Where those shifters are looks like it probably bends your wrist/hand back towards you - which is a recipe for developing pain or numbness... you want to try to keep your wrist in a neutral position while riding.

Try just swivelling the handlebars down and seeing how you like the position of the shifters first... you just have to loosen the bolts lightly and it should rotate.... if it doesn't work for you, then you might want to retape things... but if you're careful when you unravel the handlebar tape that is on there, you won't need new handlebar tape. just pay attention to how it's wrapped, have some electrical tape to retape it at the ends afterwards...

to loosen the shifters so you can move them, pull that rubber hood thing at the top back towards the handlebar, and it'll expose a bolt head on the outside of the shifter... loose then, the shifter'll slide to whereever you want, then tighten it back up and then retape.

Your wheels do look different, definitely less spokes - but that's not a bad thing... more performance type wheels typically have less spokes because it makes the wheel lighter. it does make the wheel not quite as strong - so if you're very heavy that might be bad when hitting a bump.

I'm not sure if bikepedia is entirely accurate on their archives of lemond bikes... I've looked up a few lemond bikes I've seen on craigslist, and the pics/descriptions usually don't match the listings and what I see on forums when I google... but since trek took the lemond archives down, bikepedia's all there is.