LeMond Expected to Stay With Team, His Attorney Says

On the day after Greg LeMond won the 23-day, 2,030-mile Tour de France, he went cycling.

He rode in a 37-mile criterium Monday at Lisieux in Normandy, about 100 miles west of Paris. He has more exhibitions scheduled for this week in the Netherlands before returning to the World Cup circuit.

Rumors have LeMond returning with a team other than Belgium’s ADR, which signed him this year after he left the strong PDM team of the Netherlands in a contract dispute.

But LeMond’s attorney, Ron Stanko of Reading, Pa., denied Monday that the two-time Tour de France champion is leaving ADR and said reports that the team has not fulfilled financial obligations of the contract, estimated at $350,000, are exaggerated.

“I’m not going to fuel that fire with kerosene,” Stanko said. “The problems we’ve had are not much different than the ones we had with Greg’s previous teams that I dealt with, La Vie Claire and PDM.

“This is not a world like the National Football League and major league baseball. It’s a world of sponsors, co-sponsors and entrepreneurs. There’s no union where we can take our grievances.”

LeMond’s grievance with PDM resulted in the cancellation of his two-year contract with one year remaining.

Stanko said PDM had promised LeMond a $100,000 raise to $450,000 this year. A PDM spokesman, Harry Jansen, said the team was committed to pay the $100,000 only if LeMond fulfilled certain expectations last year, which he did not because of injuries and illness.

“We are kind people,” Jansen said. “But we are not crazy.”

Stanko thought he had the last word in that deal after the Tour de France.

“The big loser in that game was PDM,” he said.

Besides the deal with ADR, LeMond will receive about $200,000 this year to ride for Coors in six U.S. appearances, three of which he already has made.

A Coors spokeswoman, Sandy Bean, said Coors is considering sponsoring a team in Europe next year and believes it has a chance to sign LeMond if it can afford to pay him as well as a competitive supporting cast.

“We’ve heard Greg say that he would really want to ride with an American team,” she said.