Guy is a myoptic moron! His facts are all flawed. However.....I guess the logic works for fans of real sports.....you know like fut bawl and rastlin' an' such. Don't give the idot any credit. It's not deserved.

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Ya just had ta get us started, didn't ya Eric. Tanks a million.

That guy is so far off in his decription of me as a cyclist. I'm conservative and voted for....well, it doesn't matter here. I drink beer....lots of it. I eat red meat....lots of it. I don't sluff a 75 miler in order to study macrobiotics, I study the backs of my alcohol-dehydrated eyelids. Until recently I drove a big rig that would make any redneck jealous.

I have to say, I'm really getting tired of the lame excuse for hating cycling being that "Hey, its not that hard to pedal a bike around. Anyone could do it. Hell, with a little training I could be nearly that good." Where in the hell do these folks come up with this ASSinine theory? I'll bet this guy was the one who crashed falling over on their Huffy right out of the gate at a BMX meet and blamed the kid next to them with the shiny new RACE INC. hot rod BMX bike that won the heat. And what about the "has to have a ball" theory. Ok, I guess swimming is out. I guess skiiing of all sorts is out. I guess track and field is out except for maybe the shot put and hammer folks, but even those are a stretch. I guess speed skating is out. I guess wrestling is out. Yeah, I'm pretty sure these self-effacing morons are wrong. It must suck to live in such a small world.

A lot of people in our society believe that the only real sports have balls, sticks and teams and can be watched every Sunday on TV with a six pack.

This must be mid west sports reporter's feeble attempt at humor, at least I hope so. If this guy is serious it's almost enough to make you want to move to France.

my guess is that it is either a (poor) attempt at humor or something he does not really believes but these columnists probably start to know that once someone says something bad about cycling, triathlon etc,... the word spreads, the columns get read and these "journalists" keep their jobs...
because, truly, they wouldn't otherwise :-)

it's not even well written...

But it is funny....

I've gotta agree with Francois. Anyone who remembers last year's antagonists knows that the press they got for writing those articles was phenomenal. It was in Velonews and darn near every other cycling magazine imaginable. It always comes down to the bottom line. How many people would spread the word about this guy if he wrote yet another Armstrong praise article. As it is, he chooses a few stupid things to say--maybe he believes em, maybe he doesn't--and bam! It's posted here (thanks to me :) ), it's posted on my board, and I don't doubt it's posted a million other places. I can only imagine how many emails are floating around with this link on 'em. Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

if you want.

I think it's a bit trivial. it's fairly easy to make fun of a sport (whatever sport you take). it just shows how
important sports are in life, nothing really new.
Even though if in the case of Lance he actually brings hope to a number of cancer sufferers.

can write the same paper about football, which is just stupid, most guys actually do not touch the ball so they don't really play, there is no strategy, the big dudes hit the big dudes, the fast runners, run after god knows what and one dude always gets the ball and never wants to keep it so he throws it to the one he hates most so that he gets crushed by a couple of 350lbs dudes.

after this, they all get a bit of rest, because they are not in really good shape and the real fun starts with some half naked ladies with nice figure, big boobs and sexy moves dancing in front of a crowd who does not have anything better to do than that on any given sunday!

(I do not believe one word of the above btw).

dude don't even put football with wrestling. un cool in the highest order.

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customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.

Whoa! Hold on! Put on the breaks! I don't know which one you're saying is uncool, but let's just slow down and take a deep breath. Football is a fun sport, both to watch and to play. Are many hardcore fans narrow-minded about other sports? Sure. But that doesn't change the fact that there is a hell of a lot of physicality and strategy taking place.

And as for wrestling, I'm going to stop the discussion just long enough to make a distinction between wrestling and really, [i]REALLY[/i] bad acting. The sport in which you see guys and gals competing from 5 years old up through college and on to World Cup and Olympic competition is wrestling. That garbage you see on the TV in time-slots opposite info-mercials on late Saturday mornings ([i]i.e.[/i] when no sane person is watching TV) is not wrestling. That's total trash. That even gives a bad name to the formative years of "professional wrestling," which is more closely ancestrally related to UFC than WWE.

Okay. To summarize: elementary/junior high/high school/college/Olympic wrestling = sport; WWE and its ilk = not sport, rather bad, BAD acting.

not to mention that the "original" wrestling was in the original olympic games...even though I believe that there are two sports now (free and not free? it's lutte greco-romaine and lutte libre in french) and I believe there was only one in the greek era and the initial 1896 games.

Greco-Roman and Freestyle in English. They differ only in that, in Greco-Roman, you may not use your legs against your opponent and you cannot attack your opponents legs. I believe "original" Greek wrestling allowed striking or punching your opponent, which is now very much against the rules, but, in general, even though it's the oldest organized sport, it hasn't changed much in thousands of years (outside of each region having its own set of folk-style rules). Oh, and, yeah, running may challenge it for the oldest. ;)

I sent this to that guy - via e-mail



"I respect your views and opinions. However, the fact is that if you put me into a Pro football, baseball, or any other game that you may pick...I will at least finish the game. I may not win, however I will finish the game. You take a player of your sports and put that person in a bicycle race...chances are most probable that this person will not be able to finish at all. Your sophomoric attitude, and plebian behavior is a true reflection that I would bet that you - yourself are not capable of participating in any sport that you either enjoy, or deem as to not be a sport. The best thing for cycling and my new sport: Triathlon is that you dont see it much on TV...we as fans of cycling and Tri are not just fans. We participate in our sport...How many football fans can say that? How many football fans dont even OWN a football? Best Wishes CG"

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What if the Hokey Pokey is what it is all about?

I do agree with that guy 100% on France though :)

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What if the Hokey Pokey is what it is all about?

sorry sorry sorry need to clarify. football is a fantastic sport full of team work and athletic skill. fun to play and watch.

wrestling is finally admiting it is nothing than a male soap opera. i hate soap operas.

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customerjon @gmail.com is where information happens.

I thought it was kinda funny and nothing to get torqued over. I sent him a quick note anyway...

Thanks for your article, it gave me a good laugh. I'm sure you got a flood of emails from pissed off cyclists for this one. After growing up playing basketball, football, and lacrosse, I can say without question that cycling is much more painful, tough, and mentally challenging than any of these. It's not even close. I can't comment on baseball, I simply wasn't fat enough to play. You're right, anyone can ride a bike, but that doesn't make them a cyclist. Just as anyone can shoot a basketball, but that doesn't make them a basketball player.

what don't you grow up?

every thing from France sucks...yes...that includes the info from the french secret services that arrived to the WH in august 2001 about an imminent al qaeda attack using planes...
"it's french, it sucks, let's discard it"...good job...

The replies from this week's column from cyclists and those that agree.

http://sfgate.com/.../2003/07/29/mail.DTL

You can bet that the highlight of this guys week is watching a game on TV while sitting in his lay-z-boy.

 
Have you ever been to France?

Slider: I'm pretty sure you mean WWF style "wrestling", and not the kind done in high school, college, and the Olympics. I wrestled in high school and so did my two boys. I am willing to give guys like Dan Gable very big HUZZAHS! for their athletic ability and sheer physical strength. And, in wrestling finishing is not an option. You DO finish, one way or the other. :) Wrestling is one very difficult sport.

I also played football and have respect for many of those guys, who aren't as "bad" as so many NBA players.

Like most generalities, the wrestling and football ones are also untrue.

But, if you want a truly hard, hard, hard sport, then rowing is the game. Just try to hold 1:30 for 5K on the rowing ergometer and you'll understand. Of all the sports I've played, rowing has been the hardest for ME.

Nonetheless, I have almost universal respect for all who PARTICIPATE in sports.

Just my .02 cents.

-Robert

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

small point of contention--with the size and speed of football players these days, if you were thrown into a game and played a decent amount, you wouldn't finish...everything else was spot on though.

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f/k/a mclamb6

C'mon, anyone who's ever seen Holy Grail knows that all French people wear strange hats, talk with a funny accent, and catapult cows and chickens. At least they put on a pretty good race.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

The bottom line with this stuff is that you'll never get a guy who is too lazy to try a sport to come around to respect it. If all it takes is a ball and a scoreboard, we can rule out wrestling, swimming, diving, skiing, luge, bobsled, gymnastics, all track and field events, hell, virtually the whole pantheon of Olympic "sports". Last I checked, most of those sports are older than baseball, hockey, basketball, and football. This sports writer even ruled out soccer, the oldest game with a ball that is still played. For him, if it wasn't invented in the good ole USA, and if you can't do it with a keg nearby, then it isn't sport. Good thing the good people at ESPN don't agree. I believe Lance won "Athlete of the Year" for 2002.

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Slowguy

(insert pithy phrase here...)

In the last 30 years the kind of people who do sportscasting has turned around quite a bit. You now have ex-athletes, rather than professional writers and reporters, dominating the airwaves in particular. Many local newspapers use ex-jocks, though the major newspapers still look for writing talent. The upshot of all of this, including the heightened competition among media, has been a gradual lowering of standards. We are about as close to the Roman Coliseum version of sports reporting as we've ever been.

Sports reporting now appeals mainly to mass murderers, rapists, and couch potatoes. :), j/k

-Robert

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

Saw some definitions years ago, can't remember the source--

Football, baseball, soccer, etc. are "games."

Hunting, fishing, swimming, cycling, mountain climbing, etc. are "sports."

When sports become competitive (races), they are "contests."

BTW, used to love to laugh at guys with attitudes like this when I was a competitive swimmer--we had some football players come out for the swim team and learn a new definition of the word pain.