Paris – July 1989

May 11, 2005 Richard Boardman

One of the greatest moments in sport that I’ve ever witnessed, was the final stage of the 1989 Tour de France, when the American Greg Lemond snatched victory from Frenchman Laurent Fignon, by the tour’s narrowest ever margin, a mere eight seconds.

It was an astounding achievement in many respects. Lemond had been shot and nearly killed two years earlier in a hunting accident. This was his first year back in the Tour. Not expected to perform, he found himself riding for a low budget team, and ended up largely unsupported as his team mates dropped out in the mountains. With only one stage to go, Lemond trailed Fignon by 50 seconds.

In normal circumstance it would all have been over – by tradition the last stage is largely a procession into Paris, and the lead doesn’t change – but for the first (and last) time the tour was to be settled by a time trial against the clock. While this gave Lemond a glimmer of hope, it was the very faintest one. Given the short length of the stage – a mere 24km –no self respecting race commentator gave him a hope.

Lemond rode off two minutes ahead of Fignon, covered the distance averaging 34 mph, the fastest ever time trial in the Tour de France, and crossed the line to watch Fignon cover the distance 58 seconds slower, and lose the tour to the American by the tiniest of margins.

What is less well known, is that Lemond’s win came as the direct result of a significant new advance in cycling technology. Emanating from the triathlon community – a very young but innovative sport at the time – was a new design of handlebar. It totally changed the traditional set up; the U shaped bars put the rider’s hands and elbows together in the manner of a down hill skier, and in so doing dramatically reduced frontal resistance.

The new bars made riders not a little, but a lot faster. With the exception of Lemond, the traditional cycling community largely ignored these developments, content to do things the way they had always been done. But Lemond needed an edge and was happy to try something new. Without the new handlebars, victory would have gone to Fignon.

It strikes me there are parallels between the attitude of the cycling peleton and the business community towards harnessing technological change. I’ll perhaps speculate on the why in future posts, but in my view executive teams in the main are still uncomfortable capitalising on technology advances.

The ‘triathlon’ bars, as they were dubbed, had been in use for some time. The ‘technology’ was freely available to anyone who was prepared to invest £50 or so at their local cycle shop, and the 2 to 3 mph improvement in speed they provided was well documented. Despite the evidence to the contrary, the traditional cycling community was blinkered to the notion there might be a better way of doing things.

From a CRM perspective – the technology is freely available for a modest investment, but I strongly believe there is too little executive focus on using it to achieve real business gain. I’ve no doubt this will change over time as it becomes recognised as a key source of competitive advantage. The good news, for those who want to reap the maximum reward, there are so few organisations executing well on it, that the field is still wide open to gain the best returns.