Shooting Teaches LeMond About Life : Cycling: Three-time Tour de France winner learned the importance of having a family.

The shotgun blast pierced the still spring morning with a deafening ring.

Greg LeMond would recall two years later that the blast sounded as if it had come from his gun, not from one 25 yards away.

“My first realization that anything had happened was that I saw there was blood on the ring finger on my left hand,” LeMond told Samuel Abt in the book, “LeMond: The Incredible Comeback of an American Hero.”

“Then I felt numbness. When you get shot, you go into shock instantly and don’t really know what’s going on. I must have tried to stand up . . . and I almost passed out. I tried talking, but my right lung had collapsed and I could barely breathe.”

Kathy LeMond, Greg’s wife, was pregnant with the couple’s second child on April 20, 1987, the day LeMond was accidentally shot by his brother-in-law during a turkey hunt in Northern California. She went into labor, but visited LeMond after his emergency surgery.

“They had just lifted Greg up to change his sheets,” she told Abt. “Out of every single hole in his body he was dripping blood. It was just like a colander. I asked, ‘Are you sure he’s going to be all right? He has all these holes in him.’ He had 60 holes and he was just dripping blood out of every single hole.”

Pellets were removed from LeMond’s liver, kidneys and intestines. About 30 remain lodged in the body, including two in his heart lining.

Three years later, however, he is all right.

LeMond, who in 1986 became the first American to win the Tour de France, survived the ordeal to become one of the world’s best-known cyclists.

Although he had to skip two tours--in 1987 because of the shooting and in 1988 because of cycle-related injuries--LeMond returned and won the 1989 and 1990 tours.

Those victories represent an inner strength that friends say was solidified after the hunting accident. They say the shooting profoundly affected LeMond and everything he has done since then.

LeMond agrees.

On the verge of death, LeMond said he learned a valuable lesson about life.

A crowd of Southern California bicycling enthusiasts swayed as if being rocked by an earthquake. With hands out, they waved pieces of paper in LeMond’s face.

“Hey, Greg. Greg LeMond! Over heeeere. Won’t you sign? Pleeeease!”

LeMond honored thousands of requests at the recent DuPont pro cycling championships in Newport Beach in a scene that is repeated around the world when he greets his public.

LeMond has learned the subtle art of signing autographs while not ignoring a sponsor, reporter or whoever else is competing for his attention.

“At the Tour de France, he can’t even get out of his car, so many people want him,” said Greg Miller, LeMond’s bicycle mechanic.

The bottomless sea of requests is daunting, yet LeMond does not flinch. He shows no hint of resentment when tapped on his left shoulder to mug with a fan for a photograph, then tapped on his right shoulder to face the glare of television lights and a microphone.

“You couldn’t put on the smile and do the things he does if you weren’t genuine,” Miller said. “You would lose your cool with people after a while.”

But one can shake only so many hands, accommodate only so many people.

“He tries to please everyone, and sometimes it is too much,” Kathy LeMond said last July in Paris.

After the shooting, Greg LeMond had nothing but time to ponder his future as he lay in bed, barely able to move. He said he began to realize his family meant more to him than any Tour de France victory.

“It just makes you realize how fragile life is,” he has said. “Everything can be going along perfectly, and then suddenly--boom--you’re dead.

“The accident is exactly why I won’t dedicate myself (exclusively) to cycling. . . . I train as hard as anybody, but I have different priorities. The accident made me realize that a healthy family is the most important thing in the world to me.”

For the last three years, LeMond has struggled not to undermine that perspective.

The LeMonds have three children--Geoffrey, Scott and Simone. The children are shuttled between homes on Lake Minnetonka, near the Twin Cities of Minnesota, and Kortjik, Belgium. That way, when LeMond is competing in Europe, he can always spend time with them.

LeMond hoped this transatlantic homesteading would satisfy each world. But some of the old issues still confront him.

As his wife reminds him, LeMond never will be completely free until he learns to say no.

“It is something that I’m better at now,” he said.

He was polite but firm in his resolve not to ride in the Newport Beach race, for instance. LeMond was advertised as the race’s star attraction, and Southland fans were disappointed that he did not compete.

But his season had ended three weeks earlier. He did not want to alter his schedule for a meaningless event. Race promoters knew the situation but continued using LeMond’s name to draw a larger crowd.

LeMond was bound by a contract with DuPont to appear at the event.

In other years, he has been pressured into riding, then regretted it when he performed miserably.

So, this time he said it--”No.”

“I figured there would be no point to racing if I was going to stop halfway,” he said.

Cycling experts praised LeMond’s decision. After the World Championships in October, most of the international elite took a break. The cycling season runs from February through October, so November is their month to rest.

LeMond, 29, failed to follow such a regimen after the 1989 season. He won the world road race championships and a memorable Tour de France in which he overcame a 50-second deficit on the final day to defeat Laurent Fignon of France.

An avalanche of awards followed that season. LeMond was spirited around the world, toasted from Tokyo to Toledo.

He had time for every interview, award ceremony and guest appearance. He had time for everything but training. So, when spring came, LeMond was unprepared.

“I was riding like a tourist,” he said of the early part of the 1990 season.

He first blamed it on the globe trotting. He was weak and overweight from the whirlwind “tour de fame.”

But that did not explain the energy lapses when LeMond returned to cycling.

During a ride last April, LeMond said he fell asleep on the road. His masseuse, Otto Jacombe, came to his aid.

“I couldn’t go two hours without hurting,” LeMond said.

He might have been out of shape, but he also was sick. His father-in-law, Dave Morris, an immunologist, diagnosed LeMond’s ailment as Epstein-Barr, an illness similar to infectious mononucleosis.

“He thinks I have a hard time fighting viruses,” said LeMond, who received anti-virus vaccinations. “It was the only thing that turned me around.”

LeMond said he did not regain his strength until the end of the Giro d’Italia. By June, he was ready for the Tour de France.

Although he did not lead the race until the second-to-last day, LeMond rode spectacularly, with the help of his teammates from Z, the French team for which he rides.

After the third French victory, some suggested that LeMond has a magical touch for the tour.

“It is all exaggerated,” LeMond said. “People think it is a science to peak for the Tour de France. It doesn’t work that way. To do well in April, I would have to start training in January.”

The 1991 Tour de France is 2,447 miles, starting in Lyon. Race organizers have planned a course with only one rest day but a shorter mountain section.

LeMond welcomed dropping an extra rest day, saying he builds on his strength as the race wends it way through the French countryside.

Some think the shorter mountain stages will be a disadvantage for LeMond.

“I like the way the tour has been divided up,” LeMond said. “I don’t need the rest day if I’m riding right. The mountains aren’t as tough, but I think it will still be difficult. It will come down to who’s riding the best in the mountains.”

LeMond hopes he will avoid repeating last season’s disastrous spring through better training this winter. He, Kathy and the children are staying at Lake Minnetonka through the end of the year.

The setting is ideal for LeMond, an avid fishermen and golfer. Except for a clinic in France, he stayed home this autumn.

Lake Minnetonka is far enough removed to shield the LeMonds from most outside disturbances. But it is not quite removed enough.

Kathy LeMond said she woke up recently to 40 pages of correspondence on their fax machine, all involving requests or demands of some sort.

“Sometimes, there is so much paper, I just dump it,” she said.

LeMond does not mind. He has a self-imposed moratorium on interviews, television commercials and any other distraction outside family and training.

The LeMonds will leave Minnesota in January and embark on a five-week journey from Santa Rosa, Calif., to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. LeMond will ride the 1,500 miles as his major preparation for the 1991 season.

LeMond bought a motor home so his family can join him. He also has a $10,000 bet with his racing team owner, Roger Zannier, that he can make it.

“It’s a motivator,” LeMond said. “If I win, he will provide me with a motor home for next year’s Tour de France, which is the way I want to do it. It will be easier with the kids.”

There you have it, the ultimate compromise: A home that follows LeMond as he races through France.