It’s always nice going to Paris. Even in January, when the trees are bare, the tables and chairs of sidewalk cafés are chained up, and cold breezes make you turn your collar up as you walk along the Champs-Élysées. It was on that famous avenue, at a lunchtime reception in a swank hotel, that the 1981 Renault-Gitane professional cycling team was presented to the media.

The star attraction, of course, was Bernard Hinault. The Frenchman was at the height of his fame, the newly crowned world champion, and eager to win a third Tour de France after knee tendinitis forced him to quit the race in 1980 when he was wearing the yellow jersey. The railway man’s son from northern Brittany was the center of the media’s attention that January day.

I was more interested in talking to two of the Renault team’s newcomers, Californians Jonathan Boyer and Greg LeMond, who came to the luncheon with their respective wives. I was immediately struck by the pair’s contrasting characteristics. Boyer was in his mid-20s, neatly combed dark hair, assured, and with a somewhat brooding air. He even spoke French with a Parisian accent. Then there was LeMond, an exuberant 19-year-old with a shock of blond hair and a ready smile. Boyer probably thought his new teammate was a little gauche.

The French team’s directeur sportif was Cyrille Guimard (the same guy I’d raced against back in the Sixties before he went on to a successful career as a pro). Guimard was a great scout. He’d watched LeMond at an amateur stage race in Brittany the previous summer when the American (winner of the world junior road title the previous year) was racing with the U.S. national team.

Guimard saw the U.S. teenager up close when he had a mechanical during a key breakaway. His team car was nowhere in sight and after a long, frustrating wait that cost him the race, a furious LeMond threw his bike in the ditch and quit. “I like his spirit,” remarked Guimard, who that winter flew out to Reno, Nevada, to get LeMond’s signature on a neo-pro contract.

At the same time, Guimard was fully aware of Boyer’s unexpected fifth place at the very tough 1980 world pro championship, in which the American finished with the chase group behind winner Hinault. Recruiting Boyer was a natural: The tall American seemed to have the makings of a great team rider for Hinault, he’d already ridden a Tour of Switzerland, and his fluent French should help the rookie LeMond assimilate with his new French colleagues. Anyway, that was the theory.

Some of Guimard’s expectations were met, others were exceeded, but in the end the Boyer-LeMond bonding never happened. Competitively, Boyer achieved what he set out to do. He was the first American to start (and finish) the Tour de France.

As a domestique for Hinault at the 1981 Tour, Boyer helped the Renault team take fourth place in the two (yes, two) team-time-trial stages in the opening week, one of 40km from Nice to Antibes, the other over 72km from Narbonne to Carcassonne. On the four major mountain stages, Boyer came in 38th (at Pla d’Adet), 30th (Morzine), 36th (L’Alpe d’Huez) and 39th (Le Pleynet). His best stage finish was ninth on stage 10 to Aulnoy-sous-Bois. He finished the Tour in 32nd overall, 59:21 down on Hinault.

It wasn’t the brilliant debut that LeMond would make three years later. But Boyer did help his team leader win the race, and as such the American’s first Tour was a far more distinguished performance than the backs-against-the-wall debuts made by Australians, Canadians and Brits before World War II.

LeMond’s Tour debut had to wait until he was 22. On reflection, it’s amazing how quickly LeMond assimilated the skills of a top professional. That first year (1981) in Europe was somewhat of a domestic nightmare. At the beginning, Renault team boss Guimard set up the newlywed Greg and Kathy LeMond with a small house in a tiny village near Guimard’s home at Nantes in western France. Kathy felt so isolated there, especially when her young husband was traveling on races (most of the spring and summer), that she counted the days until the fall, when she and Greg could fly home to see their families.

As a result, when they returned to Europe in 1982 the LeMonds rented a house in Kortrijk, Belgium, to be close to their new friend in the peloton, Aussie Phil Anderson (and his American wife, Anne). Equally important was being able to receive English-language television programming from nearby England (this was before the days of satellite or cable TV).

While Boyer soon left the Renault team and joined a different French squad, he got ready for a second shot at the world championships. They would be held that year (1982) in Goodwood, England — where LeMond and Boyer would both involved in the fight for the medals. That’s an American “first” that I’ll write about another time.