstrong started lying to himself as well as the cycling world at large, essentially losing sight of the truth. As problematic as that is, the reality is far worse. The portrait Holmes paints is of a clinical sociopath, who fully understood the implications of his actions and would do anything necessary to maintain his righteous public image. It is not pretty, but it is fascinating. Stop at Nothing is a damning indictment and a grab-you-by-the-lapels watching experience. Recommended for fans of cycling and legal thrillers, Lance Armstrong: Stop at Nothing premieres this Friday (11/7) on Showtime, with multiple airdates to follow.

Tribeca ’14: Slaying the Badger

This almost goes without saying, but good golly, did the American cycling establishment ever pick the wrong athlete to put all their PR chips on. It is especially frustrating considering what a great champion they had in Greg LeMond. LeMond has indeed had his issues with Sheryl Crow’s ex, but his greatest rivalry was with a member of his own team. John Dower chronicles the pitched battle between LeMond and Bernard “The Badger” Hinault in Slaying the Badger, which screens during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

LeMond was the great American hope of cycling at a time when the sport was totally off the American radar. At least the French noticed when he started dominating international competitions. Soon the American was recruited for the prestigious La Vie Claire team, headed by Hinault, the four time Tour de France winner. There was a general understanding if LeMond would help Hinault win a coveted fifth Tour in 1985, Hinault would ride in support of LeMond in 1986. It was not just unspoken agreement, it was evidently quite well verbalized.

LeMond held up his end of the bargain in 1985, albeit under controversial circumstances. Frankly, he probably could have won, but deliberately held back on coach Paul Köchli’s instructions. After the fact, he learned Hinault’s momentary setback involved far more lost time than the coach let on. As a result, he felt rather betrayed when Köchli introduced a new policy for 1986: every man for himself.

It might sound like hyperbole, but Slaying could arguably be considered the sports documentary equivalent of Rashomon. Few docs on any subject feature such widely divergent interpretations of the same events. For what its worth, the archival interview and press conference footage consistently support LeMond’s side of the story.

Even when wearing an uncomfortable looking back brace necessitated by an auto accident, LeMond is a lively, but well spoken interview subject—and he has much to say. Scenes with his wife Kathy further humanize him, clearly suggesting they still have that old magic going on. Appropriately, Dower also scores a sit down with The Badger, who somehow comes through the film relatively unsullied. Köchli is a different matter. His dissembling and hair-splitting degenerates into a downright risible spectacle. If backpedalling were a sport in its own right, he would be its Michael Jordan.

Even if you know every stage of the 1986 Tour by heart, Dower still builds the suspense quite adroitly. By the same token, viewers who only know the sport for its unfortunate recent developments will find themselves completely caught up in the film. This is just first class documentary storytelling all the way around. Highly recommended, Slaying the Badger screens again this Saturday (4/26) as part of the 2014 Tribeca Film Festival.