LANCE WINS 7TH

woohoo he did it again he beat cancer and he won 7 tours un freigin real

Net yet Raggie, although it looks very good. One more day left although the ride in should be a formality.

Yep - 1 more day, but the last day is USUALLY a formality except for some sprint points.

I was watching the stage today, the end of an era. Good to see that Lance is honest with himself and is leaving on top, the way it should be.
It would be interesting to see him join the International Human Powered Vehicle Association to set some speed records. The IHPVA allows any human powered vehicle to compete...the speeds hit up to 90MPH so let's get his butt in a streamliner that stands a meter tall and set some records.
I wonder what his plans are now that he is retiring? Quick! Someone send him a Surefire U2 and invite him to the CPF! /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/yellowlaugh.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/stupid.gif

Darn, I have to work on Saturdays, so I missed it today. I'll get the replays tonight on OLN, though.

The fear and pressure of a crash must be tremendous at this point (probably has been most of this past week). I hope some crazed anti-Lance wacko doesn't decide to jump in front of him or anything.

[ QUOTE ]
geepondy said:
Net yet Raggie, although it looks very good. One more day left although the ride in should be a formality.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep, this baby's OVER! Lance has proven himself the greatest bicyclist of all time. Not just seven Tours, but seven straight!

YAY! Hope that it really IS "over".

I don't follow the Tour at all, but always greatly admired him.

man if some crazed fan does go after him ill be on my way to france /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gifid be so pissed

I won't call him the greatest rider ever - He is a "one trick pony" and It's only since Lemond that we have riders who concentrate on "the tour" only

I'd still call Merckx the best - he rode (and won) the Giro, the Vuelta, and raced in the spring classics (and won those too) - the list I have below doesn't include his winter indoor racing (6 day bike racing) (he won a total of 455 races)

5 times Tour de France winner (1969-72, 1974) and 35 stage wins. Wore yellow jersey for a record 96 days.

5 times Giro d'Italia winner (1968, 1970, 1972-74) and 25 stage wins.

Vuelta a Espana winner (1973)

World Champion (1967,1971,1974)

Hour record (49.431 km, 1972-84)

3 times Paris-Nice winner (1969-71)

Tour of Switzerland (1974)

7 times Milan-San Remo winner (1966-67, 1969, 1971-72, 1975-76)

Tour of Flanders (1969,1975)

Paris-Roubaix (1968, 1970, 1973)

Liege-Bastogne-Liege (1969, 1971-73, 1975)

Amstel Gold Race (1973,1975)

Tour of Lombardy (1971-72)

Het Volk (1971,1973)

Ghent-Wevelgem (1967, 1969-70, 1973)

Fleche-Wallonne (1967, 1970, 1972, 1975)

Paris-Brussels (1973)

Henninger Turm (1971)

Grand Prix des Nations (1973)

one trick pony? Lance will indeed find that funny even if most of us missed the joke. I guess to be fair you should have called him a SEVEN TIME one trick pony that beat Cancer
Topper

I know a lot of people especially those who were around at the time, think Merckx was the best. I don't like the "team" aspect of the Tour where you depend on your teammates to hold off challengers. I much prefer the time trials like today. Man I would love to do a time trial like they did today. 34.5 miles. Hmmm...if I practiced and really got into it like a few years ago, I might be able to do it in two hours!

[ QUOTE ]
KC2IXE said:
I won't call him the greatest rider ever - He is a "one trick pony" and It's only since Lemond that we have riders who concentrate on "the tour" only

I'd still call Merckx the best - he rode (and won) the Giro, the Vuelta, and raced in the spring classics (and won those too) - the list I have below doesn't include his winter indoor racing (6 day bike racing) (he won a total of 455 races)

5 times Tour de France winner (1969-72, 1974) and 35 stage wins. Wore yellow jersey for a record 96 days.

5 times Giro d'Italia winner (1968, 1970, 1972-74) and 25 stage wins.

Vuelta a Espana winner (1973)

World Champion (1967,1971,1974)

Hour record (49.431 km, 1972-84)

3 times Paris-Nice winner (1969-71)

Tour of Switzerland (1974)

7 times Milan-San Remo winner (1966-67, 1969, 1971-72, 1975-76)

Tour of Flanders (1969,1975)

Paris-Roubaix (1968, 1970, 1973)

Liege-Bastogne-Liege (1969, 1971-73, 1975)

Amstel Gold Race (1973,1975)

Tour of Lombardy (1971-72)

Het Volk (1971,1973)

Ghent-Wevelgem (1967, 1969-70, 1973)

Fleche-Wallonne (1967, 1970, 1972, 1975)

Paris-Brussels (1973)

Henninger Turm (1971)

Grand Prix des Nations (1973)

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, a 7 time one trick pony - I'll put him as #2, right after Merckx.

(edit to add http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8661431/ which sums up what I feel fairly well)

Remember, it takes a different riding "style" to win a Tour (any of the big 3 tours - of which you see Merckx won 13) than it does, say, the spring classics.

The BIGGEST change the occured in cycling (which changed about 18-20 years ago) is we now have a class of riders (Lance is among them) which specialize in ONE race - in this case, the TdF (as it's known in the cycling world). Riders train to peak for that one event. This is why I do NOT put Indurain up with the other 5 time TdF winners. BTW the reson for this change was MONEY - back pre approx 1980, it was NOT possible for a rider to make a living just winning the TdF, the saleries and sponserships were not there. So you rode every race you could, to make a living

A way to ask the question of "Is Lance the Greatest rider of all time?" would be to say, put it in American terms

Let's say you had a racer, who won the Indy 500 7 times, but won nothing else

Then you have a guy who won the Indy 500 5 times, the Dayton 500 5 times, LeMans a couple of times, Won the Monnico GP, plus won, oh, the Fall, Spring and Summer Nats in Drag racing, plus won a few hundered dirt track races in the "off season"

Who is the better race car driver?

The first is OBVIOUSLY the better Indy Racer, but overall?

I give Lance his due - I've been following his racing since before he won his first Triathon as a Jr in Texas. The USCF head of Youth development at that time owned the local bike shop around here, and I was one of the guys who used to hang out, so I heard about Lance before he had a name. (Al passed on in about 1988 give or take a year or two)

Back before I got married and fat, I used to seriously follow bike racing, and actually did a lot of semi-serious riding (never was good enough to race, but good enough to go on club rides and USUALLY not get dropped)

BTW to look at Merckx - let's just look at MAJOR wins in 2 years

1972
TdF (Tour De France)
Giro (Tour of Italy - the 2nd of the big 3 tours)
Hour Record (considered the test of how fast a rider you are)
Milan-San Remo
Tour of Lombardy
Fleche-Wallone

1973
Giro (tour of italy again)
Vuelta (Tour of Spain the 3rd of the Big 3)
Hour Record (again)
Paris-Roubaix (Probably the nastiest of the spring classics - "the hell of the North")
Liege-Bastogne-Liege (one of the HUGE one day races)
Het Volk
Ghent-Wevelgem
Paris-Brussels
Grand Prix des Nations

Uh, you left out the Cancer. I do not follow this kind of "sports" so my bad for not haveing a clue as who your
#1 Merckx is, did he beat Cancer? Did he race in that France thing the last seven times? I honestly do not know. As a dummy I see the news paper at least 4 days a week I know alot about Lance cuz he is in the paper. If someone asked me about Merckx I would say "beats me an asteroid heading for earth?" please forgive my ignorance on this
I was not intending to offend you.
Topper

I'm sure the French are especially pissed off because they changed the course so the areas where Lance is especially strong (in the hills and mountains) were reduced, in a low life attempt to get a another winner; preferably a French one, of course. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/mad.gif

I don't have anything aginst the French inparticular, but that's about as low as you can get, IMHO.

I'm glad Lance wiped their face in it, despite the French changing the course.

I hope he makes a ton of money on endorsements; he's earned it /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

I heard a reporter told Lance that he was the best cyclist of all time, better than Eddy Merckx. His response was he did not want to be compared to Merckx.

If I won the TDF 7 times I would not want to be compared to Eddy either! When it comes down to total wins of all the races in cycling, Eddy has no competition. The total is mind boggling and when you see a picture of Eddy's toothpick legs... he won on sheer will and heart.

One thing you have to remember it was a different time. Back then, it was about cycling and the equipment was much more even across the board. No carbon fiber, no computer models matching the bike to the rider... no clipless pedals and no ECGs transmitting to a chase vehicle. No special diets, no performance enhancing "vitamins", no teams of doctors, no aerodynamics.... just the pure heart and will of the racers... and not much money to go around. Truely a different era.

As far as top speed records go, that is a different class. DuPont offered a prize for the first person to go over 65MPH in the flying mile. Years past and "Fast Freddie Markham" took the prize on a aero Gold Rush recumbent. That record fell and is now around 77 to 80MPH with peak speeds in the high 80's. Should Fast Freddie be listed as one of the greatest cyclists of all time? No, it is one race, one contest of pure speed with a lot of technology to get him there. Besides, recumbents are banned in international bicycle racing as they are not "legally bicycles" (Hence the formation of the International Human Powered Vehicle Association to push advancing technology in bicycling and ignore the UCI/USCF politics)

Cycling is much bigger than the Tour, there is moutain biking, ice biking, unicycling, mountain unicycling (believe it!) trials, cyclocross, recumbent racing, open class streamliner recumbent racing, BMX, freestyle, race across America (RAAM), downhill mountain racing and trick riding.

To me, Eddy is #1 because he won the most races, set the most records in his time and did it with very basic technology and very little money. The world advances and all sports are money/technology driven. Lance is the best cyclist of our generation but not of all time.

Eddy is like Hank Aaron and Lance is Sammy Sosa. Even Lance acknowledges that Eddy Merckx is a cycling legend.

The thing to watch is what Lance will do now, take up mountain biking, set a world speed record on streamlined recumbents or (just to be crazy) take up mountain unicycling?

Don't worry Topper, most people outside of cycling don't know who Eddy Merckx is. I bet KC2IXE did not know who Fast Freddie Markham was either (and why would he unless he rides recumbents) Then there is Ned Overend that won many national/international mountain biking championships even past the age of 40!

To Lance, the best TDF rider of all time !


/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/happy14.gif

Yep = I'd heard of fast Freddie, as I've follwed, but not ridden recumbants

As for best TdF rider - that is clear - Lance.

As for best RIDER - It's Merckx (imho). Yes, it's amazing that Lance did this post cancer, and that makes the 7 TdFs even MORE amazing.

As for changing the course to make it harder for Lance to win. That's NORMAL!!! Every year, the course is determined, as is deliberately setup to make the course HARDER for the previous winner. Went on "Pre Lance", and will go on "post Lance" (along with bids from the towns for the right to host the race)

As I said - you can argue who is the best. The TdF is by far the hardest race, but you have to look at Merckx's OTHER wins too (BTW Merckx isn't French - he's a Belgian) Even just looking at the TdF, there are things that Merckx did there that Armstrong never did. The BIGGEST being winning the Polkadot (climber), Green (sprinter's points) and Yellow (overall GC leader) in ONE YEAR. Which basically meant he was on the FRONT of the race the WHOLE way - no sitting in the Peleton - if there was a breakaway, he was in it. The flat sprint stages? He won those. The mountain stages - yep, those too. Common tactics in the race (even in the Merckx era) was that you stay close to your rivals in the flats, gain a lead where you are strong, and then try to hold the lead - if guys who have no chance for the overal GC win are outfront, you ignore them - they are no threat to your yellow. Merckx didn't DO that - he was out to win EVERY stage. I doubt we will EVER see a rider like that again, even if the rider could do it!!! The thing is that the money and sponserships have changed the sport

There is always a hater in every crowd.

Shane

KC2IXE,
You have heard of Fast Freddie? Checking out what the IHPVA is up to is always very interesting, screaming streamliners hitting crazy speeds.

To me, the best cyclists are not road riders...they are those lunatics that do those 24 hour mountain bike races. And then those Iditabike racers that ride hundreds of miles in Alaska... in the winter. Pure hellish conditions on wheels... better them than me!

Lance rides mountain bikes also, it would not surpise me to see him hitting the dirt next year. For now, he is in Paris chasing an Australian as the rain has started. Ooooops, three Discovery riders went down and Lance got delayed a bit. Now he had to put the hammer down to get back in it. I guess one of them forgot to not ride on white paint in the rain.

Bottom line in my opinion is this. Putting his vast Cycling talents aside, what Lance Armstrong has done transcends the sport of Cycling. He has become a household name the World over. And when all is said and done, I feel that the Lance Armstrong Foundation will be his true lasting legacy.

Hate? Not at all. Putting him in the #2 spot, and calling him the best TdF rider in history isn't hate - I'd call that respect.

It's just that he has been a one dimentional rider - he rides the TdF - and was, and is, the greatest there

I'm just saying that there is a LOT more to the sport of cycling than the TdF, and to judge a rider on that alone is a mistake.

Now, can you make an argument that he is the best? Yes, without a doubt. I just put him #2, and Merckx as #1.

This is like arguing who the greatest race car diver, or the greatest baseball player ever. How do you compare a pitcher vs a hitter? How do you compare, say Hank Arron vs Pete Rose? Or either of them vs, say Cy Young?

Among cycling fans, the Argument of Armstrong Vs Merckx is very much like one of the classic arguments you would see between people in the US re Baseball greats.

Now for a more fun argument - Who's going to win NEXT year? It would be ironic if Jan Ullrich won - it would prove to him that he really WAS 2nd best all these years Backstory for those in the US who don't follow cycling all that much. Ullrich won the year before Lance, and really has felt that he was the better rider, but that the postal team made the difference.

Anyway, congrats to Lance Armstrong on his 7th TdF - the best TdF rider in history, and arguably the best Rider in history