Add up the number of hours Thorpe raced in his life, compare to the hours Armstrong raced in the Tour this year (83:36:02), then get back to me.

You say Thorpe dominates his sport, not just one event, then you cite his dominance in the 400 fr?

The Tour de France isn't one event, it's a collection, or Tour, of events: Time Trial, TTT, Mountain stages, uphill TT's, and sprints.

Doesn't Lance pretty much dominate in all of these 'events?'

Stop comparing sports, it's just silly. (and as an All-American ex-collegiate swimmer, believe me when I say that Thorpe isn't half the athlete that Michael Phelps is, he's just more dominant in the 400 free)

People who say Lance has only won the tour just really don't know anything about him or bicycle racing beyond what you could read in USA Today.

He's won so much more than just the Tour de France it's beyond comprehension how anyone could say that! How about the World Championships, Fleche Wallone, San Sebastian, Classique de Alps, Tour DuPont, Tour de Georgia, the list goes on and on. And he wins time trials, road stages, mountain stages.

But I do like what the other poster said. Compare the number of hours Lance was on his bike just this year in the Tour with what Phelps has spent in the pool racing in his entire life. THAT's perspective.

Bob C.

You also have to realize that it's just a different world now than when Eddie Mercyk was racing. If Eddie was racing today he likely would also be concentrating solely on the TDF. If Lance was racing back then, he'd be racing every other weekend just like Eddie and the boys did in their era.

It's not really fair to compare yesterdays sports heroes with today's.

Unless of course you're comparing Scott/Allen against the current crop at Kona :)

I think Lance is great -- but it is pretty early in the 21st century to be the greatest of the century - we still have 95 years to go.

I would say he is the greatest athlete so far in the 21st century.

But I would not say he was the greatest cyclist of all time. Eddy dominated everything - winning double grand tours over several years - the one day classics, etc. etc.

Who else has dominated anything since 2000 ???

No Micheal Jordans, No Mohammad Ali's, No Pele's, No Babe Ruth's

Lance is the greatest so far in the 21st century. But he will not be THE greatest athlete of the 21st century.

umm...how does that change anything? how does the amount of time racing mean you are more or less dominant?



phelps would prob swim 83 hours in about a month. how long is tdf? 2 weeks?



top swimmers train very very hard. and ex collegiate swimmer, phelps is better than thorpe? pfftt i take it your an american. phelps is an amazing swimmer but i dont think you can say he is 'better' than thorpe.


all that training for races that go for maybe a maximum of just over 4 minutes.

"How long is tdf? 2 weeks?"

'nuff said

"I think Lance is great -- but it is pretty early in the 21st century to be the greatest of the century - we still have 95 years to go."
That raises an interesting question. Off the top of their head, can anyone name who would have been the athlete of the 20th century if it was decided in 1905?

how does the length of the race change anything? surely it is easier to be dominant in a long race where people will falter, you can build up a lead etc..

rather than races which are measured in .01 of a second in events like 50 and 100 free...which popov totally dominanted from 91-2000. pretty sure he was unbeaten during this time.

all ya gotta do is have a slow start or do a bad turn. and popovs turns were never great.

Now now, I can't let you get away with swimmer-bashing in order to make a point about cycling, even if I do agree with you.

Look at it from this perspective:
Lance on any given race day, races for about 4.5 hours. He's on the bike training, on average, 30 hours a week to prepare.

Phelps on any given race day, races for about 4 minutes. He's in the pool training, on average, 20 hours a week to prepare.

That means that for every minute he races, Lance trains for about 23 minutes. Phelps trains over 3 hours for every minute of racing.

so let's leave swimmers alone, at least hours racing/training.

And with the Phelps/Thorpe debate, we'll keep this to the cycling metaphor (forgetting that when Phelps swam the 200 fr he got bronze in Greece, while Thorpe barely cracks the top 20 in the 200 IM): Phelps is Lance, Thorpe is Pettachi. It's not even a debate if you know the sport, believe me. They're both amazing, and even within the sport of swimming, comparing two athletes is difficult, because at the elite level, different events are almost like different sports. But Phelps plays them all.

like i said phelps is amazing. world's best in fly, prob could have medalled 200 back at olympics, bronze in 200 free, best at im. that is an awesome record. i often struggle to understand how someone can be so good at everything. but thorpe is amazing as well in his 200 and 400 free events. the 400 free record is an AMAZING time.

and using Lance's hours during an event is not a valid sort of measure. For perhaps (I am just guessing here, absolutely no science) 80% of the total hours he is riding in the peleton with his team and not taking it to his challengers.

yeah...americans are the best...

and Thorpe actually didn't swim the 200IM in the olympics. he did however in the worlds and was 2nd.

Aside from Eddy dominating the sport, whilst Lance only dominates the Tour, another difference is that Eddy got caught for doping, whilst Lance has gotten away with it so far

I am not the biggest Lance guy myself, but how about my main fella Fred Rodriguez getting his first win of the year today? Mad props to the non-Lancers. Plus, Bobby J is setting himself up nicely for a win at the Tour of the Med. As you can guess, I am a roadie disguised as a tri-geek,,, and the French still make the best Pinot.

didn't even know the med tour was going on...they talked about cancelling it at the end of last season...good to know!

I'm glad I could share the knowledge. It looks like it will come down to CSC versus the field, with Jens Voight and Bobby J sitting up there nicely. I realize this is a digression from the post, but I just did a late night spin on the trainer and drank a half bottle of 2000 Megnien Pinot on an empty stomache. Life is great.

OK Asgelle - I'll give you that Fulla loses his point when he doesn't know how long the Tour is but consider this about your argument:



The Tour is 3 weeks long (see - I know!).

Of those 3 weeks (83 hours of 'racing' I think someone pointed out)...

How much time do you think Lance really spends 'racing' rather than hidng in the pack or letting his team do the majority of the work?

I know it is part of bicycle racing and I have no problem with it but I bet Lance doesn't actually 'race' for more than 5 hours out of those 83. TT and TTT he is obviously racing. Other than that it is really just the last 30 minutes or so of the mountaintop finishes.



If the argument is 'time spent racing' (which byt the way - I think is totally irrelavent), you'd have to give the award to George for pulling on all those flat stages. Or - Floyd this year for pulling the other 2 hours of climbing on all those mountain stages.



Don't get me wrong - I have a lot of respect for what LA does. But - He doesn't 'race' for 83 hours.

Not exactly right that he has won no other races.

1. Lance was a very strong one-day Classics rider before the Cancer. He one a couple of the biiger ones and a World Championship.

2. This is happening in many sports - as the level of competition increases right near the top, real specialists start to emerge. There are cyclists now who's whole year may revolve around one race on one day - Consider Englishman Roger Hammond at Paris- Roubaix. In running there are guys who inly focus on the 5,000m. Years ago, top runners had more range, running world leading times from 3,000m to 10,000m

Fleck

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

if we just look at the amount of racing, then Ellen McArthur kicks everyone's ass ;-)

"If the argument is 'time spent racing' (which byt the way - I think is totally irrelavent)"

Of course it's irrelevant. That's exactly my point. It ridiculous and futile to try to compare athletes in different sports or over different eras. I could have just as easily pointed out that Armstrong defeated around 190 competitors to win the Tour while Thorpe only has to defeat 7 to win a race.

But saying Armstrong isn't racing the full 83 hours is like saying that 99% of a soccer (sorry, football) match is irrelevant because what little scoring there is takes place over only maybe a minute or two of a 90 minute match. At anytime during those 90 minutes or 83 hours, something could have played out that would have changed the results. It's all racing.

TIME racing/training has nothing to do with being dominant. Was MJ dominant because he played more minutes? Was The Great One most dominant because he played more games?

Who wins the most and embarrasses others over the longest time? That is the measure of dominance.

Sad as it is, cycling has become a specialist's sport, and for this reason, no one can be viewed as dominant as Eddy Mercx. Lance is expanding his horizons by really competing in some smaller races... and don't forget the hour record attempt, and he does his share of belittling, but I don't think to the extent of some other great athletes.

I agree with the swimmers (and I'm a biker). Thorpe and Phelps are more dominant in their respective sports than Lance is in cycling.

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The Dude abides.

You guys are WAY off on the hours spent training for the for swimmers. In High School I did two workouts a day M-F The AM was from 5:00 -7:15, PM was from 3:00-6:00, so that is 5 hrs 15 mins/day x 5 days = 26.25 hours. On the weekends we then usually had a 3-4 hour Saturday workout, so if you ad that to the weekday numbers I usually averaged right at 30hrs/week plus 1-2 meets per week. Now my HS coach was Hitler's evil twin so we did a bit more than the norm, my coach actually ended up runing the youth developement program for the US Olympic Committee.

During college the NCAA rules prohibited more than 20 hours of workout per/week, so we did our 20 M-F with 5 PM workouts and 3 AM workouts, then a "voluntary" work for 3-4 hours on the weekend, for everyone to come to. Since I was a distance guy I also had "Voluntary" AM workouts on Tuesdays and Thursdays for about 2 hours each. SO in college I'd say I averaged right around 27hrs/week. Plus we usually had 1 meet a week which in college if you're a D guy can tear you apart based on the amount of swiming you do in about 2.5 hours.

Guys like Thorpe and Phelps and other world class swimmers (once they are out of high School) are not held to any specific shedule other than getting to the pool for their workouts. Many of the US top swimmers are paid a stipend so that they can train full time. I'd be willing to bet that many of them spend close to 6+ hours a day training, some 6 days a week. No not all of that is in the pool some will be spent in the weight room and some spent doing land based exercises. I'd say an average of 35 hours a week would be pretty standard, even higher during peak training/non meet season.

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I'm just a 10 cent rider on a $2,500.00 Bike

Er, didn't he win the USPRO CHAMPIONSHIP, the WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP, recovered from a particularly nasty case of cancer, then came back to win the Tour 6 consecutive times, which of course, no one has done before. That's a pretty impressive resume to me. Maybe not the greatest, but definitely at the top of the list.

BTW - Do top runners, who "dominate their sport", dominate the 100 meters as well as the 5,000 meters? Uh-uh. They dominate one, maybe two or three very similar, events at most.