Okay with all the topics about bikes on this site I couldn't believe nobody had commented about Lance kicking Jan Ullrich's ass yesterday. I find the guy awkward in interviews but nobody, but nobody in any sport I've ever witnessed throws the gloves down like Lance can.
I find it refreshing that in a world of technology, complexity and lots of bullshit, that something as straight up as riding a bike and doing it as well as he does without a lot of talk just action gets me to try a little harder in everything I do.
I often thought its just that I am an avid cyclist but I'd be interested in hearing what others reaction was.
I heard Lance Armstrong referred to as "possibly the greatest living athlete" on NPR yesterday. It seems funny to me because riding a bike is just basically, kinda, sitting....I mean not really, but "greatest athlete" seems like it would refer to someone who is athletic in how s/he moves, gracefully and powerfully, I suppose. Riding a bike seems to not involve physical coordination in the way some sports do.
But what do I know, I ride a recumbent - I'm a bike potato. And none of this musing is intended to deny that Lance A seems incredibly conditioned and competitive.
oh - you're one of those!! ha ha, i just kidding. i always laugh at the people who ride recumbent. you're right - you can eat a hot dog while burning calories. . . j/k.
whistler - ulrich got into a bicycle accident the day before and had to go to the hospital. his team car stopped immediately in his path and he slammed into the rear of the car. if anything, ulrich road a very good time trial for his condition after the accident @ 12th place. however, a team is a team - if you're not thorough in practice and fit throughout training . . . one would suffer the consequences. there's still a lot of racing to go.
lance is the best. one can hardly believe that he's gone thru cancer at the age of 24 and has worked himself to this level at 33. biking is more serious than you think it is. . . if it wasn't, people wouldn't have to dope and act all crazy about the sport since it's so competitive. remember marco pantani? the guy overdosed. oh yeah, what about tyler hamilton - fucking guy is probably the biggest let down for the US. he got a gold medal @ athens, but not without scrutiny. i'm glad lance let him off uspostal 3 years ago. things like that could have been speculation against uspostal and lance. it's a very very serious sport that involves much more competition than any other, in my opinion.
lance is possibly the greatest living athelete too because his body is physically abnormally different than any body else's too. his lung capacity is probably 1.5 times better than a well trained athlete.
Being a professional cyclist is the same as being an architect. Few people in the US respect the sport. Most people think it is easy, fun and everyone can do it. Like architects, cyclist train extremely long hours, longer than most professional athletes. A team consist of 9 cyclist working hard for the star of the team. Like in architecture, the star may earn some reasonable money but it is less than a rookie in baseball(excluding lance). The other team members earn as much as an intern in architecture. Most of them are obliged to become blue collar workers after retiring.
Right - like I said, my musing about the term "athlete" has nothing to do with Lance Armstrong's abilities - and I had sorta forgotten the whole cancer recovery thing, that blows my mind to think about. He seems so strong, impossible to believe he was battling cancer at some point. And greater lung capacity than well-trained athletes let alone regular humans? That's interesting too, since riding a bike with your torso hunched over makes it harder for your lungs to operate at full capacity (hence riding a recumbent takes less effort), Lance's bike training must have forced his lungs to become super-efficient in hard circumstances.
Again, not doubting the "greatest athlete" claim, and I know competitive cycling is more than just sitting still and pedaling - just musing on it.
while currently recovering from knee surgery which was necessitated from a cycling related injury, I'm excited to enjoy cycling vicariously through Lance...
I also wanted to chime in with an affirmative to the point that like architecture, the team who pulls a captain like Lance to victory is underappreciated and underrecognized by the news media. Of course every ship needs a captain, but offices and bosses and cycling teams are nothing without the team pulling the endeavour to victory.
There's some americanized rhetoric about victory and whatnot for everyone on July 4th. Enjoy the holiday fellow yanks
Joe Bloggs.... It's freeride nirvana!. Crazy stunts / drops / and jumps. I'm getting too old for that stuff so i'll just enjoy the nice scenery on the x-country rides. Great terrain without the brain splitting elevations found in Utah and Colorado, although I heading out for a heli drop at about 8000 ft into the back country in a couple weeks.
Road riding is good in the Vancouver area with a great array of road and trail networks that network around the city. Pretty much a cyclist dream with a terrific network along the waterfront. Nice islands just off the coast for touring too if your into that stuff.
i think i read a new yorker article about him once that says his heart is 1.5 times larger than a normal person's so he's genetically primed for sport any way.
maybe if lance would havea participated in say, other competitions like all the other riders do, with the exception of a joke warm up leading into "le tour" he'd be more respected, say in the world cycling community. great, so he trains all year long for the tour, and even lives in france so he can ride it before after it's announced. and? i just wish other cyclists would have caught on to his "technique" so he would have gotten his ass kicked long ago. greatest athlete, eh? i'd like to see him do the 100-miler.
Melia - that's just ridiculous. If anyone else in professional cycling was capable of winning 6 consecutive Tours over the last decade (or even one for that matter), they certainly would have devoted a whole season to it. Over the twenty years the Tour has become the pre-eminent cycling race as the Giro and Vuelta have receded in importance. Jan Ullrich, Basso and Vino and everyone else would be Tour specialists if they could justify it to their sponsors. You can lament that the Tour has become more important than all of the other races combined, but that is a problem for cycling's governing body (and incidentally the Protour was initiated this year to rectify that perceived problem). But how is this Lance's fault - because he is too dominant?
Also: pre-riding the Tour stages is considered de rigeur for any serious GC competitor. It's not cheating, it's called training, and you might be surprised to find out that the entire CSC and T-Mobile teams rode the most important stages during the spring.
the only problem is that we will never be able to compare la to the other greats because he didn't race the other tours. yeah - he's won 6. maybe even 7 - i hope. but look at what merckx did. merckx was THE MAN.
oh - don't get me wrong. lance is a man - even with one nut. it's just unfortunate that we will never be able to compare him with merckx - or perhaps it's for the best.
As with most sports tactics and strategy plays an ever increasing role as part of "game/sport". The team tactics was, from what I've read, a non-issue in Merckx day, clearly Lance and Johann Bruyneel are master strategists. Its how wars are won these days, think General Schwarzkoff.
Somehow I think Merckx was an all round stronger and more dominating rider in regards to the challengers of his day, while Lance is clearly superior to most of his challengers today there has been days when the team falters and you see a few chinks in the armor of his team ( not often ) but it would be a different tour without his stellar team mates.
I dunno... if you watch the documentaries Stars and Watercarriers and A Sunday in Hell (which both feature Merckx), team strategy may have played an even larger part since the divide between star and domestique in terms of skill was so much larger.
I hadn't heard of those movies....thx I'll have to tell the wife were watching a movie tonight and its not with Tom Hanks!
Just as a thought( a really bad one ) whose going to play Lance in the made for TV movie of the week that'll be coming out next month? Hollywood has got to be all over that one.
I hadn't heard of those movies....thx I'll have to tell the wife were watching a movie tonight and its not with Tom Hanks!
Just as a thought( a really bad one ) whose going to play Lance in the made for TV movie of the week that'll be coming out next month? Hollywood has got to be all over that one.
I was really hoping that last year was going to be Lance's last Tour and that this year he would have tried to win some of the Classics to prove his critics wrong. I'd like to see how he would fare going all out on the Paris-Roubaix...now thats a race. Merckx won it three times.
Melia, I don't get what you're saying. In 2004, Lance rode in the Tour de France, the Tour of Alrgarve, the Tour de Georgia, the Midi Libre, the Criterium International, the Dauphine Libere and the Tour of Murcia (and maybe others I'm missing?). Not to mention the off-road racing he did. He occasionally pops up running races, even. When someone wins an Olympic medal after working their entire lives to get to the podium, do you say "Maybe I would respect her/him more if he'd also played a good cricket game"?
snjr...
the races you list are mostly prep races. look at the records of anqueteil, merckx, hinault, indurain. these guys sometimes won two major tours in a year, plus a bunch of one day classics. the tour of georgia is not a major tour, nor is it a one day classic. paris/roubaix is not called the hell of the north by some over-zealous 25 year old oln producer in charge of a promotional campaign - it has earned it's name over decades from the enlightened - people who know the sport.
again - la's approach is different. history will decide how to judge. i've been following this sport closely for something like 30 years - and i'm not ready to make a judgement. (disclaimer - i do own an eddy merckx bike team sc road bike)
norm, okay, you've got about five more years of watching the sport than I do, and I admit I've been a little casual w/my attention to the Tour the last two years. Those races may be mostly prep races, but it's not like he's just doing nothing all year long. I'm not dissing merckx, but I also don't think you can dismiss Lance for peaking for the Tour every year. It's just not right to claim he's not really racing, he's not really any good simply because he's focused on the Tour de France. Runners peak for certain marathons or for the Olympics, and again, no one says, "Damn those Kenyans, they're not really athletes because they only compete in long distance races and only try to win the big ones. I'd like to see them win the 100-meter dash!"
If Lance changed his focus, and decided to peak for the Paris-Roubaix, and won it in consecutive years, people would then complain that he never wins the Tour de France.
snjr...
the difference is that la is changing the way things are done. his approach is a new one in what is a tradition-rich sport. again - i'm not arguing one way or another - just trying to keep the cheer-leading in perspective.
puddles...
cheap shot. this guy is the most drug tested human on the planet. his performance can be explained by his physiology, and his approach. no one pays more attention to physical preparation, mental preparation, technological research and development, strategy, and tactics. all those things add up to a huge advantage. would it be worth it to risk it all for the incremental boost from blood-doping or the like? i doubt it - but that's just my opinion.
in this day of highly specialized racing and training techniques, no one is going to win a grand tour AND a classic every year. are we asking that johan museeuw go take a tour or 2 to make his classic domination more "valid".
or what about the famous japanese keirin rider koichi nakano who was world pro sprint champion for 10 straight years from '77 - '86? must he go even start a classic to validate his unprecedented winning streak on the track?
lance is the best TDF rider to date. not the best all-around cyclist. he just happens to be the best at what most consider the hardest event of it's type. the days of classic and grand tour domination combined left when the cannibal retired.
listen to the discovery team Podcast for great information stage by stage of the Tour.
add the feed http://team.discovery.com/podcast/lance.rss to your podcatcher or search for it in the new itunes 4.9
form64...
track and road are apples and oranges so that is pointless.
and johan isn't being compared to these guys either.
"...the days of classic and grand tour domination combined left when the cannibal retired." hinault might take exception to that. he won the amstel gold, paris roubaix, and the tour in '81. more impressively he won the giro and the tour in both '82 and '85. (i think indurain also pulled off that double one year)
look - i could make an argument for merckx #1 - hinault #2 - and la #3. i could also make an argument for la as #1. and that may be the best thing about what lance has done - he has secured his place in history while perhaps even fortifying merckx's pedestal. very unique is sport.
i meant very unique IN sport.
i also want to add that we are lucky to be seeing this. be glad there is the oln - and support their advertisers if you can.
I heard today that of the 1500 +/- races Merckx entered as a pro he won something like 540 +/- of them ....... that's impressive!
On another note when doing some planning work for the x-country ski site for the 2010 olympics we had a preliminary layout for the site and then went out on site to have it reviewed byt the International ski federation. It was to ensure that our routes were to the standards expected. We thought we had set a tough route ( for a couple of us who regularly compete in regional races etc. But during the site review the ski federation official made us re-route to take teh course up this totally insane hill that I had a tough time walking up. He quite funny insaying that " Oh no we need those kind of sections for the genetic freaks of the sport" . He was totally serious and I actually believed him.
My point is that Lance and all these elite level athletes are just at a completely different level than all us chat room participants to comprehend, as much as we like to think we know how it maybe. Its something the average person just coan't relate to.
I heard today that of the 1500 +/- races Merckx entered as a pro he won something like 540 +/- of them ....... that's impressive!
On another note when doing some planning work for the x-country ski site for the 2010 olympics we had a preliminary layout for the site and then went out on site to have it reviewed byt the International ski federation. It was to ensure that our routes were to the standards expected. We thought we had set a tough route ( for a couple of us who regularly compete in regional races etc. But during the site review the ski federation official made us re-route to take the course up this totally insane hill that I had a tough time walking up. He was quite funny in saying that " Oh no we need those kind of sections for the genetic freaks of the sport" . He was totally serious and I actually believed him.
My point is that Lance and all these elite level athletes are just at a completely different level than all us chat room participants to comprehend, as much as we like to think we know how it maybe. Its something the average person just coan't relate to.
norm, you missed my point which was that each type of cyclist CAN be the best at his speciality and NOT have to prove that by doing any other type of races. is nakano "better" because he dominated his speciality 10 years over lance's 6-7? one could say he was a better track sprinter than lance is a TDF rider.
of all people, I KNOW the road and track are apples and oranges as i've competed in both as a cat 1 racer. nakano was the dominating track sprinter with a still upbeaten record. johann was a better classics rider than lance. period. lance is a better tour rider. period.
now who is the BEST cyclist? that is an unswerable question really. BEST at what? in reality, the new pro tour will determine the "best" performer at the pro tour events over the course of a year. but like with the proceeding world cup, was bettinni the "best"? well, he was the best at the world cup races, really not much different than a "stage race" spread out over a season with lots of rest days in between. one has to keep form longer to consistently place high in the pro tour than the TDF.
BEST TDF rider? lance. best all-around "road cyclist" past and present? merckx or hinault?
the original post was that lance is the man. my point was/is that he is a man - not the man. just like johan and nakano and the rest. THE man on a bike - has to be merckx. Remember - on top of everything else - he held the hour record almost forever - and only lost it when technology started making huge improvements. of course it's only my dos centavos and i just spent my lunch hour on my merckx bike - so take it for what it's worth.
On top of all that Merckx refuses to get drawn into any comparison with himself and any other rider over the years. He has been a huge supporter of Lance, and clearly a first rate gentlemen. Class!
I don't check the board for a few days and miss out on a great (and overplayed) conversation. Yes, in 13 years Eddy Merckx won approx. 1/3 of the races he entered (445 out of 1582). He was a brilliant climber and could also sprint. He raced everything from tours to track. The reason I love him as a racer is the style of his racing. He isn't called the Cannibal because he sits on his heels. NOBODY could chase a group down like Merckx.
But, it's impossible to compare Lance to Eddy. Too much has changed in the past 25 years. It's like trying to compare the races back in the 70's to the first few TDF's.
All of the races Lance does before TDF are tuneup races. The team doesn't race the same in other races. Lance rode domestique for part of Dauphine this year to get Hincapie a stage win.
In comparison, Eddy was always the leader during every race his team was in.
Hinault was also a fantastic racer, but he never had as much color as Eddy during races. It falls in line w/my fascination for Mario Cipollini (I already miss him in this tour.)
slide 009...
good points. i suggest we put lance on an old school bike and let's see if he can match eddy's the hour record.
they are both amazing athletes and we ar lucky to be able to see them perform. like watching michael jordan or emmitt smith.
remember to support oln advertisers if you can.
Lance .... is the Man!
Okay with all the topics about bikes on this site I couldn't believe nobody had commented about Lance kicking Jan Ullrich's ass yesterday. I find the guy awkward in interviews but nobody, but nobody in any sport I've ever witnessed throws the gloves down like Lance can.
I find it refreshing that in a world of technology, complexity and lots of bullshit, that something as straight up as riding a bike and doing it as well as he does without a lot of talk just action gets me to try a little harder in everything I do.
I often thought its just that I am an avid cyclist but I'd be interested in hearing what others reaction was.
I heard Lance Armstrong referred to as "possibly the greatest living athlete" on NPR yesterday. It seems funny to me because riding a bike is just basically, kinda, sitting....I mean not really, but "greatest athlete" seems like it would refer to someone who is athletic in how s/he moves, gracefully and powerfully, I suppose. Riding a bike seems to not involve physical coordination in the way some sports do.
But what do I know, I ride a recumbent - I'm a bike potato. And none of this musing is intended to deny that Lance A seems incredibly conditioned and competitive.
oh - you're one of those!! ha ha, i just kidding. i always laugh at the people who ride recumbent. you're right - you can eat a hot dog while burning calories. . . j/k.
whistler - ulrich got into a bicycle accident the day before and had to go to the hospital. his team car stopped immediately in his path and he slammed into the rear of the car. if anything, ulrich road a very good time trial for his condition after the accident @ 12th place. however, a team is a team - if you're not thorough in practice and fit throughout training . . . one would suffer the consequences. there's still a lot of racing to go.
lance is the best. one can hardly believe that he's gone thru cancer at the age of 24 and has worked himself to this level at 33. biking is more serious than you think it is. . . if it wasn't, people wouldn't have to dope and act all crazy about the sport since it's so competitive. remember marco pantani? the guy overdosed. oh yeah, what about tyler hamilton - fucking guy is probably the biggest let down for the US. he got a gold medal @ athens, but not without scrutiny. i'm glad lance let him off uspostal 3 years ago. things like that could have been speculation against uspostal and lance. it's a very very serious sport that involves much more competition than any other, in my opinion.
lance is possibly the greatest living athelete too because his body is physically abnormally different than any body else's too. his lung capacity is probably 1.5 times better than a well trained athlete.
there is a lot more to professional cycling than just sitting on a bike and pedaling, damn tough, lance is the man
I think Lance is too much like a clockwork on a bike - I would prefer someone else (more human) maybe Ullrich (T-mobile) or even better BASSO (CSC)
Being a professional cyclist is the same as being an architect. Few people in the US respect the sport. Most people think it is easy, fun and everyone can do it. Like architects, cyclist train extremely long hours, longer than most professional athletes. A team consist of 9 cyclist working hard for the star of the team. Like in architecture, the star may earn some reasonable money but it is less than a rookie in baseball(excluding lance). The other team members earn as much as an intern in architecture. Most of them are obliged to become blue collar workers after retiring.
yeah, but if like Lance you come to train to a place like Girona then I'm sure it's pretty much fun...:
Finding Nirvana on Two Wheels (NYT)
Right - like I said, my musing about the term "athlete" has nothing to do with Lance Armstrong's abilities - and I had sorta forgotten the whole cancer recovery thing, that blows my mind to think about. He seems so strong, impossible to believe he was battling cancer at some point. And greater lung capacity than well-trained athletes let alone regular humans? That's interesting too, since riding a bike with your torso hunched over makes it harder for your lungs to operate at full capacity (hence riding a recumbent takes less effort), Lance's bike training must have forced his lungs to become super-efficient in hard circumstances.
Again, not doubting the "greatest athlete" claim, and I know competitive cycling is more than just sitting still and pedaling - just musing on it.
Hope he wins #7.
doesn't he have an undue advantage over his competitors seeing that he has no balls; less discomfort down there.
while currently recovering from knee surgery which was necessitated from a cycling related injury, I'm excited to enjoy cycling vicariously through Lance...
I also wanted to chime in with an affirmative to the point that like architecture, the team who pulls a captain like Lance to victory is underappreciated and underrecognized by the news media. Of course every ship needs a captain, but offices and bosses and cycling teams are nothing without the team pulling the endeavour to victory.
There's some americanized rhetoric about victory and whatnot for everyone on July 4th. Enjoy the holiday fellow yanks
Good coverage here;
[url=http://www.pezcyclingnews.com]
Joe Bloggs.... It's freeride nirvana!. Crazy stunts / drops / and jumps. I'm getting too old for that stuff so i'll just enjoy the nice scenery on the x-country rides. Great terrain without the brain splitting elevations found in Utah and Colorado, although I heading out for a heli drop at about 8000 ft into the back country in a couple weeks.
Road riding is good in the Vancouver area with a great array of road and trail networks that network around the city. Pretty much a cyclist dream with a terrific network along the waterfront. Nice islands just off the coast for touring too if your into that stuff.
i think i read a new yorker article about him once that says his heart is 1.5 times larger than a normal person's so he's genetically primed for sport any way.
maybe if lance would havea participated in say, other competitions like all the other riders do, with the exception of a joke warm up leading into "le tour" he'd be more respected, say in the world cycling community. great, so he trains all year long for the tour, and even lives in france so he can ride it before after it's announced. and? i just wish other cyclists would have caught on to his "technique" so he would have gotten his ass kicked long ago. greatest athlete, eh? i'd like to see him do the 100-miler.
yeah, what a wimp, trains 6-10 hours a day all year just for the tour, pansy
Melia - that's just ridiculous. If anyone else in professional cycling was capable of winning 6 consecutive Tours over the last decade (or even one for that matter), they certainly would have devoted a whole season to it. Over the twenty years the Tour has become the pre-eminent cycling race as the Giro and Vuelta have receded in importance. Jan Ullrich, Basso and Vino and everyone else would be Tour specialists if they could justify it to their sponsors. You can lament that the Tour has become more important than all of the other races combined, but that is a problem for cycling's governing body (and incidentally the Protour was initiated this year to rectify that perceived problem). But how is this Lance's fault - because he is too dominant?
Also: pre-riding the Tour stages is considered de rigeur for any serious GC competitor. It's not cheating, it's called training, and you might be surprised to find out that the entire CSC and T-Mobile teams rode the most important stages during the spring.
the only problem is that we will never be able to compare la to the other greats because he didn't race the other tours. yeah - he's won 6. maybe even 7 - i hope. but look at what merckx did. merckx was THE MAN.
The Cannibal indeed was great.
But there are many seats in Olympus.
oh - don't get me wrong. lance is a man - even with one nut. it's just unfortunate that we will never be able to compare him with merckx - or perhaps it's for the best.
. . . did david zabriskie choke today or what! that was a dramatic spill at the wrong time.
As with most sports tactics and strategy plays an ever increasing role as part of "game/sport". The team tactics was, from what I've read, a non-issue in Merckx day, clearly Lance and Johann Bruyneel are master strategists. Its how wars are won these days, think General Schwarzkoff.
Somehow I think Merckx was an all round stronger and more dominating rider in regards to the challengers of his day, while Lance is clearly superior to most of his challengers today there has been days when the team falters and you see a few chinks in the armor of his team ( not often ) but it would be a different tour without his stellar team mates.
I dunno... if you watch the documentaries Stars and Watercarriers and A Sunday in Hell (which both feature Merckx), team strategy may have played an even larger part since the divide between star and domestique in terms of skill was so much larger.
I hadn't heard of those movies....thx I'll have to tell the wife were watching a movie tonight and its not with Tom Hanks!
Just as a thought( a really bad one ) whose going to play Lance in the made for TV movie of the week that'll be coming out next month? Hollywood has got to be all over that one.
Robin Williams is too hairy and barrel chested!
I hadn't heard of those movies....thx I'll have to tell the wife were watching a movie tonight and its not with Tom Hanks!
Just as a thought( a really bad one ) whose going to play Lance in the made for TV movie of the week that'll be coming out next month? Hollywood has got to be all over that one.
Robin Williams is too hairy and barrel chested!
janosh - pulling out the hard-core titles. nice.
I'm a cycling dork. I admit it.
P.S. I think Matt Damon was discussed at playing Lance.
I was really hoping that last year was going to be Lance's last Tour and that this year he would have tried to win some of the Classics to prove his critics wrong. I'd like to see how he would fare going all out on the Paris-Roubaix...now thats a race. Merckx won it three times.
I vote for Edward Norton!!
I caught the big celebration in Austin after his...4th win I think. What a party.
Melia, I don't get what you're saying. In 2004, Lance rode in the Tour de France, the Tour of Alrgarve, the Tour de Georgia, the Midi Libre, the Criterium International, the Dauphine Libere and the Tour of Murcia (and maybe others I'm missing?). Not to mention the off-road racing he did. He occasionally pops up running races, even. When someone wins an Olympic medal after working their entire lives to get to the podium, do you say "Maybe I would respect her/him more if he'd also played a good cricket game"?
I'd love to see Lance sucking down a gaulloises at the end of a stage like Merckx. With that increased lunge capacity I bet he'd get a wicked buzz.
I vote for a young Dennis Quaid to play Lance, at least he's from Texas.
No mention of.... do I dare say it ....Brad Pitt!
Oh lord... I thought we were all through with Brad Pitt...
How about Jason Statham of Snatch and Transporter fame?
Of course, Brad Pitt was in Snatch...
I actually though about Vinnie Jones who was also in Snatch, has the serious look, haircut and toughness but the guys' about 6'4" ... wrong body size.
snjr...
the races you list are mostly prep races. look at the records of anqueteil, merckx, hinault, indurain. these guys sometimes won two major tours in a year, plus a bunch of one day classics. the tour of georgia is not a major tour, nor is it a one day classic. paris/roubaix is not called the hell of the north by some over-zealous 25 year old oln producer in charge of a promotional campaign - it has earned it's name over decades from the enlightened - people who know the sport.
again - la's approach is different. history will decide how to judge. i've been following this sport closely for something like 30 years - and i'm not ready to make a judgement. (disclaimer - i do own an eddy merckx bike team sc road bike)
norm, okay, you've got about five more years of watching the sport than I do, and I admit I've been a little casual w/my attention to the Tour the last two years. Those races may be mostly prep races, but it's not like he's just doing nothing all year long. I'm not dissing merckx, but I also don't think you can dismiss Lance for peaking for the Tour every year. It's just not right to claim he's not really racing, he's not really any good simply because he's focused on the Tour de France. Runners peak for certain marathons or for the Olympics, and again, no one says, "Damn those Kenyans, they're not really athletes because they only compete in long distance races and only try to win the big ones. I'd like to see them win the 100-meter dash!"
If Lance changed his focus, and decided to peak for the Paris-Roubaix, and won it in consecutive years, people would then complain that he never wins the Tour de France.
so has anybody figured out what performance enhancing drugs armstrong is using yet for his super human feats?
snjr...
the difference is that la is changing the way things are done. his approach is a new one in what is a tradition-rich sport. again - i'm not arguing one way or another - just trying to keep the cheer-leading in perspective.
puddles...
cheap shot. this guy is the most drug tested human on the planet. his performance can be explained by his physiology, and his approach. no one pays more attention to physical preparation, mental preparation, technological research and development, strategy, and tactics. all those things add up to a huge advantage. would it be worth it to risk it all for the incremental boost from blood-doping or the like? i doubt it - but that's just my opinion.
fyi - here's a crib sheet on the big names throughout bike racing history history...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A3420523
in this day of highly specialized racing and training techniques, no one is going to win a grand tour AND a classic every year. are we asking that johan museeuw go take a tour or 2 to make his classic domination more "valid".
or what about the famous japanese keirin rider koichi nakano who was world pro sprint champion for 10 straight years from '77 - '86? must he go even start a classic to validate his unprecedented winning streak on the track?
lance is the best TDF rider to date. not the best all-around cyclist. he just happens to be the best at what most consider the hardest event of it's type. the days of classic and grand tour domination combined left when the cannibal retired.
listen to the discovery team Podcast for great information stage by stage of the Tour.
add the feed http://team.discovery.com/podcast/lance.rss to your podcatcher or search for it in the new itunes 4.9
form64...
track and road are apples and oranges so that is pointless.
and johan isn't being compared to these guys either.
"...the days of classic and grand tour domination combined left when the cannibal retired." hinault might take exception to that. he won the amstel gold, paris roubaix, and the tour in '81. more impressively he won the giro and the tour in both '82 and '85. (i think indurain also pulled off that double one year)
look - i could make an argument for merckx #1 - hinault #2 - and la #3. i could also make an argument for la as #1. and that may be the best thing about what lance has done - he has secured his place in history while perhaps even fortifying merckx's pedestal. very unique is sport.
i meant very unique IN sport.
i also want to add that we are lucky to be seeing this. be glad there is the oln - and support their advertisers if you can.
I heard today that of the 1500 +/- races Merckx entered as a pro he won something like 540 +/- of them ....... that's impressive!
On another note when doing some planning work for the x-country ski site for the 2010 olympics we had a preliminary layout for the site and then went out on site to have it reviewed byt the International ski federation. It was to ensure that our routes were to the standards expected. We thought we had set a tough route ( for a couple of us who regularly compete in regional races etc. But during the site review the ski federation official made us re-route to take teh course up this totally insane hill that I had a tough time walking up. He quite funny insaying that " Oh no we need those kind of sections for the genetic freaks of the sport" . He was totally serious and I actually believed him.
My point is that Lance and all these elite level athletes are just at a completely different level than all us chat room participants to comprehend, as much as we like to think we know how it maybe. Its something the average person just coan't relate to.
I heard today that of the 1500 +/- races Merckx entered as a pro he won something like 540 +/- of them ....... that's impressive!
On another note when doing some planning work for the x-country ski site for the 2010 olympics we had a preliminary layout for the site and then went out on site to have it reviewed byt the International ski federation. It was to ensure that our routes were to the standards expected. We thought we had set a tough route ( for a couple of us who regularly compete in regional races etc. But during the site review the ski federation official made us re-route to take the course up this totally insane hill that I had a tough time walking up. He was quite funny in saying that " Oh no we need those kind of sections for the genetic freaks of the sport" . He was totally serious and I actually believed him.
My point is that Lance and all these elite level athletes are just at a completely different level than all us chat room participants to comprehend, as much as we like to think we know how it maybe. Its something the average person just coan't relate to.
norm, you missed my point which was that each type of cyclist CAN be the best at his speciality and NOT have to prove that by doing any other type of races. is nakano "better" because he dominated his speciality 10 years over lance's 6-7? one could say he was a better track sprinter than lance is a TDF rider.
of all people, I KNOW the road and track are apples and oranges as i've competed in both as a cat 1 racer. nakano was the dominating track sprinter with a still upbeaten record. johann was a better classics rider than lance. period. lance is a better tour rider. period.
now who is the BEST cyclist? that is an unswerable question really. BEST at what? in reality, the new pro tour will determine the "best" performer at the pro tour events over the course of a year. but like with the proceeding world cup, was bettinni the "best"? well, he was the best at the world cup races, really not much different than a "stage race" spread out over a season with lots of rest days in between. one has to keep form longer to consistently place high in the pro tour than the TDF.
BEST TDF rider? lance. best all-around "road cyclist" past and present? merckx or hinault?
the original post was that lance is the man. my point was/is that he is a man - not the man. just like johan and nakano and the rest. THE man on a bike - has to be merckx. Remember - on top of everything else - he held the hour record almost forever - and only lost it when technology started making huge improvements. of course it's only my dos centavos and i just spent my lunch hour on my merckx bike - so take it for what it's worth.
norm-
fully agreed.
i spend mine on a giant. go jan! LOL
On top of all that Merckx refuses to get drawn into any comparison with himself and any other rider over the years. He has been a huge supporter of Lance, and clearly a first rate gentlemen. Class!
I don't check the board for a few days and miss out on a great (and overplayed) conversation. Yes, in 13 years Eddy Merckx won approx. 1/3 of the races he entered (445 out of 1582). He was a brilliant climber and could also sprint. He raced everything from tours to track. The reason I love him as a racer is the style of his racing. He isn't called the Cannibal because he sits on his heels. NOBODY could chase a group down like Merckx.
But, it's impossible to compare Lance to Eddy. Too much has changed in the past 25 years. It's like trying to compare the races back in the 70's to the first few TDF's.
All of the races Lance does before TDF are tuneup races. The team doesn't race the same in other races. Lance rode domestique for part of Dauphine this year to get Hincapie a stage win.
In comparison, Eddy was always the leader during every race his team was in.
Hinault was also a fantastic racer, but he never had as much color as Eddy during races. It falls in line w/my fascination for Mario Cipollini (I already miss him in this tour.)
any idea how much those bikes cost ?
slide 009...
good points. i suggest we put lance on an old school bike and let's see if he can match eddy's the hour record.
they are both amazing athletes and we ar lucky to be able to see them perform. like watching michael jordan or emmitt smith.
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