When the Tour de France begins Saturday, with riders zipping along the banks of the Rhine, their heads down and their legs churning, you will have to pay close attention to spot the Americans in the field of nearly 200. Very close.

That is because only three of them are competing in the Tour this year, a total that continues a trend. Last year, five Americans raced. In 2015, it was three. Not since 1996, before Lance Armstrong began his improbable run of success, has the number crept so close to zero.

It is a dramatic turn for a sport that once produced prime-time highlights in the United States, thanks to Armstrong and others who turned a European passion into one Americans could embrace. But now professional cycling is, more than ever, fighting to maintain relevancy in a packed sports market — owing, at least partly, to Armstrong and his era of doping cheats.

There is an upside: If the United States has only three riders at the Tour, it is good that Taylor Phinney is one of them. The story of how he finally ended up on the starting line in Düsseldorf, Germany, this weekend after more than a decade of dreaming of racing the Tour is rich.

Phinney, who turned 27 this week, descends from American cycling royalty.

His father, Davis, was the first American to win a road stage at the Tour, in 1986. His mother, Connie Carpenter-Phinney, is a two-sport Olympian — cycling and speedskating — who won the gold medal in the Olympic debut of the women’s road cycling event, in 1984.

When Taylor Phinney was 14, he went to the Tour with his father and rode some of the course and saw some of the mayhem and glamour. It was alluring enough for him to quit playing soccer and start racing a bike. He was so good, so fast, that he soon became a junior world champion. Later came three Olympics and a stage win in the Giro d’Italia.

His arrival at the Tour de France, though, has come much, much later. Certainly much later than he expected. The scars on his left leg can tell the story of why.

He was supposed to ride the Tour three years ago. But in the weeks leading up to it, he crashed his bike into a guardrail going more than 60 mph, breaking his left leg in multiple places, shattering bones, severing a tendon and partially tearing a ligament. The scars on his leg today are a road map of suffering, zigzagging around his knee and down his leg.

Those scars, once red and angry, hinted that Phinney should quit the sport. They also were constant reminders of a doctor’s words: “You’ll probably never run again.”

He did not ride a bike for six months and needed crutches to walk for nine. He did not race for more than a year. A contemplative guy, he took the time to step back and think. He painted and drew. He took flying lessons.

He also tried not to complain. After all, how could he when his father — once so physical that he was nicknamed Thor — was battling Parkinson’s disease and having trouble with his mobility?

“I thought about how my life would be so different without cycling,” Taylor Phinney said in a telephone call Thursday. “I learned so much about the grand scale of the world and how small the cycling bubble is within this whole scheme of things. And that life would be OK for me if I never raced a bike again.”

When he did race a bike again, though, he was a calmer Phinney. “Obsessive Taylor died when I broke my leg,” he said.

The weight of having to succeed, he decided, was gone. After five surgeries, after so much unexpected physical and emotional pain — including his crash during the 2009 Cascade Cycling Classic in Central Oregon that resulted in a serious concussion and knocked him out of the race — it was time to just enjoy cycling.

It has not been all successes. In February, Phinney slipped off the steps of his team bus and fell on his bad knee. In April, he crashed at the Tour of Flanders and suffered a concussion. In May, he crashed at the Tour of California. His leg still bothers him enough to require an hour or two of rehab every day. Sometimes he walks with a limp.

But at the Tour de Suisse, a mountainous nine-stage race that ended June 18, Phinney bounced back. And that was when Jonathan Vaughters, the manager of the Cannondale-Drapac squad, concluded that he had to pick Phinney for the Tour de France.

“I’ve never seen a rider that can regain a high level of fitness as fast as he can,” Vaughters said. “If it were any other rider, no way would he make the Tour de France team. But this guy deserves it.”

Vaughters’ team, one of three teams based in the United States, goes out of its way to sign American riders, and it has all three of the Americans entered in this year’s Tour. That means Phinney and the other two — Andrew Talansky and Nathan Brown — will ride together, which might make them easier to spot. Phinney does not mind being in the minority, though. He calls his squad America’s Team, and in the days before the Tour, he urged American viewers to get behind it.

The team’s first chance will come on Saturday in the Tour’s first stage: an 8.7-mile time trial. The stage fits Phinney’s expertise, and so it offers a rare chance for an American to slip on the leader’s yellow jersey again — even if for only a day.

Phinney’s goal for the Tour is less grand. He just wants to cross the finish line in Paris. “I’m just so grateful that my body is at a point where I can do this,” he said.

He said he had considered getting a small tattoo of the word “Paris” on one of his thighs, a constant reminder of that goal that would hide under the bottom seam of his shorts. But the tattoo would need time to heal, and so he nixed it.

If he arrives in Paris with the rest of the peloton in three weeks, he can always get the tattoo there. Finally, he is ready.

First up

Stage 1: An 8.7-mile individual time trial in Dusseldorf, Germany

TV: 6 a.m. Saturday, NBCSN (replays at 5 and 9 p.m.)