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YELLOW JERSEY
The 1999 Tour de France


Lance's Story  |  The 1999 Tour  |  My Story  |  A Word to Men

For those who don't follow cycling, a word about the race. The Tour de France runs for three weeks every July, more than two thousand miles around France and its neighbors, over the Alps and the Pyrenees, and finishes in Paris. Every day's stage is timed, and the rider with the lowest total time wears the yellow jersey. Whoever is wearing it at the end in Paris has won. It is, without much argument, the hardest sporting event there is.

Last year's Tour was a mess, with a drug scandal that knocked whole teams out of the race, and this year the organizers billed it as a Tour of renewal. Nobody, and I mean nobody, picked a cancer survivor from Texas to win it.

THE KEY DAYS

SATURDAY, JULY 3  ·  THE PROLOGUE
The Tour opens with a short individual time trial at Le Puy du Fou, in western France: each rider alone against the clock. Lance wins it and pulls on the yellow jersey on the very first day. I read about it in Sunday's paper and had to read it twice. As expected, he gives the jersey up once the flat stages and the sprinters take over. But a lot of people had noticed.
SUNDAY, JULY 11  ·  THE METZ TIME TRIAL
The first long time trial, at Metz, in the east of France. Long time trials are where the Tour is often won, and Lance wins this one outright, beating the best time trial riders in the world, and takes the yellow jersey back. Now people are paying attention. The question everybody asks is whether he can climb.
TUESDAY, JULY 13  ·  SESTRIERE
The first big day in the mountains, over the Alps into Italy and up to the ski town of Sestriere. On the final climb, he rides away from the best climbers in the race and wins the stage alone, in the yellow jersey. That answered the question. The man who wasn't supposed to be able to climb, the man who'd had chemotherapy less than three years before, was the strongest rider on the mountain. That was the day I knew.
THE NEXT TWO WEEKS
More mountains, the Pyrenees, and day after day of other teams attacking him. His U.S. Postal Service teammates, George Hincapie, Frankie Andreu, Tyler Hamilton and the rest, ride at the front for him and protect him. He doesn't just hold on: he wins the final time trial too, the day before Paris.
SUNDAY, JULY 25  ·  PARIS
The final stage finishes on the Champs-Élysées, with the American flags waving along the avenue. Lance wins the Tour de France by 7 minutes and 37 seconds over Alex Zülle of Switzerland, with Fernando Escartín of Spain third. Greg LeMond won the Tour three times, but always for European teams. Lance is the first American to win it on an American team.

WHERE I WAS

Cycling doesn't get much television in this country, so for most of the three weeks I followed it the way you'd follow a war overseas: a few minutes of highlights at night if I was lucky, and the results in the paper the next morning, which I'd read standing at the kitchen counter before work. A fellow in our bike club, Marvin, who has been riding since before either of us had gray hair, would call me every evening with the day's news, and by the second week the calls had gotten longer than the stages.

On the 25th Karen and I watched the finish. When he rode up the Champs-Élysées in yellow, I thought about the chemotherapy ward in Indianapolis in 1988, and the men who were there with me. I thought: this is what it was for.

The next morning I went out and rode forty miles before work, slow, with a big grin on my face the whole way. Marvin says I looked ridiculous. He was riding next to me, grinning too, so he's in no position to talk.

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Last updated Monday, September 20, 1999