Sports | Greg Lemond Trades His Bike For A Race Car -- Retired Cyclist Says He Will Switch From 2 Wheels To 4 | Seattle Times Newspaper Greg Lemond Trades His Bike For A Race Car -- Retired Cyclist Says He Will Switch From 2 Wheels To 4 AP Greg LeMond has fallen in love with four wheels. The retired three-time world cycling champion and Tour de France winner was looking for something to give him the same kind of charge he used to get from the two-wheel sport. He found auto racing. LeMond will drive in the USAC-SCCA Formula Ford 2000 Pro Series for Miller Brothers Racing in 1997. "I missed the action," he said. "I'm a racer. I don't care for the training in bike racing. I don't miss that. But you don't need to do that kind of training to race a car." LeMond, 35, will take over the ride left vacant by FF2000 series champion Steve Knapp, who will stay with the Miller team but move up to either Indy Lights or Toyota-Atlantic, both stepping stones to the PPG Indy Car World Series.

Could the same path be in LeMond's future? "It's way too soon to be thinking about anything like that," he said. "I'd like to do anything in car racing and I'd love to be driving Indy cars, but that's a far-off dream." Knapp will help LeMond learn the ropes, especially chassis set-ups and aerodynamics. "I'll probably be in the back of the pack for a while," LeMond said. "I don't know where my potential is. I just know I'm pretty hooked on this sport." "Don't look for me to be where Steve is right now. Give me time. I've only had about 16 days in the car." John Miller, the team owner and a driving teammate, approached LeMond after watching him finish 12th earlier this year in a rain-soaked pro racing debut in the SCCA Spec Racer Ford Pro Series at Minneapolis. The team later tested him at Blackhawk Farms Raceway at Rockford, Ill., in early September. "This is not just a celebrity ride," Miller said. "We think there is a serious potential here.

Greg is old for bike racing, but not for auto racing." LeMond retired from cycling in 1994 because he was diagnosed with a rare muscular disease called mitochondria myopathy, which affected his ability to compete in the sport. "I was diagnosed with a genetic disease that only affects me at the top end of my performance," he said. "It shouldn't have any effect on me in a race car." LeMond said his cycling education should stand him in good stead on four wheels. "In the Tour de France, you're doing 40-50 miles per hour in a group of about 60 guys going downhill," he said. "I think the similarities are learning the course and knowing it well and knowing your tactics. "In racing, cycles or cars, you always have to be looking ahead, and your reaction time is very similar. Both sports are very intense and you have to stay very focused." LeMond is also very aware of the physical danger that is always present in his new sport. "My wife is worrying about the safety aspects of racing, but there's danger in any sport. A lot of people die in bike racing," he said.

"Sixty miles per hour coming down a mountain pass without a helmet is pretty dangerous, too. "You don't think about that part of it in either sport. You just prepare the best you can, get the best equipment you can get and go out and do the best you can." Copyright (c) 1996 Seattle Times Company, All Rights Reserved. LeMond: The UCI should use a heat gun to detect motors | Cyclingnews.com LeMond: The UCI should use a heat gun to detect motors Former Tour winner talks about Pantani and tips Contador for the Giro-Tour double 1 / 5 Change Cycling Now has advocated that Greg LeMond become interim UCI president while the UCI Independent Commission investigates allegations of corruption.

(Gerry McManus/ Greg Lemond is a special guest at the Tour Down Under (Fotoreporter Sirotti) Greg LeMond racing Paris-Roubaix in the early 1990s (Getty Images Sport) Three-time Tour de France champion Greg LeMond with one of his yellow jerseys (Marco Quezada/nyvelocity.com) Greg LeMond assists with the prep of a time trial bike (Greg LeMond) Greg LeMond has suggested that a simple way to detect if riders have hidden motors in their bikes is to use a heat-detecting gun, even during races. Related Articles What is mechanical doping? The former Tour de France winner watched the finish of stage 19 of the Giro d'Italia in Cervinia. While Fabio Aru climbed on the podium after winning the stage, LeMond spoke Cyclingnews and Gazzetta dello Sport about the race, Marco Pantani, his own Giro d'Italia memories and Alberto Contador's domination. Talk soon moved to the reports of possible use of motors and the UCI's checks to try to find them after Thursday's stage to Verbania.

LeMond is convinced that motors have been used in the peloton and that a heat gun and banning bike changes could be a simple but effective deterrents. "I know that motors exist, I've ridden a bike with one and I've met the inventor and talked about it. If people think they don't exist, they're fooling themselves, so I think it's a justified suspicion. I believe it's also been used in the peloton. It seems too incredible that someone would do it, but I know it's real," he said. "To make sure it doesn't happen, I don't think there should be bike changes in races. Period. Unless you have a real mechanical problem. It'd take away the suspicion. I just hope the UCI is doing the right thing. Fifty or 100 watts is nothing for a motor. If you're say riding at 400 watts on a climb, an extra 50 watts means minutes on a climb and there's no real weight penalty. "It's like any sport but there will always be people trying to cheat. It's a pretty shocking way to cheat if some of the top riders do it. Hopefully it'll never surface and the UCI will nip it in the bud.

"It's simple to check for, much easier than doping, but not by looking down the tube. You need a thermal heat gun, you can use it in the race. It can see from metres away if there a difference in the heat in the bottom bracket. I'd recommend that to the UCI." Pantani was a good person Despite now working for Eurosport, LeMond was not afraid to give very personal opinions. He spoke from the heart even when veteran Gazzetta dello Sport reporter Claudio Gregori asked LeMond what he thought Alberto Contador's adoration for Marco Pantani. Contador said he had hoped to win the stage of the Giro d'Italia to Madonna di Campiglio, where Pantani had failed a blood haematocrit test leading to him being disqualified from the race. LeMond's answer was revealing. "I'm sure that when Contador was growing up, Pantani was at the top, I think his style of racing is what Contador is talking about," LeMond said in defence of Contador. "I've been very critical of many riders but I've always been more critical of some of the corruption that has gone on in cycling.

Riders have a choice and need to be given that choice but I don't think riders really had much of a choice in the '90s and 2000s. It doesn't make it right, people have heroes who aren't always perfect. I met Pantani and I liked watching him race. Pantani was a good person but good people also sometimes do bad things. Because somebody doped, it doesn't make them a bad person. I want the sport to ensure that riders feel they don't have to dope. That's the best way." Contador can do the Giro-Tour double LeMond rode the Giro d'Italia seven times, finishing third in 1985 and fourth in 1986. However later in his career he often used it as training for the Tour de France and failed to finish three times. He has enjoyed the aggressive racing in this year's event and is full of praise for Contador. LeMond believes Contador has the mental strength to recover quickly from his efforts at the Giro d'Italia and peak again for the Tour de France.

"1986 was probably my best year but I lost time in a crash," LeMond explained reminiscing with pleasure. "They did not have stages like this one (to Cervinia) back then. I'd have loved stages like this. The races were built for Moser and Saronni, there were only a few mountains. I needed big mountains to make a big difference. "This year's been a hard race, there's a lot people on the wayside. It's been a pretty impressive ride by Alberto Contador. He's head and shoulders above everyone else, he's doing it with ease. This hadn't been an easy Giro for him but he fought on after injuring his shoulder. Others would have gone home but he fought on. He's had a whole team of Astana riders against him but they can't do anything. He's also tactically smart. He'll be confident for the Tour now. "If anybody can do the double, he can. He's got so much experience. He's an impressive rider and is arguably the most consistent Grand Tour rider, probably ever. We'd have to go back to Merckx's reign to make a comparison and he doesn't seem to be fading yet.

"I think he can do the Giro-Tour double. Having the energy for it is more psychological than anything, so he'll be good. I think in 10 days time he'll have recovered and be fine. It's about maintaining that hunger. I felt I was physically able to do another Tour de France five days later, racing gets you in good shape. Peaking is mainly psychological." To subscribe to the Cyclingnews video channel please click here .

Share on Facebook Greg LeMond becoming a Tour de France institution Greg LeMond becoming a Tour de France institution Hugely popular former champion has become the face of cycling on Eurosport Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 13:40 Updated: Wed, Jul 22, 2015, 13:47 Ian Austen French Mayor of Pau Francois Bayrou, French two-time Tour de France winner Bernard Thévenet, French writer Christian Laborde, French former professional road racing cyclist Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle, American three-time Tour de France winner Greg Lemond, and Irish Tour de France winner Stephen Roche pose before the inaugurate of totems as part of the “Tour of Giants,” a memorial of 101 totems dedicated to the 101 winners of the Tour de France. Photograph: Getty Images Lance Armstrong’s reappearance on the fringes of the Tour de France last week was greeted at the race with the sort of enthusiasm usually reserved for bad odors.

That is in stark contrast to Greg LeMond, the other American Tour champion, who not only received a warm reception when he returned last year, but who is increasingly becoming an institution. After a long absence from the Tour, LeMond has become the host of a daily show and the face of cycling on Eurosport. It is a rare Eurosport vehicle that does not have an oversize portrait of LeMond on its exterior. In a motor home so decorated and sitting just beyond Monday’s finish line, in Pau, LeMond seemed both surprised and pleased to find himself back at the race that he won three times, this time as a different kind of celebrity. “It’s great; I think I’m more popular now than even as a Tour winner,” LeMond said while keeping an eye on a small television showing the race. “Obviously the show helps. But maybe it’s because there are a lot of people who really love cycling who, after a dark period in cycling, remember my victories as the last, maybe, the last clean period in the sport.” LeMond’s delight at being at the Tour again is a relatively new phenomenon.

From 1999, when Armstrong won his first Tour de France, to 2010, when Armstrong abandoned his comeback attempts after his fall from grace, LeMond said, he was an outcast. A particularly low point came in October 2002, when Tour organisers staged an elaborate presentation of former winners while unveiling the route for the race’s 100th anniversary edition in 2003. Although LeMond, 54, was the first American winner, in 1986, and won in perhaps the Tour’s most exciting finish, in 1989, and repeated in 1990, he said he was routinely shunted aside to avoid contact with Armstrong. It was also his sense that he was placed on the fringes of public gatherings, or not seated at the head table at formal dinners, so he would not diminish the glow of Armstrong, who in October 2002 had won four Tours to LeMond’s three. ADVERTISEMENT “I didn’t come back because of my experience in 2002,” LeMond said.

The main reason for the tension was LeMond’s speaking out about doping, something rare for prominent figures in cycling at the time, and his suggestion that Armstrong was not clean. LeMond said Armstrong knew he was the one person who could call him on it. “I knew what was going on,” LeMond said. “I didn’t think he had the talent to do what he did. “I don’t really understand how he did it with the doping. That’s just one of the mysteries that I can’t understand.” Then came the year LeMond recalled as the most stressful in his life, 2008. At the time, Trek, Armstrong’s bike sponsor, licensed LeMond’s name for a line of bikes. After accusations by LeMond that Armstrong had used performance-enhancing drugs, which ultimately proved true, Trek ended the arrangement, and they became mired in two years of litigation. Despite that, LeMond said he was not all that keen about a suggestion from his wife, Kathy, that they should visit the Tour in 2013 with their children.

It turned out, he said, that not only was he welcomed, but the crowd also chanted his name when he made an appearance at the finish at l’Alpe d’Huez, the ski resort climb where the real racing of this year’s Tour will conclude on Saturday. Eurosport approached him not long afterward to do a daily live show at the race. He turned the channel down five times, he said, before yielding in February 2014. (In a twist, Eurosport was acquired by Discovery Communications , the American broadcaster that at one point sponsored Armstrong’s team.) LeMond found appearing at the Tour last year, and facing a full studio for his show, more than a bit intimidating. “I was really nervous about not having all my facts and being accurate about stuff,” he said between interruptions to meet V.I.P.s outside the motor home. “But I really enjoyed it last year. I’m having a good time, I think.” The program is now broadcast live in 21 languages and 68 countries in Europe and parts of Asia-Pacific. LeMond said that he believed that if cycling was to fully recover its reputation, it must avoid its tendency to idolise star riders.

“I’ve always said if you can’t clean up the peloton, get rid of them,” he said. “Because you know that there will be new young kids, new riders. It’s not the stars. The public wants to see genuine human performance, human suffering.” LeMond, however, is generally optimistic about the sport and its current state. He is even selling bikes again — through his own business this time. While at the Tour, he rides for about an hour for two days followed by two days off on an orange LeMond bike. His renewed enthusiasm stems in part from the enormous growth in recent years of mass participation rides that sit somewhere between racing and touring. The annual event organized by the Tour de France this year lured 15,000 riders who paid to ride a variation of Thursday’s actual Tour stage in the Alps. “I love that it’s not just spectators watching the Tour de France, but people ride their bikes,” LeMond said, lamenting that he did not go Monday because of the heat. “You have to realise that cycling is a great liberator and great exercise. I didn’t start cycling to race.

I just loved riding my bike.” NYT Services FRANCE: UNITED STATES CHAMPION GREG LEMOND BECOMES FIRST NON-EUROPEAN TO WIN TOUR DE FRANCE. FRANCE: UNITED STATES CHAMPION GREG LEMOND BECOMES FIRST NON-EUROPEAN TO WIN TOUR DE FRANCE.

Story Greg Lemond of the United States (US) won the Tour de France on July 27, sealing his overall victory on the Champs Elysees in Paris to become the first non-European to carry off the world's major cycling classic.The 25-year-old Californian, who set out on the 23rd and final stage with a lead of over three minutes, completed his win ahead of French team-mate Bernard Hinault, who last year equalled the record of five Tour victories.Lemond had strengthened his overall lead in the 21st stage two days earlier, which took the cyclists from St.Etienne to the Puy de Dome, some 1465 metres above sea level.He had finished six minutes behind the stage winner, Eric Maechler of Switzerland, but more significantly he was 52 seconds ahead of Hinault.With two days left before the last stage, from Cosne to the French capital, Lemond was three minutes ten seconds clear of Hinault.Maechler won the 190-kilometre stage in five hours 32 minutes 40 seconds.Britain's Robert Millar, suffering from laryngitis, retired in the last 50 kilometres of

 the stage after losing 30 minutes in the previous two stages.Maechler broke clear of Belgian Ludo Peeters two kilometres from the finish of the six-kilometre climb of the Puy de Dome.They reached the foot of the volcano with four others, including Ireland's Martin Earley, the leading cyclist from the British Isles, and 46th overall.On the last stage of the Tour, Lemond, third in his first Tour in 1984 and second last year, finished in the pack undeterred by a spill earlier in the stage to clinch the 73rd running of the 4,000 kilometre race.Guido Bontempi of Italy took the final sprint for the 255-kilometre stage which brought the three-week tour to its traditional climax of six sweeping laps of the Champs Elysees in the heart of the French capital.Urs Zimmermann of Switzerland was third overall and Andrew Hampsten, a US newcomer to the Tour, was fourth.Hinault, who has said he will retire next November when he reaches his 32nd birthday, earned the red polka-dot jersey as 'king of the mountains' for compiling most points in the climbing sections of

 the race.

Reference January 9 at 6:14am Greg, got your book for Christmas. I'm a lifelong cyclist and fa...n of the sport and yours. ( I got to shake your hand and Trexlertown years ago) .. I've been just opening to random pages and reading, it's really wonderful. The picts are spectacular. It reminds me why I'm a fan of the sport. Thank you Please put me on any mailing list you have and let me know if ever you are in the New Jersey/PA region signing it. coacharnold@gmail See More Greg LeMond rejects calls for Lance Armstrong’s life ban to be reduced | Sport | The Guardian Greg LeMond rejects calls for Lance Armstrong’s life ban to be reduced • ‘If there’s anybody who deserves a ban, it’s this guy’ • ‘He took 10 years out of my life’ says American rival The multiple Tour de France winners Lance Armstrong, left, and Greg Lemond, pictured in Portsmouth in 1994, were to fall out later in their careers.

Photograph: Laurent Rebours/Associated Press Guardian sport and Associated Press Thursday 22 January 2015 05.06 EST Last modified on Monday 4 April 2016 09.53 EDT Close This article is 1 year old Greg LeMond has rejected calls for Lance Armstrong’s life ban to be reduced, saying: “If there’s anybody who deserves a ban, it’s this guy.” LeMond told a news conference in Adelaide, where he is attending the Tour Down Under cycling race, that Armstrong’s doping activities “took a good 10 years out of my life”. He said the seven-times Tour de France winner was punished not just for doping but for the way he treated people who accused him before he finally admitted his guilt. “I believe everyone deserves a second chance but it’s like he was positive one time, admitted it and said he was sorry. It’s repeated cover-ups. There’s nothing like it in the history of cycling.” LeMond, the 1986, 1989 and 1990 Tour champion, fell out with Armstrong when he began raising doubts about whether his compatriot was racing clean.

Armstrong eventually admitted to doping in an interview on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2013. “We had a decent relationship, but since 2001 we’ve not had any relationship. I’m not one that holds a grudge but I’m also realistic with who I’m dealing with and he’s not really shown any remorse for what he’s done,” LeMond said. “That’s not about doping but about what he’s done to people’s lives, destroyed them. He took a good 10 years out of my life.” Armstrong was stripped of his seven Tour de France titles and banned for life by the UCI, the sport’s governing body, in 2012 after the US Anti-Doping Agency accused him in its “reasoned decision” of running “the most sophisticated, professionalised and successful doping programme that sport has ever seen” while at US Postal Service. “If anyone deserves a life ban … Ben Johnson got a life ban in 1988 and relative to that he wasn’t involved in the conspiracy to cover up stuff. I don’t think there’s ever been a cyclist who has ever been involved in that level of deception. It’s unfortunate,” LeMond said.

Asked if Armstrong’s ban should be reduced, LeMond said: “What’s the point, so he can race amateur races? He can do his own races. If there’s anyone who deserved a ban it’s this guy. Otherwise what’s the point in rules?” LeMond also accused Armstrong of trying to force him out of the sport, saying: “Cycling was my life and it was a major attempt to make sure that I was excluded from it. Even from the Tour de France at one point. “That’s pretty hard when you have one guy really focused on eliminating you. It was very stressful but it’s really the way he treated me, and I and don’t like being threatened or bullied, so I was willing to risk everything.” Armstrong confessed to doping on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2013.

Photograph: George Burns/AP LeMond: Armstrong has been trying to destroy me for 10 years | Cyclingnews.com LeMond: Armstrong has been trying to destroy me for 10 years Tour winner speaks about the challenges ahead 1 / 3 Greg LeMond in attendance at the 2012 Tour of the Battenkill (Peter Hymas) 2 / 3 Greg LeMond at the 1985 Giro where he would land his only final podium appearance (3rd) for the Italian Grand Tour. (Sirotti) Greg Lemond at the start of the 1992 Tour of Flanders. (Sirotti) Skip Ad Former three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond says that Lance Armstrong has been trying to destroy him for over ten years. The now outspoken anti-doping advocate made the claims during an interview with Irish radio Newstalk in which he spoke candidly about a number of topics including his abuse as a child, living with attention deficit disorder, Lance Armstrong and doping in the sport.

Related Articles USADA report contains "the same, old, worn-out stuff": Armstrong spokesman LeMond was on the show ahead of supporting ADHD (Attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder) Awareness Week and spoke of his battle through school and with learning difficulties. The American believes that he may not have made it as a professional if he had been diagnosed with ADHD as a child, but is thankful of the type of person it made him become. "I’m a good, classic, star ADD [Attention deficit disorder] guy," LeMond told Newstalk. "ADD is not a bad thing. It’s just that in our culture we are made to get and up go to a classroom for eight hours a day with no activity and we are supposed to listen to a teacher talk and we are expecting kids to sit there, and behave and absorb. People’s brains aren’t really made for that. They are supposed to be outside, they need sunlight, and exercise and I’m kind of a guy who needs to be doing something to learn it. I can’t sit through a lecture." "That’s one of the traits. It’s the inability to sit down [and listen] to something you are not really interested in and absorb it.

If they are interested in it, people with ADD excel in really good ways." "When I got into cycling I would say the sport itself took a fog off my brain. I was able to absorb stuff I read. It changed my life." LeMond discussed coming to terms with being abused as a child and the embarrassment that he lived with whilst growing up and into his adult years. It wasn’t until recently that he decided to tell his wife of what happened so many years ago. "There’s some things I’m ashamed of. I was abused as a twelve-year-old. I never told anybody, not even my wife, until I was about 42. That was really difficult and it’s something that took a lot of work to overcome," he said. His ability to overcome his childhood difficulties has also made him the person he is today and that his strength in racing is also inherent in his current day to day life. In some instances, he knows it would have been easier to roll over but it’s something he just cannot do. "I think part of my strength is facing adversity. I don’t run away from stuff. I might feel like it but I’m kind of a survivor.

In cycling you can’t give up in races, even when you’re really dying in a race. I’ve won races because I don’t give up. It’s part of my make-up, I’m a skeptic, I don’t buy into BS and I really don’t like bullies or people who are thugs." "I could have taken different tactics and maybe things would have been different in my life." Destroying people LeMond stepped away from the sport not long after retiring at the end of the 1994 season, but when Armstrong first returned from cancer he was like many, a believer. That was until he began to hear the rumours surrounding his countryman. "I couldn’t be honest with myself. I knew too much from 2000 on," he said. "From 2001 and on I didn’t have anything good to say. I made up the logic in my mind that Festina Affair happened in '98 and it cleaned up. Somebody came back, they lost weight, that whole story I bought into. Then I started hearing rumours and the rumours were good observations from people within the sport.

Then in 2000 I heard some disturbing stuff from someone in the team and it became impossible. I backed away from cycling at that point." "In the months and years to come there is going to be a lot of stuff revealed. It’s going to be not just a black period for doping but it’s going to reflect on what others... He’s destroyed people and if you go against him, he tries to destroy you. He’s been trying that for ten years with me." "It’s not about him, he’s always made it to be about him - that I’m jealous. I would have said the same stuff on other riders but I’ve never been asked directly, I’ve been asked directly by people but never directly threatened by other people. That’s where things change with me." LeMond still feels bitter about having to formally apologise to Armstrong following his outspoken accusations and whilst he’s come to accept it, he still thinks he did very little to instigate such a legal response. "I just said basically I was disappointed he was seeing Ferrari. But it’s those actions that speak louder than anything. Those people who tell you to 'shut up and walk away'. Those are the ones that are basically part of the problem.

This is a great sport. This is my life. I truly dreamed of winning the Tour [de France] at 17 and I did win it and I’ve watched the sport and the people in it are not all bad. There’s a handful." He also spoke about changing the way the UCI handles drug testing and of encouraging caught riders to reveal their sources, suppliers and methods. For LeMond to truly trust the sport, there are some things that really need to change. "It’s about getting trust back into the system. It’s totally doable," he said. "I actually went to see WADA to see if they would change their deal about plea-bargaining. I’d much rather have Floyd come out, admit it but give up his source. Somebody is giving those drugs to somebody. It’s usually a doctor or team manager and if they do that it leads to an outing of those guys. "If that would have started in the '90’s, [Michele] Ferrari would have been out. [Francesco] Conconi would have been out - all these doctors. They are the ones that were doping riders in the '80s,'90s and they are still there.

Those guys are the people who aren’t willing to change that need to go. "Riders will play by whatever rules are there, but the rules need to be improved. The thing is to get the big massive oxygen drugs out of the sport where people can have a chance to win a race without having to dope themselves to the max." Omerta Being willing to speak out about the trouble in the sport is not an easy thing to do says LeMond, who understands that many riders remain silent not because of complacency but rather, fear. "Just because someone isn’t out there being outspoken does not make them complicit because anybody who has stood up in the last 10 years has been destroyed in the sport. You would have to be an unusual character and go against the grain right now. It needs to come from the public, the consumer, the fans. They need to insist on the outing of the top brass. It needs to change. Drug testing needs to be separated from the governing body [the UCI] completely. "I would buy into the UCI’s part much more in the sport if they would voluntarily help set-up an independent doping agency like USADA and WADA to where there is a real body of scientists that cannot be influenced by anybody.

Not anybody." "Any donations from anybody outside is absolutely unethical. It reeks of something that... what does that say to the other riders." Despite everything, LeMond's love for cycling remains strong. "I love the sport. Faith in the sport being totally clean? I’ve got to be realistic and say I don’t know if that’s totally possible. Oh, it’ll recover. The question is, do people really care? I think they do," he said. Share on Facebook Laurent Fignon obituary | Sport | The Guardian Laurent Fignon obituary French cycling champion best known for his epic defeat in the 1989 Tour de France Laurent Fignon, right, with Greg LeMond during the 18th stage of the 1989 Tour de France Photograph: Charles Platiau/Reuters Wednesday 1 September 2010 07.17 EDT First published on Wednesday 1 September 2010 07.17 EDT Share on Messenger Close Laurent Fignon, who has died of cancer aged 50, won the Tour de France twice, but was also widely celebrated for losing it, in the narrowest defeat in Tour history.

He was a charismatic cycling champion with trenchant views on his sport, the last Frenchman who seemed capable of living up to national expectations in the Tour, which he dominated with such insouciant ease in 1984 that the cycling magazine Vélo published his photograph that July along with a one-word caption: l'Ogre. Nicknamed "the professor" after an abortive attempt at university studies, and with distinctive looks – long blond hair, thick-lensed spectacles and a John McEnroe-style headband – the Paris-born Fignon had the cycling world briefly at his feet after winning five stages in his Renault team's total of 10 (out of a possible 23), at the age of 23. His fellow Frenchman Bernard Hinault, who had dominated cycling for six years, finished more than 10 minutes behind, and had never looked Fignon's physical equal. On one occasion, Fignon was asked how he felt when Hinault attacked. His answer was: "When I saw him going up the road, I had to laugh." The dominance was brief, although the expectations survived a little longer.

Fignon's place in cycling history is based on the celebrated role he played as the runner-up in the greatest Tour ever, in 1989. By then he had spent four years trying to regain his best level after two achilles tendon operations in 1985. His battle with the American Greg LeMond was a tense affair, with the two men swapping the lead for the three-week duration of the race until Fignon carved out a 50-second lead before the final stage, a time trial into Paris. Fignon felt his advantage was sufficient, but he was suffering from an abscess which made it virtually impossible for him to sit on his bike, and LeMond was using radical new aerodynamic handlebars. Fignon crossed the line on the Champs-Elysées and subsided in tears on the cobbles, having lost by just eight seconds after almost 88 hours of racing – still the narrowest margin in Tour history. It was a brutal defeat, a magnificent comeback for LeMond – who had come close to death in a shooting accident the previous year – and its impact turned the Tour into a truly global sports event.

Fignon won other major races – the Milan-San Remo Classic in 1988 and 1989, the Giro d'Italia in 1989 – and suffered a controversial defeat in the Giro in 1984, when the organisers pulled out all the stops to ensure a home victory. But his impact extended beyond his victories and his great defeat. In 1985, when Renault pulled out of sponsorship, he and his manager, Cyrille Guimard, came up with a novel system of managing team finances. Previously, teams had tended to belong to the sponsor, and were vulnerable when a backer lost interest. Instead, Guimard and Fignon set up their own company to run the team and own its assets, selling advertising space on the team's jerseys and cars to a main sponsor. Most professional cycling teams are run in this way today. He was also one of few cyclists to reinvest their winnings in their sport. After retirement in 1993, he set up a promotions company to run events for cycle tourists, and he bought the second-biggest race in French cycling, the Paris-Nice "race to the sun", in 2000.

As an organiser, he was unable to compete with the Amaury Sport Organisation, which has a virtual monopoly on major races in France , including the Tour, and he eventually sold Paris-Nice to them in 2002. Subsequently he scaled down his promotional ventures and put his energy into developing a training centre in the Pyrenees. He also published his memoirs, Nous Étions Jeunes et Insouciants (2009), which I translated into English this summer under the title We Were Young and Carefree. The book was painfully honest about his attempts to get back to full fitness after his operations, spoke mercilessly about former rivals and described an epic drinking session with Hinault and an occasion on which Fignon lied to his manager to enable a team-mate to use his hotel room for a romantic assignation with "an unofficial Miss France".

Fignon's main premise was that cycling was "a living, breathing art", a world that created "complete men rather than just sportsmen", and that it had been robbed of much of its magic by the demands of sponsors and the widespread use of the blood-boosting drug erythropoietin, which he contrasted with his own amateurish use of cortisone and amphetamine. He worked as a television commentator on the 2009 and 2010 Tours, in spite of his illness – the harsh croak of his voice will remain my enduring memory of this year's race – and in one of his last interviews, in January, he was typically forthright about his health: "I don't want to die at 50, but if there is no cure, what can I do? I'm not afraid of dying. I just don't want it to happen." He is survived by his second wife, Valerie, and by a son, Jeremy, and a daughter, Tiphaine, from his first marriage. • Laurent Patrick Fignon, cyclist, born 12 August 1960; died 31 August 2010

Question: Greg LeMond was a champion in which type of sport?
Answer: Cycling