Greg LeMond has to say goodbye.
At age 33, the three-time winner of the Tour de France and the greatest American bicycle road racer has decided he is no longer able to compete in the sport. He will make a formal announcement today in Beverly Hills, Calif., as part of the Korbel Night of Champions, a fund-raiser for the U.S. Cycling Federation.LeMond will be one of 14 racers honored there, but the achievements of the others don't approach his: victories in the 1986, 1989 and 1990 Tours and victories in the 1983 and 1989 professional world championship road races.
That list might have been longer had he not been seriously injured in a 1987 hunting accident that cost him two years of racing. The glory years are long gone, and he has not finished first in a race since the 1992 Tour DuPont. He has not even ridden in one since he dropped out of a stage on July 8 in the middle of the Tour de France.
"It's probably been expected," he said of his retirement.
In the past few seasons, he has often complained of and displayed weakness and exhaustion but was unable to specify the cause. Now he thinks he can.
His condition, he said, is called mitochondrial myopathy. "I can't spell it," he said with a laugh, "but I can say it's basically dysfunctional mitochondria, which won't help me produce energy. My energy delivery system has been off whack. It's a mild state that affects my performance at a high level but not my day-to-day living.
"It's time for me to get out because of physical problems."
"It's not just age that's been responsible for my performances these last few years," he said this week by telephone from his home in Medina, Minn. "It's not that I wasn't motivated or just did it for the money. I have a very big physical disability that does not allow
me to compete at the world-class level. I have a physical condition that is not allowing me to race at the level I should."
Mitochondria are parts of a cell that produce energy through respiration. When they are impaired, muscles are impaired.
According to the Merck Manual, a standard medical reference book, mitochondrial myopathies are among a group of progressive muscle disorders of unknown cause that are inherited through the mother.
LeMond said he and his doctor believe, however, that the condition is caused by the 40 lead shotgun pellets left in him after he was accidentally shot while hunting in California on April 20, 1987. Three of the pellets rest in his heart lining.
The major effect of his ailment, he said, has been on his ability to use oxygen during a race to refresh his muscles.
Discussing the amount of oxygen he could use with each breath, he said, "I went from 6.2 liters of oxygen in February to 4.2 liters of oxygen during the Tour, even three weeks after the Tour."