Greg Lemond Having Time Of His Life

WAYZATA, Minn. - It has been a rough day for Greg LeMond, confessed food snob.

There is no extra virgin olive oil to drizzle on the pizzas the baby-sitter had been sent on an hour-long expedition to fetch. The Swiss-made cappuccino machine, the foolproof model, refuses to put enough foam in the milk. And there are no more brownies after a weekend in which 14 guests ate the LeMonds out of house and extra virgin olive oil.

All those problems, and it is only 3 p.m., still too much daylight for LeMond to avoid the cross-country ski workout he has planned with a friend. The two-time winner of the Tour de France, the most demanding endurance event in sports, has been yawning almost constantly since returning from a 90-minute cycling workout in the morning. Now a nap seems a far better option than dragging himself out to ski on Lake Minnetonka.

It isn't that getting to the lake is any big hassle. Its vast, frozen expanse spreads out across the street from his five-bedroom home in this most fashionable of Minneapolis suburbs.

It is just that Greg LeMond, who won a 2,023-mile, 24-day Tour de France in 1989, would prefer to loll about in blue jeans and a T-shirt in his northern idyll just a little longer. A second workout will remind him of the 10 to 15 pounds he must lose in the relentless hard days that lie ahead. His winter of near total content was almost over. Last weekend, he returned to Europe for another cycling season.

``It is so easy here,'' says his wife, Kathy.

Oh, LeMond did get so upset there had not been a major snowfall that he took off to Lake Tahoe for a few days of cross-country skiing. And he was tired of the flat sameness of Lake Minnetonka, about the only snow-covered spot around by mid-January.

Such are the hardships Greg LeMond, 28, has to deal with these days: Regular olive oil. Foamless cappuccino. Another workout on a lake that he can see from the house's picture windows.

How different a perspective that is than the one with which LeMond saw himself a year ago. Then, his 1986 triumph in the Tour de France seemed part of another life, the one that literally nearly ended in a 1987 hunting accident. When it was followed by operations for an infected leg tendon and appendicitis and by results so poor they made rivals laugh, LeMond lacked all the confidence that had made him the only non-European to win the Tour.

``I never knew where I was, never knew whether I would be able to come back,'' he says. ``There was always the question that physically there was something wrong that I would not be able to overcome, no matter how determined I was or how hard I worked.

``Physically, I am in the same shape I was at this point last year. The difference is, if I ride poorly in February, March, April, even May, I know there is nothing wrong with me, that it's just a matter of time.''

His time came and went and came again. LeMond is healthy, very wealthy, worldly-wise, homeowner in Belgium and Minnesota, connoisseur of fine French restaurants and about to become co-owner of one, at 50th and France Streets in Minneapolis, to be named, naturally, Tour de France. His life is plainly an embarrassment of riches, so much that he talks of the impossibility of spending them in a lifetime.

``When you look at the average person, what I have is unrealistic,'' he says. ``I feel odd even living in a house like this at 28 years old. You always like to think there are a lot of people out there who work just as hard and never make the money athletes do.''

Ten years ago, a few days after Greg LeMond of Reno married the former Kathy Morris of La Crosse, Wis., the couple took off to live in a cold-water flat in a French provincial town. He had his first pro cycling contract, worth $12,000 a year, and the couple had a French vocabulary of about eight words. Her parents wondered what would happen if LeMond did not succeed.

The risk involved was not unlike that taken by the LeMonds in October, 1987, buying the $725,000 house in Wayzata while he was in a Sacramento hospital bed after the appendix surgery. He simply needed to leave Sacramento, because it was too close to the hunting accident memories and its climate allowed him too many days on a bicycle.

``The one thing I always wanted out of cycling was a paid-for house where I could raise my kids,'' he said. ``I also thought it could turn around my cycling career. If I was in California, by January I would be so burned out on cycling I didn't care whether I raced again. Skiing helps me keep my enthusiasm.''

The decision brought rewards, but not immediately. As late as last May's Tour of Italy, where he finished 39th, LeMond was so discouraged that he thought of immediately quitting the sport.

``The accumulation of all the misfortunes, all the accidents, that is what made this Tour de France victory so much better than 1986,'' he says.

When he began the Tour de France July 1, after missing the 1987 and 1988 races with injuries, LeMond was riding for a financially and competitively weak Belgian team, ADR. Soon after it ended, on July 23, three strong teams were bidding for him.

The winner was ``Z,'' owned by French clothing magnate Roger Zannier, who gave LeMond $5.7 million in a three-year contract that also promotes LeMond's 3-year-old cycle company by having the team ride on his bikes. Meanwhile, he and ADR are suing each other, LeMond for some $300,000 in unpaid Tour de France bonuses, ADR for breach of what it claims to be a two-year contract.

With appearance fees, equipment contracts and bonuses, LeMond's annual income should surpass $3 million the next three years. Six years ago, LeMond was the first cyclist to break $1 million in a multiyear contract ($1.2 million for four years). Now he is the first to earn $1 million a year. Sons Geoffrey, 5, and Scott, 2, and daughter Simone, 3 months, need not worry about the roof over their heads.

Of equal importance to him, ``Z'' is a team with three other riders who have been in the top 10 of the Tour de France, one clearly capable of making LeMond the first three-time winner in 35 years.

Fortunately for LeMond, the Tour de France does not start until June 30. He needs every day of the next six months to race himself back to a fitness level ``impossible in training alone.'' He realizes that there will be plenty of criticism in Europe if he races poorly while rounding into shape.

His first scheduled race was the Route of the Sun, ending today in Spain. In the two months before the Tour de France, he plans to ride the 11-day Tour de Trump, the 20-day Tour of Italy and the 10-day Tour of Switzerland. That should help overcome an off-season in which training was constantly interrupted by obligations such as being named Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year and other such demands.

It had taken nearly three months to arrange a visit with LeMond, and only an hour was promised. Several hours after the visitor arrived, LeMond was as hospitable as ever. His skiing partner, Mark Frise of La Crosse, swears LeMond has not changed at all. His only recent extravagance was ordering an $84,000 Mercedes 500 SL convertible.

He had been looking at the car in magazines during the Tour of Italy, and he asked Kathy whether he could buy one if he won the Tour de France. She obviously agreed, so unlikely was the possibility.

``If you told me a month before that it would happen, I would have sent you to a psychiatrist,'' LeMond says.

The result was equally mind-blowing even when LeMond went into the race's final stage in second place, 50 seconds behind Frenchman Laurent Fignon, a two-time Tour winner. No one figured LeMond could make up that margin in the short, time trial finale. He won by eight seconds.

``UNFORGETTABLE!'' and ``THE AMERICAN MIRACLE'' were the Page 1 headlines the next two days in L'Equipe, the French sports paper. Six weeks later, when LeMond had won the World Championship road race by a similarly small margin over Fignon, the paper screamed, ``SUPERMAN!''

``I would like to win the Tour de France once or twice more,'' LeMond says. ``A lot (10) have won it twice, but you don't remember them.''

Only five men have won the race more than twice, including five-time winners Jacques Anquetil, Bernard Hinault and Eddie Merckx. LeMond has the best finish average in history, with a third, a second and two firsts in his four attempts. He has done it despite a bicontinental existence.

``I could have been the best rider over the past five years and already have won three or four Tours,'' LeMond says, ``but a lot would have depended on my mental state. I may have been as physically talented as Hinault or Merckx, but you can't judge me by them.

``I'm American, and by mid-September I want to come home. They live at their home 12 months a year. I have a house in Europe, but it's not home.''

LeMond's unabashed pride in his own accomplishments is more factual than boastful. It is like his trying to earning every cent he can (and more) and yet feeling awkward about such riches, between delight over his recognition and head-shaking amazement that Presidents Reagan and Bush both greeted him at the White House.

``In 1987, at least in Europe, I was written off the earth,'' he says. ``I realize that once you stop competing or doing well, the recognition factor goes down a lot.

``I'd like to compete another three to five years. I'm rejuvenated. My best years should be the next three.''

Greg LeMond grabs his skis and heads down his front lawn to the lake. It is time. The time of his life.