Inside Cycling with John Wilcockson: The real story behind Hinault v. LeMond in ’85
With nine stages remaining in the 1985 Tour de France, Frenchman Bernard Hinault seemed to be on a clear course to his fifth overall victory. He was 5:23 ahead of his American teammate Greg LeMond in second place, and 6:06 ahead of third-placed Irishman Stephen Roche. Not much was expected to change on stage 14 from Villard-de-Lans to St. Étienne, a transitory stage that featured the fairly gentle Cat. 1 Col de l’Oeillon and Cat. 4 Croix de Chabouret climbs just before the fast descent into the finish. Colombian mountain goat Lucho Herrera attacked on the major climb to add points to his
Published Dec 2, 2005
By John Wilcockson
With nine stages remaining in the 1985 Tour de France, Frenchman Bernard Hinault seemed to be on a clear course to his fifth overall victory. He was 5:23 ahead of his American teammate Greg LeMond in second place, and 6:06 ahead of third-placed Irishman Stephen Roche. Not much was expected to change on stage 14 from Villard-de-Lans to St. Étienne, a transitory stage that featured the fairly gentle Cat. 1 Col de l’Oeillon and Cat. 4 Croix de Chabouret climbs just before the fast descent into the finish.
Colombian mountain goat Lucho Herrera attacked on the major climb to add points to his King of the Mountains lead, and went on to win the stage. But behind him there was an interesting development when LeMond spearheaded an eight-man counterattack with climbers Robert Millar and Pedro Delgado. It was a smart tactical move by LeMond’s La Vie Claire squad that helped the American gain time on Roche and so consolidate the team’s hold on the top two overall places.
While LeMond pushed the pace ahead, race leader Hinault duly played the team role behind, controlling the efforts of Roche, fellow Irishman Sean Kelly and Australian hope Phil Anderson. “They didn’t want to let LeMond go,” Hinault recalls, “but I gave them no choice. As soon as a rider attacked I jumped on his wheel…. As a result of blocking their efforts, I got them so heated that I later paid the price.”
Hinault was referring to what happened when his 16-strong group raced into the final kilometer on the broad Cours Fauriel boulevard, almost two minutes behind LeMond’s group. They would be sprinting for only 10th place, but the jostling that took place where the street curved to the left about 400 meters from the line was more reminiscent of the do-or-die sprints at the end of one-day classics.
Hinault — who had three La Vie Claire teammates with him, Steve Bauer of Canada, and Dominique Arnaud and Bernard Vallet of France — takes up the story: “Bauer attacked with Marc Madiot on his wheel, about a meter from Anderson. I thought there was room between them and I tried to get through, but Anderson leaned on me. He’s never admitted it, but that was the only explanation. He deliberately crowded me out.”
Anderson disputes that version, but there was a major collision. Six riders went down. The least injured were Vallet, Dutchmen Steve Rooks and Peter Winnen, and Belgian Paul Haghedooren. Hinault and Anderson remained sitting on the curb next to the crowd barricades for several minutes — although they lost no GC time because the incident came in the last kilometer.
“I’d been wearing a pair of sunglasses and they broke my nose,” says Hinault, whose face was covered in blood and already swelling. “I think I may have cut my head by striking a pedal. I had two black eyes the next morning.”
After a hospital visit to have the cuts stitched, Hinault gave a press conference, saying that nothing was seriously wrong. Luckily, there followed a couple of intermediate stages before the Tour reached the Pyrenees. But the race leader still had the black eyes, and a dark demeanor, as he began stage 17 from Toulouse to Luz-Ardiden with a 3:32 lead over runner-up LeMond, with Roche at 6:14.
The final part of the stage — over the Col d’Aspin and Col du Tourmalet before the summit finish at Luz-Ardiden — was the same as the famous one in 2003. That was the year when Jan Ullrich attacked on the Tourmalet, chased by Lance Armstrong, who then crashed at the foot of the last climb before going on to a solo victory by a minute over Ullrich.
Back in 1985, the first attackers before the Tourmalet were Delgado’s Seat-Orbea teammates José Del Ramo and Pello Ruiz-Cabestany, who were setting things up for a later attack by Delgado. The Spanish climber moved ahead of the pack with the Colombians Herrera and Fabio Parra, along with Roche and LeMond, about 3km from the Tourmalet summit.
Hinault, apparently having breathing problems because of his broken nose and a touch of bronchitis on the foggy day, couldn’t stay with them and was soon stuck in a group that was fast losing time. La Vie Claire sports director Pail Köchli was piloting the team car behind Hinault’s group, while assistant director Maurice Le Guilloux was sent ahead to tail the LeMond-Roche group.
Delgado attacked over the Tourmalet summit, and on the long, fast descent joined his teammate Ruiz-Cabestany — who pulled his team leader to the base of the final climb. Meanwhile, Roche was riding hard to put time on Hinault, while LeMond was also taking pulls in the group with the two Colombians.
That was the situation at the bottom of Luz-Ardiden, when LeMond was apparently told by a TV camera crew that Hinault’s group was several minutes back — which would have put LeMond in the yellow jersey. The American wanted to start riding harder on the last climb, confident that he was stronger than the others in the group and that he had a good chance of winning the stage (and the Tour!).
It was then that Le Guilloux, after discussing the situation with Köchli on their walkie-talkies, drove up alongside LeMond and said in French, “You can’t ride with Roche. Hinault’s coming up. You need to wait for him. We want to ensure our first and second places.”
Recalling his conversation with Le Guilloux, LeMond told Bicyclist magazine a few years later, “We started arguing, with me saying, ‘Well, how far back is [Hinault]?’ But he wouldn’t tell me, and then eventually said 40 or 45 seconds. And as we’re sitting there arguing, Herrera rides up the road.
“By now, all the momentum of our strong break had been lost because of our argument. So I waited. I wait and I wait and I wait. A group with Anderson and Kelly finally comes up, and Hinault was still nowhere in sight. He’s still a minute and a half behind that group. It wasn’t until that big group came up to me that I really got pissed.”
Delgado went on to win the stage by 25 seconds over Herrera, with Parra in third at 1:29. The sprint at the summit for fourth place was taken by Kelly from LeMond, at 2:52, while another 1:11 ticked by before Hinault struggled across the line in 18th place on the wheel of his Swiss teammate, Niki Rütimann.
LeMond was so mad about what happened (if he had stayed with Herrera, as he was capable of doing, he would have taken the overall lead by two seconds from Hinault), that after crossing the line, he angrily swore at the CBS TV camera crew trying to get an interview, and then dashed straight to his father’s Mercedes-Benz before driving away to his team’s hotel near Pau.
“I wasn’t pissed at Hinault,” LeMond continued, “Hinault wasn’t telling them what to do. It was [team owner] Bernard Tapie’s and Paul Köchli’s conspiracy to make sure Hinault won his fifth Tour.”
With a view to clearing up this conspiracy theory, I recently asked Köchli exactly what his orders to LeMond had been on Luz-Ardiden that misty afternoon 20 years ago. Remember, it wasn’t the Swiss coach Köchli who spoke directly to LeMond, but Le Guilloux, a just-retired Frenchman, who had been a domestique for Hinault and was a close friend.
Köchli told me, “I didn’t tell Greg to wait for Hinault. I told him he could attack — just once — but he had to drop Roche. Remember, Roche was very close on time to Greg, and Roche was potentially a ‘better’ rider. The next day, we had to ride very hard to contain Roche when he attacked on the Aubisque.”
Indeed, on the first half of a split stage, finishing atop the Col d’Aubisque, Roche boldly wore just a skinsuit for the 52.5km stage, with the Irishman finishing 1:15 ahead of LeMond and 1:30 up on Hinault.
Köchli’s La Vie Claire team was still worried about Roche in the final time trial, a 45.7km circuit of the Vassivière lake near Limoges. LeMond won that stage — the first-ever Tour stage won by an American — five seconds ahead of Hinault, with Roche only fifth, 59 seconds back.
Hinault eventually won the 1985 Tour by 1:42 from LeMond, with Roche in third at 4:29. Reflecting on the result, LeMond said, “In a way, Hinault shouldn’t have won that Tour. If he had a bad day, that’s part of it — he didn’t deserve to win the ’85 Tour. At the hotel [near Pau], they made all these promises for the following year,” that LeMond would be the team leader and Hinault would help him win.
But it’s interesting to reflect that if it had been Köchli talking directly (in English) to LeMond on Luz-Ardiden, and not Le Guilloux (in French), the American very well might already have won the Tour in 1985.
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