Tiger, Michael or Lance?

[junglewarfare]

It's insanely hard. This year, the winner's total time was about 90 hours over 20ish stages. Much of that is going uphill. The 2nd place guy was a minute behind, everyone in the top 10 was within 15 minutes or so. There is no real slowest time since a lot of guys drop out of the race. I don't know how many guys drop out exactly, but its more than 20. A lot.

Each stage takes 3-4 hours (for the winner), some stages are 100+ miles. The hardest part is finishing a stage and then being able to get up the next day and do it again... 20 times. The reason the race is so interesting is because every team has to pay a lot of attention to its tactical plan and how they are preserving themselves for the mountains and final stages. If a rider goes out full blast, he will be out of the race by stage 10. The muscle recovery and lung capacity the riders have is incredible.

The average US male would not be able to do 20 stages in a month. They could maybe slog through a couple rounds but by stage 4-5 their muscles would not be able to recover and they would be out.

[teamdonkey]

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You either don't know that much about cycling or are being incredibly biased and taking things way out of context.

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i don't know that much about cycling. just curious how someone can be ranked #1 in the world and still be "unaccomplished".

looking through Wikipedia, the other 4+ tour de france winners all won their first in their mid 20's:

Merckx - 25
indurain - 27
Hinault - 24
Merckx - 25
Anquetil - 23

Lance is diagnosed with cancer at 25 and doesn't win his first until 28, seems about right to me.

Again i don't know much about cycling, but it seems reasonable that younger athletes wouldn't have the physical maturity to handle something as grueling as the tour, but become much better equiped the older they get/more they train.

[Victor]

lance was kinda big before cancer. he had broad shoulders and did not look like a cyclist, more like a triathlete. he liked to drink beer and eat tex-mex.

after cancer, his frame was much thinner and leaner. the difference is striking. i would say that the cancer transformed his shape more than anything. power to weight ratio is most important part of climbing.

steriods could have contributed to his power obv.