Anderson turned professional in 1980, for Peugeot, one of the oldest French teams. He won two races in his first season – the Prix de Wetteren and a stage in the
Étoile des Espoirs, and came second in two others. He moved to
Lokeren, Belgium, to ride
criteriums. :It was a big change; I'd never lived out of home before, so that was a big difference, and then there's the length of the races; you know all of a sudden you're riding 200 km a day instead of back here you'd be racing 80 or 100 km a day; huge fields, you turn up at a race and you'd have 200 riders, 250 riders. It's difficult because I was on a French team, and I felt that the French riders got priority, and I had to go a bit deeper or had to be a little better than some of my colleagues on the team. But that hardened me, and put pressure on me, and I think became part of my make-up in the end. He came fifth in the
1982 Tour de France, in which he held the white jersey of best young rider, and again fifth in
1985, the year he won the
Tour de Suisse. That same season he finished second in the
Super Prestige Pernod International, forerunner of the
UCI points championship. His highlights were wearing the
yellow jersey of the
1981 Tour de France and then again for nine days of
1982. He was the first rider from outside Europe to lead the race. Anderson described what it meant in 1981: :It happened in the
Pyrenees. This was my first Tour de France. I didn't have aspirations of becoming the wearer of the yellow jersey or anything like that. I was given my instructions and I was supposed to look after a rider on my team, the team leader, a Frenchman, and I forgot my instructions and just sort of went into survival mode over a number of
mountain passes, just staying up with some of the top riders, and before I knew it, my team director came up beside me in his car and told me, 'Listen, what happened to your leader, the guy that you've been instructed to watch today?' you know. And to help if he has any troubles, or just pace him back if he's having some troubles. And I said, 'Oh gee, that's right. Where is he?' And he said, 'he's five or ten minutes back, in the next group.' I said, 'No worries I'll wait up for him.' He said, 'No, no, stay up here, you're doing OK, just stay out of trouble and try and hang on as long as possible.' :So hang on I did, and whistled down the next mountain and got to the last climb and I stayed up with
Bernard Hinault; there was one rider, a Belgian rider,
Lucien Van Impe rode away, an excellent climber, he rode away and so we came in a couple of minutes later, but I had enough time from some good days previously, that I climbed into the yellow jersey, and I had no idea of what the sort of yellow jersey represented, because I mean there's so much history to it, and for me it was just like, 'Oh yes, great, I don't have to wash my old jersey tonight, you know, get a new one'. But really, you're sort of at the highest level of the sport. His best year was 1985, when he won the
Tour Méditerranéen,
Critérium du Dauphiné Libéré and the
Tour de Suisse, as well as finishing second in the
Tour of Flanders and
Gent–Wevelgem. He continued to ride the Tour until
1989, when he came 38th, but by then he had
arthritis. In 1991 he joined the American team, – "Speculation has it that he took a big pay cut; maybe that is what turned into motivation which resulted in his comeback to the big league", said Peiper ==Retirement and honours==