When I heard there was going to be a Tour de France Féminin, I knew that was what I wanted to do. I mean, it's a whole month of racing, and it's in France. Who wouldn't want that?

In the spring of 1984, I was barely finishing races but I still had faith it would get better. All I did to prepare was a solid training programme without pushing more than my body could. I'm sure I rested more than anybody else and that's why I was so successful.

At the end of May, I knew I was getting stronger. A good friend of mine, fellow racer Steve Tilford, called the US federation and found out there was still one place left of the six available for the Tour squad. He drove me down to the Olympic Training Centre in Colorado Springs and I talked to the coach. After pleading and assuring him I was rebounding, coach Eddie Borysewicz told me I had the spot. I replied: “Believe me, you won't be disappointed.”

I had to pay for my flight to New York, but they covered the trip to France. We didn’t know what to expect. We only knew there were 18 stages and five rest days, for a race totalling 616 miles. The French didn't think we could finish, although we knew we could. We didn't have a very organised team: there was no coach and the person assigned to us didn't speak any English. 

Halfway through the race, a French mechanic joined us – he was great but didn't speak English either. He brought our team together and also got us some much-needed gear and equipment. Until that moment, I had raced with a 19 as the biggest cog at the back.

Our original plan was for Betsy King to win. But the Dutch team was dominating. They won ten of the first eleven stages and until then my best placings were two third places on stage one and stage ten to Pau.

Then, on stage 12 to Grenoble, I went ahead, but only because I wanted to get the polka-dot jersey. However, at the top of the climb they said I was ten minutes ahead. I couldn't believe it; I decided to slow down because I thought I couldn't do the rest of the stage alone. But nobody ever caught me. I finished that stage ahead of Heleen Hage, the yellow jersey, and moved into second place, 64 seconds behind her in the overall.

There is so much going on in your head about what you can and can't do in those moments. At the end of that stage, I thought I could win the Tour. I believed I had the strength to do it, but I never said it out loud.

I’m from a small town in Michigan and saw myself as a farm girl. I've always been physically fit, but I was not good at ball sports. I used to dance ballet and tap, and run, which gave me good leg strength. Then I hurt my back skiing and picked up a bike. I started racing only when I was out of college in 1980.

I had a couple of setbacks and broke my elbows and collarbone early on. I never had the aspiration to do anything more than race my bike around Boulder and have a barbecue with the team.

Things changed when I started doing visualisation – you have to see yourself as a champion to be a champion. The first time we did it with my coach Tim Brown, I was with Davis Phinney and Ron Kiefel. Tim had us visualise being at a world championship and winning it, and I started laughing to myself. But with time, my thoughts changed: why couldn't I be as good or even better than the top riders? I thought, okay, I may just shoot for the sky then. So I went down to Texas for a race to test where I was and won it. I started to race nationally, using up my savings and a credit card – that was a fabulous time. It got me in debt, but I had the rest of my life to pay it off.

When I entered the Tour, I never had thoughts of winning. But as we got into the mountains I started feeling better and better. On stage 14 to La Plagne, I attacked and won a second stage. That’s when I got the yellow jersey for the first time, as Hage finished more than two and a half minutes behind me.

The day after, when we were climbing towards the Col de Joux Plane, the Dutch attacked. I was having a really hard time. I looked ahead of me and saw this twisty-turn road going up for miles and miles. I thought, ‘Oh my God, there’s no way I can ride this, let alone race it.’ But our bodies constantly surprise us. Somehow I defended the yellow jersey.

I lost 22 seconds that day, but from then on I never left Hage’s wheel and on the Champs-Elysées I won by over three minutes. There was no way I could have raced an extra day; we were exhausted, but we did it. At the end of the Tour, I earned $1,000 and split it with my team-mates. Racing for me was not about the money. It was what I wanted to do more than anything else in the world.

The afterparty was bizarre. I was sitting at the table with men’s winner Laurent Fignon and his date, the actress Jane Seymour. Fignon and I didn't speak the same language, but she translated for us. Fignon was pretty reserved and not very excited about women racing or sharing the podium, which I understand.

At one point, they left the table, went on stage in funny outfits and joined the cabaret. They had this massive bottle of champagne that they knocked with a giant axe. They handed it to Fignon, he gave it to me and we both cut our lips on the broken glass. Unreal.

The year after the Tour, I started having health issues and was never at my peak again. They never figured out what it was, but I was getting sick when I was exercising hard and had colds and flu-like symptoms. Only 20 years later, I kind of solved it by buying a house air purifier. Go figure.

Moving away from sports was devastating and I’m currently writing a book about that transition. After racing, I moved to LA for two years, two months, and 14 days (just kidding!) and then went back to Boulder. I worked for VeloNews for a while and launched my photography business, Real Life Portraits.

I really hope there will be another Tour like the one we raced, it was amazing. There are many challenges though. The Tour is a business. Why make things harder or risk change? The men have been doing it for a long time, they have history and tradition. Something like that would have to make sense to the organisers. It's ultimately a business decision, it has to make sense.