De Vise expands on the molestation story, saying that it lasted less than a year and consisted of Ron slipping into bed with LeMond three or four times until LeMond’s mother banned him from their home for being an unsavory character. Years later LeMond hired an investigator to track down Ron, but he fled to Italy when he learned LeMond was seeking him. De Vise doesn’t say what motivated LeMond to do this or what action he intended to take if he found him or how this episode impacted him.
It is a salacious incident he unnecessarily gives prominence, while neglecting perhaps the most significant aspect of the story, as he fails to mention that Ron lingered so deeply with him that when he was standing on the podium on the Champs Élysées after winning the 1986 Tour de France, becoming the first American to do so, he was wondering if Ron were watching, as Richard Moore revealed in his superlative book “Slaying the Badger” on the 1986 Tour, which De Vise references from time to time.
DeVise centers his book around the 1989 Tour, LeMond’s great comeback from a hunting accident in 1987 when he was shot by his brother-in-law and nearly died. LeMond won the ‘89 Tour in most dramatic fashion by eight seconds, overcoming a 50-second deficit on the final stage time trial from Versailles to the Champs Élysées. Many consider it the most exciting Tour ever.
DeVise is a first-rare writer, having won a Pulitzer and written other books, but he doesn’t have the depth of cycling knowledge of Moore, a former Scottish racer who competed in the Commonwealth Games before becoming a cycling journalist, to write a comparable book. He makes a fine journalistic effort, spending hours interviewing LeMond and his wife, as well as LeMond’s father and all the principals of the story other than Landis and Armstrong, who declined his interview requests. But without a deep-rooted cycling consciousness he doesn’t go beyond the essentials of the story.
He wishes to convey the intimacy he had with Greg and Kathy by referring to them simply by their first names through the book, something he also does with Laurent Fignon, though he wasn’t available to be interviewed having died in 2010 at the age of fifty. Fignon is a central character of the book as well, so much so the title of the book could have been “Comebacks,” as Fignon likewise was making a comeback in the ‘89 Tour, going for his third win. Bernard Hinault is a nemesis of both of them through the ‘80s, but is only referred to by his last name.
DeVise brought some knowledge of the sport to the book, as his father, an immigrant from bicycling-mad Belgium, was a devotee of the sport, enough so that he bicycled across the US as an eleven-year old with his father and younger brother and did a little racing himself. DeVise admits he has never been more than a recreational cyclist, but he grew up watching his father race at the Northbrook velodrome, a suburb of Chicago, and watched what he could of LeMond’s exploits in The Tour de France beginning in 1983 with his father until he left Chicago in 1990 to pursue a career in journalism. Away from his father he lost interest in cycling. Armstrong rekindled his interest with his win in 1999, but DeVise soured on his dominance. He conveys a strong prejudice against Armstrong in his book, regularly denigrating him, justifying his premise that LeMond is the “True King of American Cycling.”
If not for the hunting accident, LeMond would most certainly have accumulated more than three Tour wins and been one of the all-time greats of the sport along with five-time Tour winners Eddie Merckx and Jacques Anquetil. LeMond was further derailed with advent of EPO in the early ‘90s taking over the sport and preventing him from keeping up. LeMond claims ignorance of the new drug. Fignon, too, was oblivious to this new magic potion and was befuddled that he could no longer compete. The decade of the LeMond-Fignon rivalry, two prodigies of the bike, produced many epic battles that DeVise fully recognized would make for a fine book. He doesn’t fail in that, despite his superficial knowledge of fhe sport. At least he doesn’t masquerade as something he isn’t, acknowledging that though he grew up with a father who was versed in all aspects of the sport. he wouldn’t be able to put a spoke wrench to use, an operation not much more complicated than repairing a flat tire.
He vindicates LeMond for being a near lone voice early-on questioning Armstrong’s success. It took an extreme toll on him, almost costing him his marriage. He had a two-year bout of depression, overeating and drinking, culminating with running off to Arizona from his home in Minnesota with a woman. He paints LeMond as a sympathetic, if not admirable, figure throughout, though he does say he was cursed with the “attention span of a gnat.”
He concludes the book with LeMond questioning the success of Team Sky, as he once questioned the success of Armstrong. He doesn’t accuse Sky of having found a new wonder drug, but rather the dubious supposition that they must have motors in their bikes to be able to maintain the effort they do. He said he had evidence that their bikes all weigh 800 grams more than all other bikes, implying they must have motors. Richard Moore, or any other self-respecting cycle journalist, would not give such an accusation any credence.
Those with knowledge of the sport know that motors exist, but know that no team or rider would dare risk such an innovation, knowing that they couldn’t get away with it for very long and that it would be the ultimate desecration of their career, much worse than taking an illegal accelerant. It casts a pall upon whatever esteem DeVise might have built up for LeMond. It is as questionable a way to end the book as raising the issue of LeMond being molested as a youth was to begin the book. It was as if he didn’t trust in the magnitude of the story and the quality of his writing to gain a readership, resorting to injecting some controversy to bring attention to the book, a totally unnecessary tactic. LeMond deserves better.
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