LeMond Not Among the Favorites This Year

For once, Greg LeMond is not mentioned as one of the favorites to win the Tour de France, which starts today in San Sebastian, Spain. Not surprisingly, the three-time champion, who fell to seventh last year, is not unhappy about that.

The other teams will not focus on LeMond and his Z teammates. Thus, LeMond can relax during the early going and try to seize control in the Alpine stages, late in the Tour. The strategy has worked in the past.

But will it work against this year’s strong field, which includes favorites Miguel Indurain of Spain and Gianni Bugno of Italy?

Indurain, last year’s champion, rides for Banesto, which also has Pedro Delgado, the 1988 Tour winner. Bugno, last year’s world champion and second in the Tour, rides for Gatorade-Chateau d’Ax, which also has two-time Tour winner Laurent Fignon.

LeMond said he is nothing more than one of the many challengers to Indurain and Bugno.

“Indurain will assume the pressures and responsibilities that I had in past years,” he told a French magazine, Miroir du Cyclisme.

LeMond controlled last year’s race in the first week, but faltered in the Pyrenees. An infection was partly to blame for his lack of stamina over the mountain passes.

“I don’t think my seventh place was a disgrace,” LeMond has said. “When you (have won) it, anything but winning is a disappointment. But not every year can you be at your best.”

LeMond, 31 this week, has had a more productive season than in recent years. He won the Tour du Pont on the Eastern seaboard and finished eighth at the one-day Paris-Roubaix, helping teammate Gilbert Duclos-Lassalle win one of the spring’s most prestigious races. LeMond was fourth in the Tour of Switzerland, which ended last week.

To improve his strength, LeMond said, he spent November and December cross-country skiing four to six hours a day near his home in Wayzata, Minn. The exercise helped him gain upper-body strength.

“I’m feeling good at the moment, but whether I’ll reach top form for the Tour de France is another question,” he told reporters at the Tour of Switzerland. “I’ve been performing well on the flat for some time now, but I’m not at my peak yet on the hills. I’m still one or two kilos too heavy for that.”