Greg LeMond can’t quite believe it.
“I keep going, ‘Why me?’” the three-time Tour de France winner told me earlier this week.
On Dec. 4, President Trump signed a bill to award the 59-year-old LeMond the Congressional Gold Medal, an honor that required the approval of both the House and Senate and is considered the highest civilian award Congress can bestow. Past recipients include Thomas Edison, Charles Lindbergh and Rosa Parks. The brief list of athlete recipients is similarly iconic, with names like Jesse Owens, Jackie Robinson and Arnold Palmer.
Now the group includes LeMond, the Nevada-raised cyclist who captivated the sport in the 1980s, becoming the first American to win the Tour de France in 1986 and then recovering from a near-fatal hunting accident to win two more Tours in 1989 and 1990.