There have been quite a few news about Greg LeMond recently, and I'll catch up with putting them as updates in the next few days, promise!
And for a start, Nicolas, one of the blog readers, has had this really nice idea as a tribute to Greg: he recreated a 1983 Gitane bike, looking strikingly exactly like what Greg was riding in 1983!
Here is the story of this very special bike, by Nicolas:
Hi everyone & thank you Claire for your kind words.
This is my "new" bike. In fact it is a Trek-US Postal 2003 bike that was given to me by my brother. I've never been an Armstrong fan so I wasn't too excited about the painting & stickers so...
I tried to make this bike as close to Greg's 1983 Gitane bike, the one he had when he won his first rainbow jersey. I was 9 at the time and this is when it all started for me as a Greg LeMond fan. You see, we had this habit with my father & older brother to race on our bikes, pretending we were champions. 1 week before the actual race in Switzerland, we made our own world championship. My father was Fignon, my brother was Hinault and I was Greg. Needless to say...I won. Then the real Greg won too ! That was a sign.
This is my tribute to Greg and the great many years I spent since then enjoying his victories and inspiration over & over again.
This bike has been painted in the same electric blue, I added yellow tape on the handlebars and switched from shimano to campagnolo group to get as close as the 1983 modolo brakes as possible. I finally found good reproductions of Gitane decals on e-bay Australia.
What's really funny is that I took the bike to get this done only 2 weeks prior to Trek dropping LeMond bikes.
I appreciate the kind of irony this bike gives to that story.
And here is Greg riding this bike ;-) :D !!
