A couple of quick thoughts to the interesting replies on here before I run out the door to do the Skirtchaser 5k, watch out Bryan Dunn, I'm serious this year!
-To compare cyclists from different generartions is similar to comparing golfers, football players, or athletes in any sport from different time periods. It's nearly impossible to do. Look at tennis, Federer would have won double as many majors had Nadal not come along, and Nadal a few more if not for Federer... They are two of the best ever, and their careers heavily over-lapped. Lots of factors go into what your eventual "palmares" are, and many of them don't have anything to do with how good you were. Had Lance not come along, or decided to keep playing golf insead of coming back to racing after cancer, Ullrich may have won six or possibly more Tours de France, making him the greatest ever, right? I don't think so, there's so much grey that it makes for a good discussion but there is no RIGHT answer. (Although, I feel like I've seen a few wrong answers on here...)
-It's easy to look at somebody's power file and conclude that somebody is or isn't a "Pro Tour" caliber rider. Some people are more efficient than others, more aero, have better economy, there are a lot of factors that dictate how good somebody is or can be. I'm telling you, Lieto is a Pro-Tour rider, he would not be last in the Tour De France. When he raced a couple of multi-day pro US stage races a few years back a few friends I have who've raced pro tour, were taunting me with text messages like,"Dude, this guy is better than you ever were on a bike, how do you expect to beat him in a TRIATHLON?" These guys know what they're talking about. He's got the watts, he's got the cadence, he's got the body, and he has acceleration and other factors that many top cycling triathletes don't have. Also, interestingly, he has the position too! Lieto sits nearly 5cm behind the bottom bracket on his TT bike. Many of the top triathlon cyclists would struggle to still ride their fast TT's when they would have to move their seats back 4-7cm's to comply with UCI regs. Just something to think about. Look at Bjorne, dude's a monster on the bike in triathlon, comparable to Lieto and perhaps just a little less consistent. Bjorne time trials as well as many Pro Tour guys, but look at his size, he would not make it up the hills if he had to race a full pro cycling schedule. He also pushes WAY too big a gear to ever respond to accelerations all day. Lieto would climb well, and he has proven that he can. He also has the nice fast cadence required to cycle at a high level. In no way would he ever beat Lance or is he comparable to some super-domestique you may find, after all, there is only one Jens Voight.
-In any top level activity the differences between the good guys and the great, are very small. Most of us realize this. A 3:50 400 meter long-course swim probably won't make the Olympic Team for an American this time around, but 3:50 is pretty darn good and if you put that guy in the open water with Thorpe or Hackett, over 2.4 miles, or 1.2 miles, or whatever, I wouldn't think there would be a distinguishable difference in how well they swim or who puts a gap into whom. Yes, 3:50 isn't fast enough to make the final heat of the Olympic Games, but it's right up there, and it's easily good enough to compete with anybody in open water conditions. I don't know what Potts has done a 400 in, but I would bet you he could probably sit on this guy's feet if he started with him. That's how I view Lieto in comparison to Lance. Nowhere near, yet surprisingly close. Comparing an individual sport athlete to a triathlete is hard to do. If two runners both run a 5k, one goes 14:00, the other 14:30, it's easy to conclude the 14:00 guy is going to SMOKE the 14:30 dude on the tri-run every time, right? Well I can tell you it doesn't always work like this, so many other factors come into play that can change the outcome, many of them are unknowns. Of course if their ability is significantly different then you can draw more reasonable conclusions, but I don't think Lieto and Lance at this point in their lives are hugely different on the bike in a triathlon format.
-It's easy to look back at old Lance footage and go,"wow, look how fast he was when he was younger, can he do it again?" C'mon, the kid was 16 years old! He lived with his mom, didn't have any money or much support, and he was kicking the snot out of The Legends of our sport, sometimes not just on the bike... Also, if you watch those old races he was nowhere near the cyclist he became, he was just a big strong kid. When he first made waves as a cyclist, he lost his first couple attempts in the Tour Du Pont (America's big stage race at the time, 10-12 days i think) due mainly to his weak time trials. Compared to Erik Breukink, or Raul Alcala, or Ekimov, (I think those were the three guys who beat him in three different years) he really looked terrible in the TT's. I remember once going into the final TT the race was tight, and Alcala caught Lance for a minute, flatted, got passed by Lance, got a new wheel, then re-passed Lance again, it was hard to watch for a US Lance fan. A year later in the '94 Tour de France, Indurain catches Lance for two minutes in the first TT and puts another 3-4 minutes into him, so we're talking six minutes over 39 miles maybe? Yeah, it's a lot, Lance was not a good TTer when he quit tris for cycling, yet as a triathlete he was smoking Pigg, Allen, Molina, and everyone else on the bike. His TT'ing improved and in '96 he was going very well, beating Rominger in the time trails in the Tour Du Pont and placing well in the Tour De France prologue and the Olympic Games, with cancer.... '99 and back racing, ok, his time trialing became incredible, lots of factors went into this, but I would say now he's still certainly WAAAYYYYY better than he ever was pre-pro-cycling and back then he was crushing everybody in triathlon...
-I raced an event a couple of years back in Northern California. It was unique, in that you rode a 40k in the morning and then in the afternoon you did a swim/run/swim/run starting based on your 40k time. So the guy who won the 40k would start in the afternoon first, followed 20 seconds later by the person who finished the 40k 20 seconds back, and so on. A pretty cool idea... It was in San Jose. The 40k was accurately measured, and I figured I would do well, but also lining up were Lieto, David Thompson, Chris Foster, Clayton Fettel, and quite a few other good guys. The 40k had one decent hill on the course, maybe 1.5 miles long, the rest was a flat and fast loop course. I split 52:00 low and David Thompson rode almost exactly the same time, within a second or two, and we were second and third. Lieto went 49 and beat us by 3 minutes! Nobody could believe it. Fettell I think went 55, Foster maybe 54, these guys are TOP triathletes.... After this race I realized Lieto is a cyclist who does triathlon, and not the other way around. He also started this sport very late, had he started triathlon as a 15 year old, instead of 25 or 26, I bet you he would have quickly ended up in cycling, like Lance. Would he have been as successful? No, but he would have done very well...
Now I have to go run a 5k, it seemed like a good idea when I signed up earlier in the week! Really hoping Simon Whitfield doesn't show up, or Gomez, or Brownlee, or Brownlee, or anyone too fast....
