If you'd asked me four or five days before the final stage, I'd have said: "I don't think I have much of a chance." Then three days before the last time trial, I won the stage, and my legs were fresh again.

A couple of nights before, I started thinking seriously about the time trial: I was considering using triathlon bars but it was a whim, not part of a grand plan. I'd done no studies on them, just picked them up.

I also thought about the time trial I had done against Laurent Fignon in the Giro d'Italia earlier that year. It was 50-plus kilometres but I took a minute and 21 seconds out of him. It gave me the confidence the day before to start calculating how many seconds per kilometre I could claw back. That's why, when people asked me then if I could win, I was confident.

I had had a horrible Giro that year; I almost quit cycling completely in that race. I had this yo-yo effect after my hunting accident. I came into it in average shape; first day I lost eight minutes, midway through I lost 17 minutes on a mountain stage and that was my breaking point. But my wife convinced me to give it until the end of the year and told me there was no pressure.

On the Tour I lost a minute-and-a-half on Fignon on Alpe d'Huez and then a little more the next day and I ended up three days to go with a 50-second deficit. But that didn't seem unreasonable to me.

For the rest of the peloton on the stage the day before that final contre la montre, the race was over, so it provided me with another day of recovery.

Fignon came up and patted me on the shoulder and congratulated me on my second place. It's funny though, because he and I have had the same coach and one of the rules he drummed into us was that the race is never over until the finish line.

I took 10 seconds out of him in the first kilometre.

I knew I had to be really wound up, and that from the first 100 metres I had to be at full pace. When I was riding the course that morning, my legs felt like I had just started the Tour.

It was a fast course - extremely fast. I came back after the practice run and requested a bigger gear. I remember saying to the mechanic: "I want a 55 on, and I'm going to win it!" He thought I meant the stage, but I meant overall.

I went back to the hotel three or four hours before and had my meal. I tried to take a nap but I was going over in my mind what I had to do, how I was going to warm up, to take off, to ride the turns.

The only time I've ever asked for splits in a race is when it's further than 70 kilometres - up to 50, if you're doing it properly, you should be at your maximum from the first kilometre. At 26 kilometres, I think Fignon hurt himself getting splits. There's a point in a time trial where you've paced yourself to ride at your limit, and he was getting told that he kept losing time. He was out of the saddle - usually a bad sign if you're doing that on the flats. He probably pushed himself over the top halfway through it.

I took the turns as fast as I could; I only remember one where I took it too wide. I was feeling so good, there was no pain. The first sense I had that I was doing well was when I came on to the Champs-Elysées. I could hear over the loudspeaker that I was at 40 seconds, 45 seconds. I turned from the Champs-Elysées and sprinted from there to the finish.

It was fun to win the Tour in that great, dynamic way. I think it should always finish with the time trail - it's much more dramatic. Eight years, maybe nine years later, I had a conversation with Fignon. He told me that, psychologically, that defeat finished his career.

Greg LeMond. Minnesota, USA. Greg won the Tour De France three times and is the founder of LeMond Bicycles and LeMond fitness.
www.lemondfitness.com. As told to Andrew Diprose.