Daniel de Vise - The Comeback

I Forgot to Remember:
A Memoir of Amnesia (with Su Meck)

Andy and Don:
The Making of a Friendship and a Classic American TV Show

Copyright 2018 by Daniel de Vis

Cover design by Becca Fox Design
Cover photograph Graham Watson

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FIRST EDITION

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

Text designer: Norman E. Tuttle at Alpha Design & Composition
This book was set in ITC New Baskerville
by Alpha Design & Composition of Pittsfield, NH

First Grove Atlantic hardcover edition: June 2018

Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication data is available for this title.

ISBN 978-0-8021-2794-5
eISBN 978-0-8021-6579-4

Atlantic Monthly Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street
New York, NY 10011

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

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To Pop

It never gets easier, you just get faster.
Greg LeMond

O N A SMALL PATCH OF BLACKTOP in a crowded plaza near the grand palace of Versailles, two riders pedaled bicycles in a warm-up exercise around a tiny oval, riding counterclockwise at opposite poles, like horses on a carousel. Their eyes never met. The two figures were almost mirror imagesblond-haired, muscular, and taut.

After twenty days and three thousand kilometers of racing, Greg LeMond and Laurent Fignon sat fifty seconds apart in the standings of the 1989 Tour de France. They had traded savage attacks over the three previous weeks, neither man ever leading the other by more than mere seconds. The lead had changed hands three times. Greg had worn the maillot jaune, the race leaders yellow jersey, for seven days; Laurent had worn it for nine. Now, the jersey hung on Laurents back, and Greg was in second place. By days end, the Tour would be decided. And no matter who won, this would likely be the closest finish in the seventy-six-year history of le Tour.

On this July afternoon, the circling cyclists readied for a final twenty-five-kilometer dash downhill from the royal chteau to the finish line on the Champs-lyses in Paris. They would ride at the end of a sporadic procession of 138 cyclists, starting a minute or two apart, each man racing alone as the clock ticked. This was the time trial, cyclings Race of Truth, in French the contre la montreliterally, against the watch.

Savvy observers had surveyed the course and reckoned a middling rider could complete it in about twenty-nine minutes. A great one might win it in twenty-eight.

Greg needed to reclaim those fifty seconds from his French rival on this final day of racingto pull back two seconds for every kilometer racedin order to win the Tour.

For most of the three weeks prior, Laurent had pedaled within the protective cocoon of a great cycling team, Super U, a nine-man squad with talent and depth. Greg, by contrast, rode for the pitiful ADR team, a motley crew of sprinters and second-raters. Yet, in this final contest, teams wouldnt matter. Each cyclist would ride alone. And Greg was better at time trials than Laurent. In previous matchups, Greg had pedaled more swiftly than Laurent by a margin of roughly one second per kilometer of racing. That meant he could expect to beat the Frenchman by perhaps twenty-five seconds today.

But twenty-five seconds would not be enough. To most observers, Laurent had already won the Tour. His lead felt insurmountable.

Both Greg and Laurent were men of twenty-eightyoung adults in the broad scheme of life, yet aging journeymen in the brief and brutal career of cycling. Each had conquered le Tour before, Laurent in 1983 and 1984, Greg in 1986, each, in turn, enjoying a brief reign atop the precarious pecking order of professional cycling. Then each cyclist had abruptly lost his form, a term invoked by cycling writers to describe a rider at his peak. Both had dwelled for years in cyclings wilderness, missing races, abandoning them, or finishing at the back of the pack. Now, at the signature event of the 1989 cycling season, each rider had miraculously recovered his form. Greg and Laurent were back on topboth of them, at exactly the same time, a most inconvenient coincidence. Neither knew how long the second wind might last. If there was to be another victory at the Tour for either man, the time was now.

As the clock wound down to Gregs 4:12 p.m. start, television commentators interviewed cycling experts and one another, all asking the same question: Could LeMond catch Fignon?

It will be close, predicted Paul Sherwen, a former professional cyclist turned broadcaster, speaking on the Channel 4 transmission in Britain. But I think, logically, its got to be Fignon.

Phil Liggett, Sherwens broadcasting partner, weighed in: LeMond is a very determined competitor, and he will not give up the fight for this final yellow jersey. One thing Im very confident about, and that is this Tour de France will be the closest finish in the history of the race.

At 4:11 p.m., Greg rolled to the starters gate, a structure that resembled a backyard shed. He wore a streamlined teardrop-shaped helmet of his own design. A pair of odd-looking, U-shaped handlebars jutted out from the front of his candy-apple-red Bottecchia time-trial bicycle. The tri-bars set Greg apart; none of the European teams used them.

A man in a pink sports shirt held Gregs bicycle atop the starting ramp as another man counted down seconds on his fingers. Greg reached down to check that his shoes were locked into his pedals. In those last seconds, thoughts swirled through his head: I dont like doing time trials. I dont know if I can do this again. Ive got to push myself to the limit for the next thirty minutes. Oh, my God.

And then Greg was off, rolling down the ramp, out of his saddle, pushing his pedals with the full weight of his body until he reached a cadence of one hundred revolutions per minute along the Avenue de Paris.

Greg lowered his torso and stretched out his arms along the aerodynamic bars. He rode on a 5412 gear: fifty-four teeth on the bigger front gear, twelve teeth on the smaller rear sprocket, a huge ratio that pushed the bicycle more than three meters for every turn of the pedals. Gregs gear, one of the largest on the road that day, allowed him to accelerate past fifty kilometers per hour without spinning his legs at an uncomfortable speed.

An ungainly cyclist, Greg bobbed up and down as he sped forward, periodically raising and lowering his head, almost as if he were swimming the crawl.