With over 40 pellets in his body, LeMond slowly began his journey back to being a pro cyclist. He eventually became a competitor in the ’89 Tour, when most of this documentary’s action occurs. That’s where he began a rivalry with champion French cyclist Laurent Fignon, the same man who defeated Hinault in the ’84 Tour and made LeMond aid Hinault in winning the following year. An ego-driven, media-hating, ornery cuss of a Frenchman, Fignon almost pedaled his balls off to defeat LeMond, who was just there to see if he could still roll with the big dogs.
“The Last Rider” is an engaging, efficient race to the finish line. Director Alex Holmes takes us back to those arduous hills LeMond and Fignon rode up and rode through with help from a lot of videotaped footage and commentary from the LeMonds. There are also testimonials from Pedro Delgado (the ’88 Tour winner whose late start at the ’89 Tour’s prologue practically set off the LeMond-Fignon rivalry) and Cyrille Guimard, the ex-cyclist-turned-coach who trained LeMond, Fignon, and Hinault.
Although “The Last Rider” paints Fignon, who died of cancer in 2010, as the designated villain (you could say anyone who’s French in the story—and that includes Hinault and the chesty Guimard—is the antagonist), both Holmes and LeMond respectably don’t bring up the times that year when he tested positive for amphetamines. You would think LeMond—whose anti-doping stance is so notorious he made a lot of Lance Armstrong fans mad when he wondered if the champion cyclist was juicing back in the day—would be the first to posit that Fignon was on that stuff. But the closest underhanded thing LeMond accuses Fignon of is holding onto a motorcycle during the race.
Basically, if you’re a fan of sports cinema where an all-American lad goes up against a Eurotrashy adversary (Fignon even looks like the blonde-haired dude who tried to kill Bruce Willis in “Die Hard”) on a televised world stage , “The Last Rider” gives a nice, nifty portrait of a guy who goes through one hell of an uphill battle—both figuratively and literally.
Now playing in theaters.