CyclingNews Stories by LeMond for Tour de France
I’ve written a couple of stories in the past few weeks for Cycling News’s Tour de France coverage. The stories talk a little bit about my 2010 Tour projections but mostly cover my past experiences in racing and the cycling culture. Here are some links and excerpts to a few articles I’ve written. Stay tuned for more!
The Art of Peaking for the Tour de France (July 2, 2010)
“By the start of the Tour, I would typically have had 70 to 80 days of racing in that year. My training during the final month before the Tour was planned almost a year in advance. The goal was to do most of the hard training well before the last month. More often than not this ended with the Giro. The goal was almost to over-train and then taper off during the final month. The hardest training is destructive and the body needs time to recover…” Read more
Cobblestones, Crashes, and Potential Winners of the Tour (July 9, 2010)
“Crashing on your bike is not like falling down on a snowboard or off a surfboard – it is not onto soft snow or in ocean water. There’s usually some contact with the pavement or an obstacle, and that’s not fun. It can rip your skin off, break a couple of bones, or even kill you!
My most unusual crash was in the 1982 Liège-Bastogne-Liège, as a second-year pro. Didi Thurau was the big German star at the time, and I was just the young punk, 20 years old. I started at the back, knowing then that you should be either in the front or back of the peloton. If you were in the middle, you’d be in what I called the dead zone – it was that dangerous…” Read more
Surviving Off Days and Racing to Paris (July 14, 2010)
“What a great first week of racing. It is a Tour de France that I would have loved to have raced, so long as I was one of the lucky few that survived all the crashes!
Watching the Tour on TV can be interesting. To hear the commentators talk about Contador’s form and how weak or strong he appears to be is great, but it is purely speculation. It is impossible to know how he will be riding next week based on just two mountain stages. Winning the Tour seems simple: ride faster than your competitor every day for three weeks. This is not always possible and does not necessarily translate into victory. Sometimes a rider can just be on an “off” day and seem to be struggling…” Read more
Bravo to the New Generation (July 23, 2010)
“When I made my now often repeated statement about Lance Armstrong and his long term relationship with Dr. Ferrari in 2001, I tried to keep it as short and to the point as possible. I was very disappointed to learn that he was a patient of Dr. Ferrari. Long before this relationship was revealed by David Walsh in 2001 I had made comments about the entrance of specialists like Dr. Ferrari and others into the sport of cycling. I was hearing stories back as early as 1993 about Dr. Ferrari and his client list of pro cyclists…“ Read more
Tags: #cycling, #greg lemond, #Tour de France
