"But even if Armstrong wins a sixth, Hinault says he has no right to call himself the best ever."

Damn he's a genius.

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"your horse is too high" - tigerchik

Interesting. Lance is not the first to really put all his focus in the Tour. Indurain largely did that, peaking for July and before him Lemond peaked mainly for the Tour. Perhaps with a 6th Lance may still not be greater than Hinault and Merckx who won year round, but certainly greater than Indurain. Then again, like in most sports, when you compare the depth and quality of the field now vs the 80's or 70's it is very difficult for a champion in ANY sport today to dominate year round. Look at Tiger Woods or Serena Williams today vs the champions in their respective sports of yesteryear (such as Martina). So if Lance wins a 6th, I'd have to say he is the greatest ever. None of the other came back (in Hinault's own words) from having "one foot in the grave" to having a worldwide impact on cancer victims. This alone should qualify the guy as greatest TdF champion :-).

Sounds like the equivlent of a troll. Sounds like a jealous little kid and seems low class to me. Even if you think that, why can't you just say that there are a number of riders who could give him a run and it should be a great tour?

Lance has a life time of beating odds and I would bet on Lance any day

not to mention that armstrong seems pretty strong so far, and his team especially so. not sure where he gets the notion that he hasn't looked particularly good. excellent prologue and excellent ttt....

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f/k/a mclamb6

"Hinault was rude and made enemies easily" -Sam Posey, 2003 Tour de France telecast on OLN.

I love Hinault. He was a flamboyant and incindeary rider.

Doubting Armstrong, on the other hand, looks like a mistake at this point.

87% of CNN.com website viewers polled feel Armstrong will win the Tour de France.

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Tom Demerly
The Tri Shop.com

"So if Lance wins a 6th, I'd have to say he is the greatest ever."

Maybe you should have a look at Merckx's palmares again.

No doubt Lance is ONE of the best ever, but THE best is a whole other story.

You know how arrogant/cocky Americans paint the sterotype for others in the U.S.?

France gives us Benard Hinault. Who, by the way, the French did not particularly like in his heyday, from what I've read.

Isn't THE BEST a rather subjective matter? There are so many different kinds of races. How can one say that any particular rider is/was the THE BEST?

It's like comparing Michael Jordan to Kareem Abdul Jabar (the basketball player, not the football player). Totally different game.

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Steve Perkins

I think my point was in today's world of athletics, year round Merckx style dominance does not happen much anymore, but happened often in all sport in the 70's and 80's. I'm trying to say that perhaps (and only perhaps), the fields are more competitive across the board and it is much tougher for one genetically (both physcially and mentally) athlete to dominate year round, given the better training approaches that everyone in the peleton uses today. Perhaps Eddy's palmares would have not been as stacked if he raced in the late 90's early 2000's. Maybe they would. I don't know. This debate is pretty academic. Right now both Lance and Eddy have won 5 Tours and Eddy has won way more outside of the Tour. IF (and only IF) Lance wins a 6th does this debate really open up. Right now, he is clearly behind Eddy and Bernard. There is no debating that.

well isnt the tour de france the big one? if he wins a 6th, why cant he lay claim to being perhaps the best rider ever of the tour de france?

This from the guy who promised to help the team mate that helped Hinault win his 5th tour. How does he fulfill that promise, by attacking LeMond every chance he got. Then turning around and saying it was to only make LeMond tougher.

Crap. This sounds more like the same. He wants to stay in the record books as one of those who has won the most tours. Tell him to quit being such a crybaby.

And how hasn't Armstrong looked strong this year? Isn't he up almost a minute to Ullrich, and more to Heras.

I absolutely agree that comparing different time periods doesn's make much sense, because there are way to much variables involved (competition, preparation, etc.).

However, as you mentioned, there are so many different kinds of races; Eddy dominated all those races. Besides all the stage races, he won every single classic (except Paris-Tours ?). Besides that, in Belgium we're also a bit patriotic...

Hinault didn't really win five. He won four, then convinced LeMond to let him win the fifth with the promise he would support LeMond the year after (1986). Of course, in 1986 Hinault tried to double-cross LeMond but wasn't strong enough to pull that off. However, it did make for one of the best Tours ever. And remember how Herrera was all of a sudden interesting in working for Hinault, even though he was on another team? That last Tour hinault "won" was ugly.

Gerard.

Even Eddy Merck said things are much different now and that if he was racing now he would have to train like Lance and focus on key races like the Tour. Having said that I think Eddy is probably best ever, he won whenever he wanted to. Lance is a close second. I would think winning the tour now is harder than in decades past, more competition, more training knowledge and it was primarily a French only event in the past>before the 80's?

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I think he will be the best to ever ride in the tour. Ullrich is a close second. If it wasn't for Armstrong he would the champion everybody is shooting for. He's finished second five times and one it once. As far as Hinault is concerned he is saying that becasue he thinks that he was the greatest. I read somewhere that he even thought he was better than Mercx. Uhhh....no. Mercx was the "greatest" ever, but Lance is nipping at his heels. Lance needs to win the olympics this year if he can. He needs to win a classic or 2 next year, and maybe even do the Giro (and do well), then I think he will the greatest.

Remember, Hinualt won his fifth because Lemond let him. Lemond was clearly the stronger of the two. I miss the days of Claudio Chiapucci.

Dev,

Indurain did the Giro-Tour Double TWICE in the 90s. He also raced the Worlds every year that he won the Tour. He took a crack at the Hour Record as well. In short, he displayed more than a singular focus on the Tour.

It might be academic, but I don't think there is any doubt that it's more exciting to look at the palmares of Hinault/Merckx than that of Armstrong (a great rider in his own right).

Lemond did win the Worlds twice, finish 2nd, and finish 3rd. He consistently raced the spring classics and also raced the Giro (albeit slowly).

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Lemond didn't really win three. He won two, then his manager convinced the tour direction to let him use an aerobar. I still feel sorry for Fignon...

How many Olympic gold medals does Armstrong have?

How many Giro wins?

Giro - Tour doubles?

Vuelta wins?

Hour records?

To say that the level of competition that Indurain won against was worse than Armstrong is wrong, IMO. Vanquished foes competing in their primes included Zulle, Chiapucci, Rominger, Virenque, Bugno, Pantani, Jalabert, etc etc.

Then again... how many World Championships did Big Mig win?

Didn't Merckx win the Tour with a broken jaw one year, unable to eat?

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LeMond did win three. He won the one he "lost" to Hinault, won the two next ones then lost the one Fignon won. So it evens out for him. So if we rewrite history we have:

Lance 6

Indurain, Anquetil, Merckx 5

Hinault 4

Lemond, Fignon, Bobet 3

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Gerard Vroomen
3T.bike
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[reply]Then again... how many World Championships did Big Mig win? [/reply]

Olano's WC was a gift from Indurain. Racing under the same flag, Indurain sat up and refused to chase Olano down for the win lest he drag the chase pack with him.

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Merckx lost the year he broke his jaw - and got seriously kidney punched by a spectator - by around 3 minutes at the end of his career. He also sat out of the Tour one year since he felt people were tired of him winning it. The easy way to summarize his record is he never won Paris-Tours, everything else he did.

How many times has Lance finished the Tour wearing the yellow, green and polka dot jersey? Case closed.

With this logic, we may have to rewrite history again in two weeks (where Mayo would have won if he didn't lose 3 min in a crash):


Lance, Indurain, Anquetil, Merckx 5

Hinault 4

Lemond, Fignon, Bobet 3

Mayo 1

Didn't Beloki really win last year?

Funny, but I agree with him. 50-50 are damn good odds for one rider in the Tour, so much can happen. As far as the best ever crap, that's just a stupid discussion. Kinda like what is or isn't a sport or which sport is the best ever.

This way, we're of for a very long night...

Great point about Hinault and his last "win"...how soon people forget. Lance does look good, but I am not convinced...yet...that he has the physical ability to win. It is still 5 stages to the toughest days begin and his two key climbers--Rubiera and Beltran--have both had 2 hard crashes today which is good and bad. Good because they still have 5 stages to recover before the big mountains, but bad that if they don't fully recover. Furthermore, Lance's two biggest rivals Ullrich and Hamilton look very strong and may peak better than Lance post stage 10, if lance is not 100% he may have some major problems even if he is at his best ever. Ullrich is the master of peaking when it counts, he has proven this year and year out; he may have lacked something over the years in full year preparation, but he looks physically better than he ever has. One can only question his choice of rear wheels in the prologue and TTT.

Tyler appears to be approaching fantastic form. If he is 1 or 2 % better than last year, look out Lance. I still really like Lance though. However, the discussion about the Postie dominance in the TTT is a little bit overblown. All the other big team had serious problems that cost them time big time. Phonak had five flats and a broken handlebar that left them with only the minimum of 5 riders in the crucial last 10km or so when having a full team makes them go so much faster and they still finished second. T-Mobile has few flats/wheel changes that cost them dearly and of course the decision to not use discs which probably cost them a minute to a minute thirty. The Posties still probably would have won, but it would have been much closer.

Gerard do you do amateur sponsorships with your bikes, but with the P2K, Dual, or Soloist 105?

He (LeMond) was out for 2-3 years after his brother-in-law ( or whoever) damned near killed him, right at the peak of his career.

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_________________
Dick

Take everything I say with a grain of salt. I know nothing.

Yeah, good point! Why isn't LeMond the poster boy for hunting accident survivors?

Looks like the spot for poster boy of getting shot by your brother-in-law and surviving is wide open John. Want to go hunting?

Dave

...for not paying attention, and the bbc "journalist" an E for not saying that the quotes from Hinault were made in June. See http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...ring=hinault;#144037

If you read the whole article in the thread above you may look at Hinault comments a different way, may you not?

Isn't it dishonest from the bbc to mix recent results from the race with comments made before the Tour started without saying so?

A 50-50 chance of winning is HUGE! I'm a big Lance fan but I wouldn't give him those odds. Too many things can happen. The riders in this year's Tour have been falling like teenage girls for Brad Pitt. Sooner or later the odds catch up with you.

Anyway, I love Hinault. He's a beast. I love the beast in all of us. That's why we do this, no? To feed the BEAST!

-Robert

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"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world." ~Anne Frank

I agree 100%. 50-50 odds makes Lance a clear favorite. With all the things out of his control, even odds is pretty good.

interestingly, for Jalabert, the one that could really annoy Lance in a quest for 6 is Tyler...

Yeah, let me get some body armor first...

I didn't notice that about Hinault's comments coming in June. If that is the case, that is bad journalism. That should explain why he said he hasn't looked that good. Like some people have said, how could you say he hasn't looked good at this point of the tour? Has he had bad posture while he is off his bike? Maybe that's it. But I posted that article trusting it would be good since it came from the BBC. Guess not.

Looks like I opened up a big discussion that may never be solved with all the variables of some focusing on just the tour and some trying to win them all, Lemond getting hosed with pellets and Hinault, Armstrong beating cancer, Indurain being a freak of nature and Mercxcxcxc beating everything (boy does that sound bad?).

However, I'm of the belief that Mercxcxcxcxc (sp?) has to be the best. He was just unstoppable.

Merckx is the correct spelling and indeed, he was just the best ever...even according to Lance...

if Lance win 7 tours, he will be the greatest TdF rider, but the greatest rider ever remains Eddy Merckx...

To be TRULY great, Lance needs as good a nickname as "The Cannibal!!!" or even "The Badger"

It's all about nicknames baby: "The Man", "The Terminator", "The ZenMaster", "The Grip (of Death)", "Herman the German", "The Rocket", "Da Bull"

I don't see one coming.

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

I thought he was "The Unaballer"

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"What the mind can conceive and believe, the mind and body can achieve; and those who stay will be champions."

So this guy is waiting for a bus with a friend of his from work. The guy is obvisously uncomfortable, leaning on the Bus Stop sign, shifting his weight back and forth, twisting and turning. His friend ask him waht's wrong.

"I think I hurt my back over the weekend and it's really killing me."

"Why don't you go to a chiropractor?" his friend asks.

"They're all frauds and charlatans. They're not really doctors, they're not even licensed."

"Have it your way, but I see one every six weeks and I have no troubles," replies the friend.

Well, after a couple more days the guy finally relents and goes to the chiropractor. Friday morning he's happy, standing well and actually handing out flyers for the guy who fixed him up.

"I thought you said they were all frauds and charlatans," inquires his friend.

"I stand corrected"

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"What's your claim?" - Ben Gravy
"Your best work is the work you're excited about" - Rick Rubin

He does... Lance

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"You're guaranteed to miss 100% of the shots you never take." - Wayne Gretzky

Hinault is a troll, only because LeMond was told NOT TO ATTACK, did Hinault win his 5th.


Eddie even said that if he raced in todays world ($$$) he would do just as Lance and Big Mig and concentrate on the Big race.

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yeah.....hinault sucks, actually he won ONLY 4 tours, what he crappy rider... :-)

like when he won LBL by 9'24'' in the blizzard...

Yes, he was an arrogant prick, yet in 1985, he was the leader and was supposed to be so until the end...I didn't see anyone question the fact that Ullrich protected Riis in the TdF96 despite being stronger...

Hinault-Lemond 1985: +1'42''
Riis-Ullrich 1996: +1'41''

that's cycling...there is a team leader and it remains this way...imagine that next year, Discovery hires a young rider to work for Lance, and who happens to be stronger during the tour...Lance and rider X are 1-2 or 2-1...do you really believe Lance will not win?
yeah right...

In 1986, I do agree however that Hinault broke the agreement of 1985...yet, after the Pyrenees, Lemond was 4'25'' down, losing quite a bit on the first TT, and essentially due to tactics in the race...guys of other teams were supposed to chase and didn't and therefore Lemond could not counter attack.

Then Lemond destroyed hinault in the first Alpe stage, closing to 40''...but still lost on the second TT...

that reaction of Hinault is exactly why he was a great champion, because he wanted to win so badly...

Uniballer...yup thats what Robin Williams calls him