The last rider is a documentary about the first American to win the Tour de France cycle race, and Greg LeMond did it without drugs! Directed by Alex Holmes (Maiden).
The Last Rider is a documentary about the first American to win the Tour de France cycle race.
https://youtu.be/9kWF4FmllqM
Listen to the review
The most famous finish in the history of the Tour de France featured the first American to ever gain the fabled yellow jersey - Greg LeMond.
Listen to Greg Lemond on RNZ here
As Greg tells it, endurance cycling was entirely the province of French and Italian teams until the late 1970s.
Arriving in Europe, he was signed up by a big pro team and started winning events, which was already history-making.
Greg won his first Tour de France against serious competition - including from his own team-mates - and then tragedy struck.
He was on holiday in America when he was accidentally shot on a hunting expedition.
The damage was devastating - not just to Greg himself, who nearly died, but to the whole family, all affected in different ways by the accident.
With Greg's body severely impaired, it seemed his cycling career - and for him, his whole life - was essentially over.
But they don't make movies about sports stars whose whole life is essentially over.
The Last Rider is about him getting back on that bike, determined to compete in the 1989 Tour de France, come hell or high water.
One thing Tour de France newbies have to learn is how the event works - the mix of actual races and time trials and how it's all about the team's success rather than the individual - even if, in the end, the winner's name is all that people remember.
The other thing we learn is just how competitive the Tour is.
French stars like Laurent Fignon and Bernard Hinault make the Australian cricket team look like Roy of the Rovers.
For them, it's about winning and they don't care how they do it.
The entire second half of The Last Rider is devoted to the 1989 Tour de France, which is often covered second by second.
Indeed the final event - Race 23 in Paris - comes down to seconds... eight to be precise.
The Last Rider is expertly directed by Alex Holmes, who did such a great job on another arcane sports event - the yacht race documentary Maiden. Holmes keeps us on the edge of our seats throughout.
But what lifts the best sports documentaries are the characters - Greg himself, his wife Kathy, and his colleagues who remember this event as the last great cycle race.
The Last Rider doesn't even mention the name of the man who brought the sport crashing to its knees, Greg's fellow American Lance Armstrong…