Yates Leads Tour, LeMond Drops Out

RENNES, France -- Sean Yates, a Briton with the U.S.-based Motorola team, captured the overall lead Friday in the Tour de France, and three-time champion Greg LeMond dropped out part way through the sixth stage. Gianluca Bortolami of Italy won the stage as the Tour returned home after a brief excursion into England. LeMond dropped out 75 kilometers from the finish of the 270-kilometer sixth stage between Cherbourg and Rennes. At the time, he was 145th in the overall standings out of 185 riders, nearly nine minutes behind the leader. LeMond, 33, has struggled for three seasons with health problems. Last year he cut short his season in June and had limited success in 1992, pulling out of the Tour at l'Alpe d'Huez. "My legs are dead and yesterday (Thursday) I had no energy," he said before leaving Cherbourg. "I am paying the price for the last two days of hard racing. "If I cannot follow in the race then I would rather stop," he added. "I don't want to ride in last place. I cannot say that it is totally over for me but it is over for this Tour."Yates, 34, was in a small group that moved away from the pack with about 30 kilometers left in the stage. Included in the group was Yates' Motorola teammate, American Frankie Andreu. Yates would have liked to gain the leader's yellow jersey in England, especially since the race went near his hometown in the leg between Dover and Brighton. "It was too difficult to concentrate on the race there," Yates said. The Motorola team was well placed to gain the lead after a good performance in the team time trial which put six of the team in the top 20.LeMond, a teammate of former race leader Chris Boardman of Britain in the Gan stable, said he had felt unfit from the start of the race. "The secret in the Tour is to be good from start to finish. You are not allowed any bad days and I have had two in the first week," he said. "I was not going great when I started and the first three days were really hard. I put in a big effort in Tuesday's team time trial and I have not recuperated."LeMond said an 1987 hunting accident, in which he was unintentionally shot, just one year after winning his first Tour could be responsible for his current poor form. Some 25 pellets of buckshot were surgically removed from his liver, lung and small intestine. LeMond lost more than seven minutes in the past two days on some modest slopes, nothing compared to the steep climbs later in the Pyrenees and Alps. Friday's stage was the longest of this year's Tour. (AP, Reuters)