World Sports Scene / Randy Harvey : Team Help May Not Be on Way for LeMond During Final Stages

Consider O.J. Simpson’s early years with the Buffalo Bills, before they built an Electric Company offensive line in front of him. Then you can understand American Greg LeMond’s task today as he enters the most demanding stage of the Tour de France.

Just as a running back cannot expect to lead the league in rushing without an offensive line to open holes for him, a cyclist, even one as talented as LeMond, is not supposed to be able to win the Tour de France without an outstanding team supporting him.

Teammates in cycling, like pulling guards, run interference. They ride head-on into the wind, taming it for the star teammate who is riding behind them. They also take turns setting a pace for him.

They do not share in much of the glory, also like pulling guards. But at least the cyclists are not accused on television of holding, unless it is of holding their star back.

That is what LeMond feared his teammates with ADR of Belgium might do to him. Instead, he has a 53-second lead through Tuesday’s 16th stage, which is remarkable considering that ADR did not compile enough points this year to earn a guaranteed berth in the tour, gaining entrance when another team withdrew.

ADR might have received a wild-card invitation anyway, but it would have been only on the strength of LeMond’s reputation. He became the only American to win the Tour de France in 1986, when he rode for the loaded La Vie Claire team.

But while LeMond’s ADR teammates have been grittier than expected, hardly anyone believes they are strong enough to set an adequate pace for him in today’s grueling 100-mile stage, which carries the cyclists over the Col du Galibier, the highest peak of the tour at 8,660 feet, and the Col de la Croix de Fer before the steep climb to l’Alpe d’Huez.

In short, he may be on his own.

How is it that a cyclist only three years removed from the championship could find himself without an established team?

“Nobody believed in him any more at the end of last year,” said George Taylor, president of Sports Mondial, Inc. of New York.

After winning the Tour de France in 1986, LeMond had a series of misfortunes--a broken wrist, a gunshot wound in a hunting accident that almost killed him, appendicitis and tendinitis.

He left the French team, La Vie Claire, after 1987 and signed a $350,000-a-year contract with a strong Dutch team, PDM, for 1988. But after LeMond’s second consecutive year of feeble results, PDM did not pick up his option for this year. You would not want to be the PDM executive who made that decision.

But perhaps LeMond will be available again after the tour.

Taylor, who represents a number of cyclists, said that the word is out that LeMond has had difficulty getting his payments from ADR, which advertises itself as a vehicle rental company but is best known, at least this month, for its bicycles.

The fallout from the political turmoil in China has forced the cancellation of a show that was to include singers, dancers and one figure skater, Cynthia Van Valkenburg of Los Angeles.

Van Valkenburg, a former U.S. junior champion in pairs who now coaches at the Culver City Ice Rink, toured China with the group, T.N.T., in 1985 and had a return engagement scheduled for Beijing this year.

More from the series in the West German newspapers, Bild and Bild am Sonntag, on East German sports:

Katarina Witt’s coach, Jutta Mueller, was so suspicious of her prize student’s eating habits that she sometimes excused herself from practice and searched the figure skater’s apartment. Once, after discovering a soft drink can and an empty potato chips bag in the trash can, Mueller put Witt on a diet of apples and mineral water.

Witt’s parents complained to the chairman of the Karl Marx-Stadt sports club, where Mueller is employed, but the coach went over the chairman’s head to her close friend, Jochen Grunwald, who is a vice president of the East German sports organization.

“Every two or three weeks, there was a big fight between those two,” Hans-Juergen Noczenski, head of the East German judo federation until he defected last February to West Germany, told Bild, referring to Mueller and Witt.

Calendar

July 21--Former President Reagan and the Oak Ridge Boys will appear, although probably not in harmony, at the opening ceremony for the U.S. Olympic Festival Friday night at Norman, Okla.

The first question that will be answered at the festival is whether U.S. athletes have learned to march in a parade. They earned a reprimand from the International Olympic Committee for their lack of order during the opening ceremony at the Seoul Olympics.

July 22--In contrast to his ultra-successful New York Marathon, Fred LeBow’s New York Games track and field meet Saturday at Columbia University could lose $500,000. Through Monday, only about 4,000 tickets had been sold.

Despite the withdrawal of Mary Slaney, who is considering surgery for the fourth time on her Achilles’ tendon, LeBow has a solid field of U.S. athletes, including Carl Lewis and Jackie Joyner-Kersee. But he attracted only a few foreigners, most notably Cuban high jumper Javier Sotomayor.

July 31-Aug. 4--Janet Evans and Matt Biondi, who between them won 10 medals, including eight golds, at Seoul, are expected to compete in the U.S. national swimming championships at USC.

Biondi tried water polo after the Olympics, but he returned to competitive swimming nine days ago with a repeat of his Olympic victory over Tom Jaeger in the 50 meters at the Santa Clara International Invitational.

One swimmer who will not be at USC is Angel Myers, who was suspended until the end of this year after testing positive for an anabolic steroid last summer. She was denied the opportunity Tuesday by U.S. Swimming to take her case to an arbitrator and announced that she may retire.

Aug. 6--Track and field promoter Al Franken said Tuesday he was still waiting for word from the Santa Monica Track Club about whether Carl Lewis will compete in the long jump in the Jack in the Box Invitational at UCLA.

There will be a $500,000 payoff to anyone who can emerge from the meet with the world record in the long jump. The money appears safe considering that Bob Beamon has held the record of 29 feet 2 1/2 inches since 1968.

But the men who finished second and third to Lewis at the Seoul Olympics, Mike Powell and Larry Myricks, have committed to try for it.