Slaying the Badger, by Richard Moore
Should triathletes know the history of bicycle racing? Probably not, unless they also want to get into a deeper understanding of how Don Schollander’s 4 gold medals in Rome evolved into Mark Spitz’s 7 in Munich. Or explain the difference between Paavo Nurmi and Lasse Viren.
Having three sports instead of one to perfect is hard enough, but simultaneously following the professional versions of our amateur passions is probably going above and beyond. However, being an inveterate polymath, dilletante and now semi-retired with way too much time on my hands, I admit that I know way more about the geeky, blue collar sport of bicycle road racing than I ever contemplated existed 15 years ago.
In 1986, the world of bike racing was hidebound, insular, and almost exclusively European. The machines and the tactics changed slowly, and Americans were exotic. Bernard Hinault was the undisputed king of the peloton, having won the Tour de France 5 times, the same as Belgian Eddie Merckx, the Michael Jordan of the sport. Merckx had been known as the Cannibal, for the way he simply devoured every race he entered. Hinault, the Badger, was his equal in this attitude.
For some reason, this distant world fascinated a few Americans, who dreamed of being more Italian than Hoosier, more French than Yankee. By the mid-80s, 7-Eleven was sponsoring a team which raced in the Tour, and a handful of US riders were giving the continental racers fits with their New World attitude towards competition and innovation.
In Slaying the Badger, Richard Moore tells the story of the 1986 Tour, when Hinault battled Greg LeMond for the win at the Grand Boucle. Lemond, a California boy who’d grown up near Reno in the shadow of the eastern Sierra Nevada, was a preternatural cycling talent. Recruited by the manager of Hinault’s team, he was to be the star of the future. In 1985, he’d helped Hinault secure that fifth title. The Badger promised to return the favor in 1986, which was to be the year of his retirement.
While Moore is not the most supple writer, he is a good journalist. He’s talked at length with both Hinault and Lemond, searched contemporary sources, interviewed many of the race’s participants and peripheral figures. After building the biographies of the two protagonists, he turns to the intrigues among the various corporate sponsored teams of that era. And in the second half of the book, he offers a day-by-day, hour-by-hour, sometimes mile-by-mile rendering of the race itself.
He tries to understand the mindset which drove Hinault’s attacking style. The badger saw these tactics as toughening up the race in order to make it more likely Lemond would win. But the American, who spent most of the 21 day race in second place to Hinault, viewed it more as a betrayal.
Since the outcome is pre-ordained – Lemond eventually wins the first of his three Tours, and personifies the sea change in power within bike racing, from the Franco-Italian axis, to a much more cosmopolitan sport, with Spaniards, English speakers, and racers from the (soon-to-be former) Soviet bloc emerging as the primary drivers.
Nonetheless, we do manage a belief suspension long enough to keep reading to find out just how Lemond will overcome the strangle hold Hinault seems to have on him. And in the process, the modern world of cycling – with aerobars, big money, world-wide TV and Lance Armstrong – just on the horizon.