I DREAM OF JEANNIE
Hunched in the corner of a room in the centre of Atlanta, Jeannie Longo was hardly imposing. When I saw Eddy Merckx for the first time, I was struck by how tall he was, seemingly too big to climb, but in contrast the Frenchwoman seemed too slight to put out the power that had just won her the second Olympic medal of her career. Perhaps it was because most of the group around her were men: sports journalists who wanted to listen to her after she had won the silver medal in the 1996 Olympic Games time trial.
Longo spoke eloquently, softly and with no bombast considering she was even then one of the greatest cyclists of her generation, probably one of the greatest athletes across the piece. I can’t remember what she said – it is almost a quarter of a century ago now, so please forgive me – but I remember being struck by her lack of airs and graces, her willingness to sit there and take the questions. She had a reputation for being ‘difficult’, moving from one dispute to another, but there was not a hint of that here.
She wasn’t in a hurry to leave. There was no sense of an unpleasant duty being endured, which had become increasingly the case when riders met press at the men’s Tour de France. The contrast was glaring, because I had come hot-foot from watching ‘Mr 60 per cent’, Bjarne Riis, win the Tour. Longo seemed at ease with the world even though she had ‘only’ finished second to
