Lance Armstrong takes his 7th TDF

[Twilight Error]

Originally Posted by Vance

I bet I can benchpress more than him.

(just kidding you cancer kicking fuck. Good on ya.)

The only time my fat ass was ever in shape was when I rode a road bike daily. That sport kicks your ass and grinds your balls.

But get him on a leg press machine and he'd be at it long after your legs stopped working.


Even in the best shape I've ever been in, my RHR is 20BPM higher than his.

[wxwax]

Originally Posted by Vance

I bet I can benchpress more than him.

They deliberately take down their upper body weight. They change their physiques to reduce weight as much as possible without sacrificing lower body strength. Very interesting.

[topes]

Lance by a landslide By Robert Lipsyte
Special to Page 2



It's all about the pain.



His mother was 17 when he was born, and his biological father left two years later. A step-father whipped him. Too small for football and too poor for the in-group in Plano, Texas, he discovered early that he could smother psychic pain with the real pain of long-distance swimming, running, cycling. That pain was self-inflicted yet comforting because he controlled it. Of them all, cycling was the best because "a bike is freedom to roam, without rules and without adults." Lance Armstrong created his own monster out of his humilation, his fears, and his pain, as well as a heart almost a third larger than average, a resting pulse of 32 beats a minute that can accelerate beyond 200, and lungs that can consume record amounts of oxygen. From such materials he created, in my mind and in a majority of yours, the greatest athlete of our time.

Along with soccer's Mia Hamm, Armstrong won Page 2's readers poll as the world's ultimate athlete. He did it convincingly, getting 70 percent of the 130,000 votes cast in his final matchup against Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick. On his way to the finals, Armstrong beat Barry Bonds, world decathlon champ Tom Pappas, triathlete Tim DeBoom, tennis star Roger Federer and wrestler Rezadadeh Hossein.

But before we get carried away, let's demystify this superhero. Lance is a hardcase, rational and blunt, so he should appreciate some straight talk. For all his superb conditioning and mental toughness, he wouldn't last a minute in the big leagues of any stick-and-ball sport; he never perfected those skills. Bo knows, he is no "all-'round" athlete. He just does one thing, something that shreds your body, your mind and your emotions for hours at a time for days on end, and he does it better than anyone else on Earth.

He is no iconic lone rider, an individual in a SportsWorld of team-members. Lance gets more protection than Michael Vick. He has "domestiques," as cycling's offensive linemen are called, blocking for him, screening wind for him, chasing down rivals and fetching food, water and jackets. He has a tactician in his earpiece and doctors analyzing the information being transmitted from his body. He's no robot; he has a lot to keep track of while he pumps uphill and tries to avoid crashing into kids, dogs, other bikers.

Also, Lance gets too much credit for "beating" cancer. Medical science did that. He beat something considerably tougher, the brutal treatment for his cancer and the tendency to become a victim who'll take the easy pass. He became a survivor and more -- he built on that pain, too.

In 1999, when he won the Tour de France, probably the most demanding major sports event in the world, his victory was described as one of the greatest comebacks in sports history. But it was far more than that, because he had never won it before. He was not "coming back" to where he had once been; at 25, he was a world-class rider but had simply never fulfilled his potential. He was said to be uncoachable, lacking in discipline. He was brash and raced disrespectfully. His character was in question; he failed to finish most of the Tours de France he'd entered. He needed cancer to find out just how tough he really was.

He told me once that he had approached cancer the way he approached a race.

"Get in shape," he said. "Find out as much as you can; be motivated by small results. The lesion shrinking a little gave me the same kind of encouragement to keep going that I would get when my uphill times got slightly faster."

By the time he told me that, he had won three in a row and become the first real hero I have ever had in sports. We had a connection. He had received his diagnosis of testicular cancer five years after my third operation for the same disease. Fittingly for the difference in our athletic ability and physical conditioning, his was a far more dangerous type of tumor in a far more advanced state than mine. His cancer had reached his brain. As cancers go, testicular has become "carcinoma lite," thanks to effective chemotherapy drugs. But the surgery and the chemo can be debilitating. Remembering how wasted and often discouraged I felt through two years of treatment, I can barely imagine how he trucked on through far more invasive surgeries and more toxic drugs. I only had to crawl back to my computer; he had to climb up on his bike.



We did share a positive side effect -- an intensification of focus and an appreciation of our own capacity for endurance. I wrote harder and faster, concentrating on what felt important to me, confident that I could finish the course. Armstrong rode harder and faster, concentrating on training for the long races, especially the three-week, 2,142-mile Tour. His old team had dropped him, but he never lost faith in himself, which can be magnetic. Doctors, nurses, friends and coaches rallied to him, giving and gaining energy.



He returned to the races in 1997, and established a foundation for cancer education and research. It's about the most inspiring and hands-on charitable work I've ever seen accomplished by an active athlete. Several years ago, he invited me to moderate a panel on athletes and cancer that his foundation was sponsoring at Stanford University. I was reluctant to accept. The skeptical sportswriter part of me wondered if he was using the event to promote himself. The sentimental fan part was afraid he would turn out to be yet another pampered jock brat. I had an emotional investment in my fantasy.

When he won his first Tour in 1999, I ran out and bought my first bicycle since childhood. Cycling became my basic work-out. On hills seemingly too steep for my bursting lungs and screaming thighs, I would yell, "Lance Armstrong! Lance Armstrong!" and invariably get to the top. I didn't want to risk losing that magic by meeting the real Lance Armstrong. Well, I'm still riding and yelling "Lance Armstrong!" Maybe even louder. He turned out to be smart, tough-minded without being arrogant, friendly without being fawning, and refreshingly unsentimental about cancer. When someone in the audience asked him how his belief in God had helped him as a patient, he replied with a bracing directness: "Everyone should believe in something, and I believed in surgery, chemotherapy and my doctors." Don't expect Armstrong to dismount and become a politician.

I sometimes wonder what's going to happen to him after he does dismount. He's 32. World's greatest athlete is no permanent title. The almost supernatural alchemy of turning pain into athletic energy requires a focus that can shut off the normal give-and-take of emotional relationships. He recently divorced the mother of his children. As psychic pain resurfaces, what will he do to smother it when he isn't inflicting physical pain on himself? Beyond winning, will suffering be the only thing?

That's up the road.

Source

[wxwax]

He beat wrestler Rezadadeh Hossein?

[Gummee!]

Originally Posted by sandgroper

As far as I'm concerned Lance is the TDF and it will be strange watching it next year without him
ed

That's what I said about LeMond and then Indurain.
M

[CGH]

Originally Posted by Dingo Joe

Lance's speech on th podium sucked!...

Tell you what ... you go ride a bicycle 3,000+ km in 21 days and then see if you can string together one coherant sentence

[Gummee!]

Originally Posted by Twilight Error

But get him on a leg press machine and he'd be at it long after your legs stopped working.


Even in the best shape I've ever been in, my RHR is 20BPM higher than his.

My resting HR's actually lower by a few BPM, but my max is WAY lower than his... I haven't seen the high side of 181, LA goes over 200 BPM regularly!

M

[kdog]

Originally Posted by mehigh

Not a hater, just saying that the only thing he really trainned for is the TDF, he could've been very good in other stuff, but didn't try/care. He was only once world champion in 1993. he's good no daout, in what he did, win the TDF 7 times, is amaizing, and will probably never be repeated, but still he's not the world's best cyclist. this prety much says why
http://www.abc.net.au/sport/content/200407/s1162272.htm

Bear in mind that article was written a full year ago when Lance had only 6 TDF wins. Now he has 7, something nobody before him has ever done. So by what metrics do you decide who was the best cyclist in history? That's a pretty subjective call. The TDF is the crown jewel of bicycle races, and Lance is the king of the TDF. During the individual time trial (stage 20), Lance showed who was the strongest rider in the world -- team or no team.

While it's absolutely true that Lance's focus for the past seven years has been on training for the TDF, it's not like he's been non-participant in other events. He's participated in and won plenty of other races. Check out his career highlights here: http://www.lancearmstrong.com/about_career.htm

I guess the greatest cyclist in history is whoever you want it to be. If you think Eddy Merckx is the greatest, that's cool. All these guys are gods. There's probably some guy out there in the handicap olympics that's done equally impressive feats given their limitations.