1990 Tour de France

iainf72

This is pretty good. The video is a bit small but decent quality and it's a nice summary of the race

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF_h_CKLgVY

Rise of El Diablo, Indurain showing well, and some cracking racing. If you've not seen it I recommend taking the 2 hours out of your life to watch.

TheBigBean

The Chiappucci handicap race - the BR spoiler thread would be at least 30 pages discussing the tactical merits of that if it happened today.

Pross

First race I watched for every stage. I can't imagine a first stage break winning by over 10 minutes ever again, made for an exciting race as Chiappucci had his lead gradually chipped away and losing big time on a couple of mountain stages.

hommelbier

Well worth the couple of hours - watched it at the time but fascinating to see it all again; but who is this Claudio Capuccino that Greg is referring to ?

mm1

[quote="hommelbier") ; but who is this Claudio Capuccino that Greg is referring to ? [/quote]

Could this be where pharmstrong learnt his habit of deliberately misidentifying / misprounouncing names? Its a not so subtle put down as Lemond would have known exactly who Chiappuchi was and how to say his name. Fantastic race, especially the stage through the Tarn gorge where Lemond punctured and called back team mates for an epic chase.

Crampeur

http://100tours100tales.wordpress.com/2 ... nd-master/ Nice article about that tour too.

the article don

^good read. The whole blog is very well written.

Pross

Considering it had the unenviable task of following the closest Tour in history it did a pretty good job of being memorable in its own right.

sportvan

I remember watching this on holiday on a 12" black and white TV in my parents motorhome. I also remember very clearly that pensec got yellow on his birthday and the local town baked him a cake.
Wiggins would have loved to have ridden this route with 5 time trials.

sportvan

Also note how so many of the sponsors (the ones that still exist) are no longer associated with cycling, I can only find 2.

takethehighroad

I think the fact there's still 2 is the most surprising thing.

Rumbellows aren't involved in football sponsorship any more. Elf don't sponsor F1...

disquieting_museeuws

Cappuccino lost most of his lead on the St Etienne stage when (allegedly) he was sick and Lemond screwed him over by sending Pensec up the road, forcing CC's Carerra team mates to exhaust themselves chasing him down (Pensec was one of the gang of four who had gained the 10 minutes).

If Pin-Pin hadn't had such a bad mountain time trial while leading the race he could have been the last French winner, with Lemond being forced to support him as a Frenchman in yellow.

tonyf34

That was a very memorable tour for me.
My first time on a long tour and It was well over 90F+ in Paris that day, absolutely boiling, even the Parisians were saying it had been very hot that week.
I'd already done 50 miles from outside of Dreux, photos of the palace at Versailles then found a nice spot right against the barriers though I tried to push past the barriers (& a gendarme) to have a twiddle along the route met firmly with a strict "non" and a shake of the head and a smile.
problem was the other 50+ miles which was meant to be 30 but my booking in a village B&B was nabbed by someone else and so had to cycle to Beauvais in almost darkness along a major route with no lights..tough tough day but so so worth it )

deejay

I haven't got 2 hours spare at the moment, but from memory -.
This is the year the shipyard workers held a protest across the road of the Saint Nazaire Bridge and the breakaway group of 4 riders managed to slip through before the protesters had realised who they were.
The following cars and the peloton got caught up in the delay and the 4 riders suddenly found themselves 10 minutes up on the peloton.
All 4 riders got to wear the Yellow jersey at some time until the the TT on the penultimate stage where Lemond then took it to Paris.
Another memory is Pensec sliding along the wet downhill road on the approach to St Etienne.

Is my memory any good. ?

Edit
The year before I think it was that Lemond punctured and was in a "Panic" to regain the GC leaders.
Duclos-Lassalle was seen to stop from a breakaway group and doodle about for a long time until the GC group went by and finally he could join the Lemond TTT to catch the others.

Turfle

I was so in love with Chiappucci

mm1

Deejay I'm not convinced it was the year before...I have the image in my mind of Lemond in arc-en-ciel going ballistic downhill....

iainf72

mm1 wrote:

Deejay I'm not convinced it was the year before...I have the image in my mind of Lemond in arc-en-ciel going ballistic downhill....

No, that was 1990.

greasedscotsman

deejay wrote:

All 4 riders got to wear the Yellow jersey at some time until the the TT on the penultimate stage where Lemond then took it to Paris.

deejay wrote:

Is my memory any good. ?

Not quite. Frans Maassen, who won the 2nd stage, didn't lead the GC at any point.

Turfle

I'm always amazed at my inability to recall climbs, and stages, and races.

mm1

iainf72 wrote:

mm1 wrote:

Deejay I'm not convinced it was the year before...I have the image in my mind of Lemond in arc-en-ciel going ballistic downhill....

No, that was 1990.

? I thought it was 1990 we were talking about here??

FJS

greasedscotsman wrote:

deejay wrote:

All 4 riders got to wear the Yellow jersey at some time until the the TT on the penultimate stage where Lemond then took it to Paris.

deejay wrote:

Is my memory any good. ?

Not quite. Frans Maassen, who won the 2nd stage, didn't lead the GC at any point.

1st stage to be precise. TTT in the afternoon, prologue the day before.

What I temember is that people realised that 10 minutes had been a bit generous of the GC favourites, and that Bauer or Pensec could be real danger men for the Tour win overall with nobody taking considering Chiappucci seriously

I also remember that Chiappucci's mum was reported burning candles daily in Lourdes for another day in yelow for her son and that she fetched bigger appearance fees at the post tour crits than most pros

k-dog

mm1 wrote:

iainf72 wrote:

mm1 wrote:

Deejay I'm not convinced it was the year before...I have the image in my mind of Lemond in arc-en-ciel going ballistic downhill....

No, that was 1990.

? I thought it was 1990 we were talking about here??

No, you're thinking of 1990.