Cyclists != athletes ? Come on, get serious

[oboeguy]

This must be a joke

 

[tigerbait]

that writer probably can't even bike a mile

Lance is a tremendous athlete

 

[Fausto]

That guy is, to put it as succinctly as I can, a f*cking idiot. :|

Fausto

EDIT: this pretty much explains things.

Ron Borges writes regularly for NBCSports.com and covers boxing and the NFL for the Boston Globe.

It's absurd to expect someone who places value on pro boxing to understand cycling. He's still a mouth-breathing dumbass tho.

 

[Michael1897]

this guy is a complete ass. jealousy is pretty evident here. look at the poll results 4654 people have voted 95% saying he is a dumbass.

he was probably the kid that was always picked last in everything having to deal with sports. i'd like to see him say that to Lance's face.

 

[vi edit]

If Armstrong is a great athlete, so are marathon runners.

ath·lete Pronunciation Key (thlt)
n.
A person possessing the natural or acquired traits, such as strength, agility, and endurance, that are necessary for physical exercise or sports, especially those performed in competitive contexts.

I would think that a cyclist and a marathon runner would qualify for this.

I'm sorry that this asshats attention span is so short that a athletic event has to be shorter than 30 seconds, or involve slam dunks or fast breaks to keep his 80 IQ interested.

Where's Fausto? I wanna hear what he thinks.

 

[bunker]

Dumbass :|

 

[Beau]

CERTAINLY ARMSTRONG IS A HELL of a bike rider, but does that make him superior to Michael Jordan, Barry Bonds, Jerry Rice or Marion Jones? Does it make him a better athlete than the Williams sisters? Does the ability to sit on a skinny bicycle seat for hours on end and pump your legs like a madman make you a great athlete or merely a guy who does better without training wheels than most people?
If Armstrong is a great athlete, so are marathon runners. Athletes, for my money, must do more with their bodies than pump their legs up and down. If that?s all it took, the Radio City Rockettes would have to be considered the greatest athletes of all time.

LMFAO!!!!! What a complete fvcking moron!

He'll call Barry Bonds an athelete over cyclists and marathon runners!! OMFG!

 

[Michael1897]

For my money, being the greatest athlete in the world involves strength, speed, agility, hand-eye coordination, mental toughness and the ability to make your body do things that defy description.

i guess this guy never tried climbing a mile on a bike while traveling over 110 miles in total.

Add this guy to my list of people to b!tch slap if i ever see them in person

 

[Beau]

MSNBC Interactive Poll
Do you agree with columnist Ron Borges that Lance Armstrong is not a great athlete?

* 4845 responses

Yes, I agree
.. 5%

No, Borges is out to lunch
..............................................95%

HAHAHAHAHA!!!

 

[StageLeft]

What a f-twat. Professional cycling has somethin that many other sports don't have which is the requirement of a world-class level of physical fitness. Your body has to be perfectly fit. Add to that the fact that there is strategy involved and you have a sport.

This guy probably considers bowling a sport

 

[pulse8]

It's absurd to expect someone who places value on pro boxing to understand cycling.

The irony.

Either way, though, he's a jackass.

 

[Jzero]

I agree with his sentiment that Armstrong may not be the greatest athlete in the world, but I seriously dispute that he's not an athlete at all....
You can make any sport innocuous if you break it down enough.

He mentions Michael Jordan, but all Michael Jordan can do is run up and down a court and put a ball through a hoop, often at point-blank range.
All Barry Bonds does is swing a stick at a ball. BFD.
All Jerry Rice does is run a little bit.

You can trivialize any athletic feat if you want to.

 

[BigJohnKC]

He makes an interesting point, but goes way overboard in telling his views. He says there was some guy on NPR saying Lance was the best athlete of all time, but he doesn't agree.

However, saying that a cyslist isn't an athlete at all makes this guy a complete ass, but I agree when he says that Lance Armstrong isn't the greatest athlete of all time. That is such a hard thing to define - there are so many sports, so many different disciplines, how can one define greatest athlete of all of them?

 

[StageLeft]

For my money, being the greatest athlete in the world involves strength, speed, agility, hand-eye coordination, mental toughness and the ability to make your body do things that defy description. Chief among them is not pumping your legs up and down while your feet are strapped to bicycle pedals.

Strength? He is very strong.
Speed? Yes.
Agility? Maybe...
Hand-eye? Maybe...
Mental toughness? HELL YAH. Probably tougher mentally than the vast majority of athletes. Sitting on a bike for hours on end when all your body wants to do is quit, pushing yourself through agonizing pain. That's mental toughness.

So he has 3 of the 5 without a doubt. Like jzero said you can trivialize any sport if you like.

And this guy says nobody cares - well he's wrong. Personally I care more about it than baseball, for instance. These guys get up day after day putting their bodies through constant pain. They don't get to play a two hour game and then go chill in the hot tub.

 

[Mursilis]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
What a f-twat. Professional cycling has somethin that many other sports don't have which is the requirement of a world-class level of physical fitness. Your body has to be perfectly fit.

Exactly - yet this guy suggests some fat slob football player is more of an athlete than Lance Armstrong. There's no way Armstrong is not an athlete, but Tony Siragusa is.

That guy's an idiot.

 

[oboeguy]

Originally posted by: BigJohnKC
He makes an interesting point, but goes way overboard in telling his views. He says there was some guy on NPR saying Lance was the best athlete of all time, but he doesn't agree.

However, saying that a cyslist isn't an athlete at all makes this guy a complete ass, but I agree when he says that Lance Armstrong isn't the greatest athlete of all time. That is such a hard thing to define - there are so many sports, so many different disciplines, how can one define greatest athlete of all of them?

You just made that point better than he did. His entire argument was that Lance is not the greatest athlete because he's not an athlete.

I'm one of the biggest Lance fans there is -- back in '92 we made a special trip to see him ride in the Olympic road race (my brother, the lucky devil, managed to meet him there while I was wandering somewhere else). I don't think he's "the greatest athlete ever" (like you said, nobody is), but I think what he's done -- winning the Tour three times (soon four) after having cancer spread all over his body -- is one of the greatest accomplishments in sports history.

Edit: grammar

 

[Fausto]

The thing that aggravates me the most about this is that he displays the same opinion that most who are not knowledgeable of cycling do: that the strongest guy will always win and that there is no skill involved....merely brute horsepower.

If he were to take a minute away from his insightful analysis of the latest fixed outcome in the world of boxing to learn a bit about cycling, he would see just how wrong he is. Yes, first and foremost you have to be unbelievably fit in order to be a successful pro cyclist, but there are many other factors at work in winning a race. You must have both a solid team (yes cycling is a a team sport) to keep you out of the wind, to control breakaways and to pace you in the mountains. You must also have the ability to pilot a 17-pound bike riding on 23mm-wide tires down twisty mountain switchbacks (a few feet away from other riders) at speeds approaching 100kph. You must have the ability to keep a bike upright in a bunch sprint, flying through corners literally shoulder to shoulder with other riders. Most importantly, you must have the mental fortitude to suffer greatly in order to win. Add all those attributes up and I think you've got a great athlete.

Nice to see that 95% of those who read his article agree with me.

Fausto

 

[Harvey]

Thanks, Beau6183. As of when I clicked, there are now about 50% more votes with the same percentage results:

MSNBC Interactive Poll
Do you agree with columnist Ron Borges that Lance Armstrong is not a great athlete?

* 6243 responses

Yes, I agree
.. 5%

No, Borges is out to lunch
..............................................95%

 

[Rainsford]

I think this guy needs some whooping.

 

[Thegonagle]

I'd like to see that guy keep up with me for 40 miles, let alone keep up with Lance for a stage of the Tour de France.

I couldn't even read half the editorial anyway. I get bored reading stuff that shows such a lack of insight.

 

[Bulk Beef]

Borges' commentary is flame-bait, pure and simple. I'm surprised MSNBC posted it. His choice of words is so inflammatory, I can't see how anyone would think that he intended to do anything other than piss people off.

What a dickhead.

 

[Harvey]

Blech!!! The poll is rigged! :|

I use several browsers. In both my Netscapes, I've made the one cookie file, COOKIES.TXT, a zero byte, Read Only file, so I don't get cookies. Their poll sets a cookie in memory, but all I had to do to vote again is quit my NS 4.79 browser, re-launch it, and go to the site. I cast over 10 votes (more than 1% of the total). The total number of votes rose, but the percentage didn't change.

 

[CPA]

It seems inevitable that Armstrong is going to win the Tour de France on Sunday for the fourth straight time, barring any unforeseen bicycle accidents or unannounced doping tests


This is all I had to read to realize how much of a complete moron this guy is. He implies that Armstrong is doping. If he knew his facts he would find that Armstrong has been tested numerous times and has never failed a drug test. Why can't some people just admit there are great athletes out there that don't dope up.

 

[SSP]

What a fing tard! He should go dig himself a hole.

 

[yakko]

Ron Borges writes regularly for NBCSports.com and covers boxing and the NFL for the Boston Globe.

Athletes, for my money, must do more with their bodies than pump their legs up and down

Well all a boxer does is pump his arms and they sure as hell don't do it for hours on end for 15 days straight in a low oxygen environment. This guy is clueless.