Greg LeMond Won the 1989 Tour de France by Eight Seconds With Three Lead Pellets in His Heart

On April 20, 1987, Greg LeMond — the previous summer's Tour de France winner, the first non-European to win the race — was turkey hunting on his uncle's California property when his brother-in-law Patrick Blades fired at what he thought was a gobbler in motion. About 60 lead pellets struck LeMond in the back, side, and right hand. He had a punctured lung, lost three liters of blood, and was airlifted to UC Davis Medical Center. The surgeons told him later he had been within 20 minutes of bleeding out. They were unable to remove all the pellets — about 35 stayed embedded, including three lodged in the lining of his heart, where they remain.

He spent two years rebuilding. By the 1989 Tour de France, he was riding for an underfunded Belgian team, had no individual stage wins, and entered the final 24.5-kilometer time trial up the Champs-Élysées trailing Laurent Fignon, the world champion and a vastly better-rated time trialist, by 50 seconds. Most cycling reporters were already writing the next-day story about Fignon's third Tour win.

LeMond rode the time trial in an aerodynamic position no one had used in the Tour before. He clipped on tri-bars from triathlon racing — long wedge-shaped extensions that let him rest his elbows and stretch flat over the bike. He used a rear disc wheel, a teardrop helmet, and a deeply forward saddle. He averaged 54.545 km/h on the run-in, a Tour record that stood until 1994. Fignon, riding without aero equipment and with a ponytail trailing in the air, lost more than fifty seconds and the Tour by eight. It is, still, the closest finish in the race's history.