Tour de France
Sweet, sour riders take the prize

By Mark Akins
Seattle Times staff

Laurent Fignon once spat into the lens of a camera.

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Lance Armstrong's recovery from cancer might be only his second-best comeback.

In 2001, Tour de France photographers gave Armstrong their Prix Citron (Lemon Prize), for the least cooperative rider in the peloton.

Two years later — voilà! — Armstrong, finally speaking passable French and smiling more often, won the Prix d'Orange, for the most cooperative rider. The prickly Texan suddenly was the sweetest fruit on the tree.

One of the most notorious Tour grumps was Laurent Fignon, back-to-back champion in 1983 and '84. With wire-rim glasses and blond ponytail, the Parisian effected an air of superiority.

In a 1989 Sports Illustrated article about Greg LeMond's eight-second win over Fignon, the closest finish in Tour history, writer E.M. Swift painted an unflattering picture.

Fignon spat into the lens of a TV camera, Swift wrote, and declined to smile for photographers, "insisting on one occasion that he was just as cute when frowning."

When Fignon refused to accommodate photographers for even five minutes on a rest day, French journalists organized a nationwide Fignon boycott.

"No photographs were published of the dour and temperamental race leader in any French paper for the next 48 hours," Swift wrote.

Let's see, what's French for "sourpuss"?
 
Mark Akins: 206-464-8994 or makins@seattletimes.com