Lance makes it 5!

[Attitude]

[Fence_Sitter]

Attitude said:

Bike racing is all about who can suffer the most. The few races (at the lowest levels) I did well in involved moments where I really wanted to quit. But you have to push through that and continue. This is much like climbing when you find yourself sketched out. Control it and keep moving.

 

Eddie B's training book was inspirational for me in this regard.

 

agreed i see many similarities with climbing and cycling... pain... fear... and brass balls...

[thelawgoddess]

lance is amazing. i highly recommend his book. very inspirational!!!

[Dru]

Fence_Sitter said:

Attitude said:

Bike racing is all about who can suffer the most. The few races (at the lowest levels) I did well in involved moments where I really wanted to quit. But you have to push through that and continue. This is much like climbing when you find yourself sketched out. Control it and keep moving.

 

Eddie B's training book was inspirational for me in this regard.

 

agreed i see many similarities with climbing and cycling... pain... fear... and brass balls...

 

if youre talking Lance dontcha mean brass BALL?

[EWolfe]

Roger said:

 

 

 

HEART, COURAGE DON'T MAKE HIM GREATEST ATHLETE

 

7-25-03

 

Why do we always do this to ourselves?

 

Here he is, cancer survivor, father, good citizen and four-time Tour de France winner, leading this year's event and, still, a voice cries out from my television trying to turn him into something more.

 

That's because he is MORE than your poor definition, fool.

 

 

"Lance Armstrong, world's greatest athlete, maybe the greatest of all time, still leads the Tour de France," the voice said.

 

Lance Armstrong?

 

The cyclist?

 

World's greatest . . . athlete?

 

Fingernails, meet chalkboard.

 

Narrow-minded writer, meet sports column

 

 

Now, Armstrong is a wonderful athlete. And he is a spectacular competitor who would pedal a unicycle up the side of a skyscraper if someone told him it couldn't be done.

 

THAT's intelligent but representative of your grip on reality

 

 

Armstrong is intelligent. He has courage, guts and brains. Armstrong has the X-factor that George Plimpton wrote about. He's an animal. But he's not the world's greatest athlete. He can't be.

 

He rides a bicycle.

 

This requires the use of his legs and lungs. It requires stamina. It uses little hand-eye coordination. There is no jumping or running. So until Armstrong plays point guard for the Blazers or shortstop for the Mariners, the greatest cyclist in the world should never be mistaken for the greatest athlete.

 

 

Do I sense some U.S. regional sportscentricity here?

 

Part of me knows the voice on television, coming from a national sports network, was just trying to get my attention. Maybe I'm a sucker for waiting through a commercial, thinking I was about to see Armstrong hop off his bicycle in the French Alps, catch a football in stride, plow over a safety and outrun 10 other athletes 65 yards for a touchdown.

 

Yes, you are a sucker, and a delusional one at that.

 

 

So I watched.

 

Armstrong pedaled.

 

Then, Armstrong pedaled faster.

 

That's it.

 

 

Armstrong didn't have to throw, catch, run, jump, dive, tackle, dribble a ball or hit a 92-mph slider.

 

Whatever, MR A.D.D.

 

 

If Armstrong wins a record-tying fifth consecutive Tour de France, it will be because he fares well in Saturday's final time trial. Since his winning streak began in 1999, Armstrong is undefeated in the final time trial of the event.

 

This means Armstrong is clutch, but it doesn't make him a better athlete than Barry Bonds, Ricky Williams, Michael Vick, Tracy McGrady, Tim Duncan, Kevin Garnett and many others.

 

And if you want to talk world's greatest all-time athletes, Armstrong isn't close to Jackie Robinson, Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe, Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali.

 

A rmstrong is a world-class cyclist. You can call him a great athlete because he's a champion. But his athleticism competes on a different scale.

 

He rides a bicycle.

 

Trying to compare him to great athletes in major sports isn't fair to anyone.

 

so, now cycling is a MINOR sport?

It's not fair to those of you that think a baseball game or Sunday night football is the peak of athleticism...

 

 

In 1999, ESPN named its 100 greatest athletes of the 20th century. And although three race horses, Secretariat, Man O' War and Citation, made the list, Armstrong, who had one Tour de France victory, did not.

 

Oh, Yeah. ESPN is the voice of the world for sports...

 

 

Is Armstrong really now a better athlete than Bonds?

 

 

Yes.

 

If the ESPN list came out in 2003 would Armstrong really already have leapfrogged Willie Mays, Babe Ruth and Jackie Joyner-Kersee and three horses?

 

 

Who gives a rat's ass what ESPN thinks?

They said horses were better athletes than Lance!

 

 

Or was the voice trying to make Armstrong into more than he actually is (as if that really needed doing)?

 

We should take caution, even while touting Armstrong and his bicycle, because, well, this is sort of the same hype machine that led us to believe we knew Kobe Bryant when we didn't. It's a small leap from good athlete to great athlete to hero to superhero. And we do it all the time, without a thought.

 

Nice comparison, ASSHOLE!

 

 

Armstrong's is an inspirational comeback story. Isn't that enough?

 

 

Enough for narrow-minded sportswriters, obviously.

 

On a summer day in which a couple of the top sports stories are early reviews of the movie "Seabiscuit" and word from New York that Sean "P. Diddy" Combs wants to buy a stake in the Knicks, calling Armstrong "world's greatest athlete" isn't just a stretch.

 

It has to be one for the ages.

 

 

 

[jon]

This guy obviously missed his cyclocross move. I must have rewound that like 10 times saying there is no way that they just did that.

 

Regardless of weather bicycle racing is hard and what skills it requires, these people are incredible sportsman. The handshake before the 1km sprint from those two guys in the breakaway, Jan and Tyler telling the field to wait after Lance went down. You don't see that shit in american sports, you just see overpaid overrated assholes make bigger assholes of themselves, and we pay to see it. No thanks.

[Fence_Sitter]

jon said:

You don't see that shit in american sports, you just see overpaid overrated assholes make bigger assholes of themselves, and we pay to see it. No thanks.

 

you forgot sniff cocaine and rape chicks... any sport that you can be one of the top 'athletes' and be a coke head, aint a sport... though i wonder what some PCP would do to lance on a bike... land speed record?

[Figger_Eight]

Watching pro sports is like watching the circus: a bunch of trained monkeys doing party tricks for an audience.

[Formaldehead]

Lance rules!! And these guys are the world's best athletes, IMHO. When Jan crashed during the final time trial, he bit it hard on the tar, slid for thirty feet into the hay bails, and the first thought on his mind was to GET BACK ON THE BIKE!! Tyler Hamilton rode the whole tour with a broken collar bone after crashing on the first day, and came in fourth. In the early mountain stages, he was in so much pain he couldn't climb out of the saddle. He even won a stage on a solo breakaway, only one of six Americans ever to win a stage.

 

I can't think of any other professional sport where the athletes subject themselves to such rigor and pain, day after day after day. They cry like sissys instead.

[Dan_Petersen]

Of course Armstrong isn't a real all American athlete. He doesn't even have a parole officer!

[iain]

[Fence_Sitter]

Dan_Petersen said:

Of course Armstrong isn't a real all American athlete. He doesn't even have a parole officer!

 

well he doesn't live here... so its debatable...