Those words easily could have come from Lance Armstrong before today’s penultimate stage of the Tour de France. But they were actually uttered by another American, Greg LeMond, just minutes before he was about to begin the second-to-last stage of the 1986 Tour.

For those of you fortunate to own a copy of CBS Sports’ Emmy-winning coverage of the ’86 Tour, you know how exciting and dramatic Phil Liggett and John Tesh (yes, the musician) made the final time trial.

There have been a lot of changes in time trial equipment over the years. But perhaps none bigger than the introduction of time trial bars.

You only have to go back to the early 80s to remember what it was like for the riders at the Tour on the day of an individual time trial. Often it meant three changes of equipment – putting on a skinsuit, switching the bicycle’s wheels to ones with bladed spokes and donning a cotton racing cap (turned backwards of course).

A quick check of my records seems to indicate that you can go all the way back to 1973 and not find a team that won all three races in a single year. But Discovery Channel can complete the hat trick this season if it can produce a champion at the Vuelta.

The question made me think back to some of the great teams of all time. The first one to come to mind was the Renault-Elf-Cycles Gitane team of the early 80s.