Bike! A Tribute to the World’s Greatest Cycling Designers
A handmade LeMond frame featuring Greg’s signature on the top tube (LeMond estate)
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Back in August BikeRadar brought you news of Bike! A Tribute to the World’s Greatest Cycling Designers. Co-edited by freelance cycling scribe Richard Moore and Cyclingnews.com managing editor Daniel Benson, it’s an in-depth look at 49 designers who’ve shaped the world of cycling, in particular on the road.
Published by Aurum Press, it’s available now for £25, and we have an exclusive extract from the book to share, on pro rider and influential designer Greg LeMond:
Greg LeMond, the United
States’ pioneering three-time Tour de France winner, was always fastidious about his
bikes and he adopted the same approach to the machines produced in his name, until
a dispute with Trek stopped the company in its tracks.
Greg LeMond’s name is
synonymous with more than innovation – more like
revolution. LeMond was the American who arrived
in Europe in the early 1980s and was at
the forefront of the massive changes to the sport
that followed, from equipment to riders’ pay,
during a decade in which the European
stranglehold was broken by an invasion of
English-speaking riders. At the head of that invasion
was LeMond. He was the first rider to
sign a million-dollar contract, the first
non-European to win the Tour de France (in 1986), and the
first to do so on a carbon fibre bike.
For his
second Tour victory in 1989, he became the first
high-profile rider to use “triathlon” handlebars
as he raced to the narrowest win in Tour
history, and, following that success, he took
cyclists’ wages into the stratosphere, signing a
three-year contract worth US $5.5 million. The circle
was completed for his third and final Tour win in
1990, when he rode one of his own LeMond-branded
bikes.
It was in 1985 that LeMond
and his father, Bob, first began discussing
the possibility of setting up a family-run bike
company. It was an obvious direction for him to
take: LeMond
To read the whole story, visit here: http://www.bikeradar.com/gear/article/bike-a-tribute-to-the-worlds-greatest-cycling-designers--35445/