Slaying the Badger: LeMond, Hinault and the Greatest Ever Tour de France

If you love drama, rivalry and pure cycling chaos, the 1986 Tour de France is the one that rewrote the script. The Tour is always intense, but this year delivered a showdown so gripping it still has fans arguing decades later.

At the heart of it all were two unforgettable characters: Greg LeMond, the cool, all‑American rising star, and Bernard Hinault, France’s legendary five‑time champion known as The Badger for a reason. LeMond was supposed to be the future. Hinault had promised to help him win. Simple, right? Not even close.

As the race wound around France, Hinault kept launching brutal attacks—on his own teammate. He insisted it was all part of a plan to “toughen LeMond up,” but nobody, least of all LeMond, believed that for a second. What followed was a psychological battle layered on top of the physical one: fear, paranoia, mind‑games and a rivalry that felt like it could explode at any moment.

Slaying the Badger dives deep into this legendary Tour, capturing the adrenaline, the betrayals, the backstage politics and the raw emotion of a race that changed cycling forever. With interviews from the key players—including the two men at the centre of the storm—Richard Moore unpacks one of the most fascinating mysteries in Tour de France history.