Greg LeMond reached the end of the road Friday in the Tour de France, and possibly his storied career, too.
LeMond, the finest American bicycle road racer ever, dropped out of the Tour exhausted on a small hill, the Cote des Loges-Marchis, during the sixth stage of the three-week race.
His finish came at Kilometer 183 (Mile 113) of the 270.5-kilometer (168-mile) ride from Cherbourg to Rennes.
The three-time winner of the Tour, now reduced to a struggling support rider for his Gan team, had dropped behind on the hill.
“Just one hill too many,” LeMond, 33, said later in his hotel. “I ran out of juice.”
Partially up the hill, he dropped out of the race.
His abandonment was only one shock Friday.
Another was a change in the wearer of the yellow jersey, the symbol of overall leadership in the Tour. The new man in the jersey is Sean Yates, 34, an English rider for the Motorola team based in the United States.
Yates finished sixth Friday, two seconds behind the stage winner, Gianluca Bortolami, an Italian with the Mapei-Clas team.
