Posted on 07/26/2002 7:25:25 PM PDT by jern
"Great feat, but not a great athlete Armstrong winning Tour impressive, but it’s not athletic
COMMENTARY
July 24 — Someone postulated on National Public Radio a week or so ago that Lance Armstrong was the greatest athlete in the world. Greatest athlete in the world? I wonder if he’s an athlete at all.
CERTAINLY ARMSTRONG IS A HELL of a bike rider, but does that make him superior to Michael Jordan, Barry Bonds, Jerry Rice or Marion Jones? Does it make him a better athlete than the Williams sisters? Does the ability to sit on a skinny bicycle seat for hours on end and pump your legs like a madman make you a great athlete or merely a guy who does better without training wheels than most people?
If Armstrong is a great athlete, so are marathon runners. Athletes, for my money, must do more with their bodies than pump their legs up and down. If that’s all it took, the Radio City Rockettes would have to be considered the greatest athletes of all time.
It seems inevitable that Armstrong is going to win the Tour de France on Sunday for the fourth straight time, barring any unforeseen bicycle accidents. This is a great feat in his sport, so good for him, but who really cares?
For the past two weeks, there have been regular reports about how the Texas-bred cancer survivor was going to catch the field of mostly foreign bike pedalers after they entered the Alps and beat them down the other side to the Champs-Elysse and under the Eiffel Tower.
A few skinny men and women seem quite excited about this prospect, although Armstrong has done it with the kind of regularity that has made more than a few advocates of this fringe sport wonder if he’s pedaling on premium fuel while his competitors are (mostly) using regular.
Whatever Armstrong is doing, most of the sporting world couldn’t care less. Newspapers annually kill a few trees to print stories about this race, and occasionally it is mentioned on network news with the required picture of a bunch of bikes bunched together and one guy wearing an ugly yellow shirt. After that, they move on to curling news.
ESPN SportsCenter updates us daily on Armstrong’s whereabouts because that is what they do. They also had a special last week on a dog competition that involved running through tiny gates and jumping over small fences. Draw your own conclusions.
That a man can race around France on a bicycle and live to tell about it is a noble feat, although I’d think more of it if he actually was using his feet. It would be more of a feat if he was forced to dine on French cuisine each night too and then lug those heavy sauces around with him the next morning. After a week of that it would be the Bus Tour de France because everyone’s bicycle seats would be broken.
Armstrong’s task is most certainly a difficult one, but so is the world lumberjack contest, and no one goes on National Public Radio and argues the winner is the best athlete in the world. He’s just a guy who operates an axe better than the rest of us.
I would argue the same is true of Armstrong. He can pedal a bike better than anyone. He probably didn’t even need training wheels. But could he do it if someone was playing defense?
How fast is he when they take the bike away? Is he as fast as Marion Jones? Is he as fast as Chipper Jones?
For my money, being the greatest athlete in the world involves strength, speed, agility, hand-eye coordination, mental toughness and the ability to make your body do things that defy description. Chief among them is not pumping your legs up and down while your feet are strapped to bicycle pedals.
Do not misunderstand me. Lance Armstrong’s feat of winning the Tour de France, if he indeed does it for the fourth time, is deserving of praise and recognition.
If you want, you can even argue that it is a great sporting feat. After all, there are people out there who actually think golf is an athletic endeavor, although I feel if it is, so is pool. In recent years, a minority of media members in America have tried desperately to convince us that fringe sports such as cycling must be given their due. It is a passion of theirs to try and convince the rest of us American sports fanatics that the less we see of something the better it really is.
Fine for them. Just don’t be trying to give away the title of world’s greatest athlete to a skinny guy from Texas who sits on a bicycle seat for nine hours a day careening through the mountains, tall though those mountains might be.
Praise Armstrong’s grit, his determination and his cardio-vascular system. But don’t try to convince me he’s the world’s greatest athlete. First try to convince me he’s an athlete at all."
Yeah....but wait until we go uphill.
Carrying 5 passengers....
Beach Boys on the Tenna Ranger 8-Track
Nice try at trolling though.
You're the only one I caught.
Guess I'm not very good at it.
This is an excellent description of the talents needed of a pro cyclist.
Oh yeah, this has the markings of a great put-down, as in:
If you look closely, you can still see the scars on Bill Clinton's neck where he was circumsized.
Or,
Are those circumcision scars on Carville's neck?
This guy has not a freaking clue! Not a one of those "athletes" he mentioned would be capable of performing at the level Lance does in the tour. Do you for a minute think it would be possible for Jordan to play at playoff level, 6 - 8 hours a day for 23 - 25 days straight? How about the William's sisters playing 6 -8 hours of Wimbeldon finals for 25 days. It's not possible for them to do it.
Someone please smack this author upside of the head with a good frame pump!
Semper Fi!
I guess you gotta be Black to be a great athelete in some people's mind? How about throwing in a decathlon champion, a Greg Maddox (arguably as "good" an athlete as Barry Bonds) or a Doug Flutie?
I barely got started reading the article before I decided the same thing. These Demo Psycological Warefare types come in all shapes and sizes, but they talk and write as if they were stamped out by cookie cutter. These radically malignant liberals may hide in the shadows of the liberal press, but they can't cover their stench - even with ammonia.
To find the reason, all one must do is go to your average university and sit through a journalism class. A few years back, I attended a psylogical warefare class in the military. The course primarily dealt with the techneques used by the Soviets, but they clearly apply to the world press, which is controlled by a few - but controls all.
Athelete:1. one who takes part in competitve sports 2. A person possessiing the natural prequisites for sports ccompetition, as strength, agility, and endurance.
Lance meets this criteria in the best way ...
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