Originally Posted by
Steel Charlie
Someone is overdue for an intervention
And AFA Boyer is concerned, LeMond beat him. He was better. He won. He deserved to win.
Except Lemond didn't win. When he chased down Boyer at the 1982 Worlds, he towed Saronni along with him. Saronni then blasted off to take the win. Not only did he take away whatever chance Boyer had, he handed the win to someone instead of closing the deal himself. On top of that, Greg's comments afterwards were kind of, well, tactless:
LeMond was asked after the finish about chasing down his team mate and he responded, “We were in the last 500 metres and Boyer only had about a 20-metre lead, which there was no way he could keep. I didn’t think he could win and I didn’t want him to. He’s just not a friend. He’s never won a professional race and I didn’t think he was the kind of guy who should be World Champion.”
“I was wearing the U.S. jersey, sure, but there really wasn’t a U.S. team and I definitely wasn’t part of it. I paid for my own trip to England, everything. There was no support from the U.S. federation. The team I was racing for was Renault.”
This is from thebikecomesfirst.com.
Lemond was a top-tier talent who would have won significantly more than he did had he not gone hunting with his brother-in-law. He seems like a basically good guy. He was hosed at the 1985 TdF and almost hosed at the 1986 TdF. That 1989 TdF wins is rightly the stuff of legend. I was and remain a big fan; I'd love the chance to have dinner with him. But he has his warts. His move at the 1982 Worlds was not a cool thing to do and his comments afterwards were unacceptable. He is without question the best road racer the USA has ever produced and would be even if a certain Texan still had seven TdF wins among his palmares. But he could be cocky to the point of arrogance (not Hinault-arrogant, but arrogant nonetheless), His comments about Boyer, no matter how sincerely he believed them and no matter how much someone else might agree with them, are just not the sort of unnecessary personal insult that one says out loud.