Is Lance the greatest American athlete of all time?

[BreakfastBurrito]

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Lance is easily the greatest American endurance athlete of all time.


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Do you really know enough about the top American endurance athletes or even what endurance competitions are out there to make that claim? I ask because I don't know. Who are your top 5?

[jakethebake]

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Lance is easily the greatest American endurance athlete of all time.


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Do you really know enough about the top American endurance athletes or even what endurance competitions are out there to make that claim? I ask because I don't know. Who are your top 5?

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Some of the triathletes and ultrarunners are amazing.

Dave Scott and Mark Allen each won 6 Ironman Triathlons.

Stu Mittleman averaged two marathons a day for 56 days, running from San Diego to New York.

[SomethingClever]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Lance is easily the greatest American endurance athlete of all time.


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Do you really know enough about the top American endurance athletes or even what endurance competitions are out there to make that claim? I ask because I don't know. Who are your top 5?

[/ QUOTE ]

Some of the triathletes and ultrarunners are amazing.

Dave Scott and Mark Allen each won 6 Ironman Triathlons.

Stu Mittleman averaged two marathons a day for 56 days, running from San Diego to New York.

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I agree that some of these ultramarathon and triathlete guys are incredible, but there is a much smaller pool of competitors that they go against.

Therefore, I think Lance > them.

However, I'm more impressed by guys like Haile Gebrselassie. He's not American, so he doesn't count in this competition. But just shattering running records like he did in the prime of his career is unheard of.

This is a guy who owned the world record in the 5,000 and 10,000, ran a 3:50 mile and a 2:06 marathon. Holy christ, do you know how insane that is?

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In a glittering career, Haile Gebrselassie has broken 17 world records indoors and out, won two Olympic 10,000m golds and four World 10,000m titles.

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link

[jakethebake]

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However, I'm more impressed by guys like Haile Gebrselassie. He's not American, so he doesn't count in this competition.

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Yea. I mentioned those guys because they're American. For non-Americans I'm going with ultrarunner Yiannis Kouros. He has over 150 world records, including running over 1000 km in 6 days and over 1000 miles in 10 days. He won his very first ultra in 1983 (the 246km Spartathlon) by like 2 1/2 hours against basically all the best ultrarunners in the world.

[Ulysses]

Skip Bayless ESPN article

[Boris]

Linking to a Skip Bayless article. Very disappointing.

[RunDownHouse]

Cael Sanderson.

[razor]

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Linking to a Skip Bayless article. Very disappointing.

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So is the article itself.

Declaring Lance > Eddy Merckx is ignorant

Bayless trivializes some elements of cycling, stage races, and Lance's performances.

This is not to say I think Lance is the greatest athlete of all time, just that the article has weaknesses.

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

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Declaring Lance > Eddy Merckx is ignorant

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For the record, I'm not disagreeing with you, however I do recall hearing them say on the OLN coverage that Merckx himself surprisingly said that he thinks Lance is a better rider. I know it's not like Eddy to say that and I have only been able to find an article where he says that he's the best of his era and Lance is the best of this era (here). However, I am almost positive that they said this, though, because I remember them being somewhat surprised that Eddy actually finally said it and they were thinking it was just him being nice and not completely sincere. It was some time during the last few stages of this year's tour.

[razor]

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Declaring Lance > Eddy Merckx is ignorant

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For the record, I'm not disagreeing with you, however I do recall hearing them say on the OLN coverage that Merckx himself surprisingly said that he thinks Lance is a better rider. I know it's not like Eddy to say that and I have only been able to find an article where he says that he's the best of his era and Lance is the best of this era (here). However, I am almost positive that they said this, though, because I remember them being somewhat surprised that Eddy actually finally said it and they were thinking it was just him being nice and not completely sincere. It was some time during the last few stages of this year's tour.

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I heard them say that too... I suspect that 1)Merckx was speaking with respect to the TdF only and 2)Merrckx was being gracious to a very good friend of his. But that's just my speculation.

Note that Bayless is speaking in terms of greatest endurance athlete ever, Merckx has significantly more TdF yellow jerseys than Lance and has won many more cycling races than Lance.


From Wikipedia...

Baron Eddy Merckx /'merks/ (born Edouard Louis Joseph Merckx on June 17, 1945 in Meensel-Kiezegem, Belgium) is considered by many to be the greatest cyclist of the 19th and 20th centuries and arguably of all-time. He is the five-time champion of the two most important races in professional cycling, the Tour de France and the Giro d'Italia, is one of only four cyclists to have won all three of the Grand Tours (Tour de France, Giro d'Italia and Vuelta a España) in a career, and one of only two men to have won the Triple Crown of Cycling (the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, and the World Cycling Championship in the same year). In his 13 year professional career, Merckx entered 1582 road races and won 445—a winning rate of 35.5%. [1], and is one of only three riders (all Belgian) to have won all five Classic cycle races at least once during his career. He also won the season-long Super Prestige Pernod International competition a record seven consecutive times.

edit: entire Eddy Merckx wikipedia entry