Pro-cyclists turned runners

Runningart2004 wrote:

People sometimes forget that the heart and lungs don't actually do the physical work required to cycle, or run for that matter. The legs do. The legs provide the work. The cardiorespiratory system simply provides the fuel (ATP).

Alan

Huh?

This is true, but one more point is that it is probably easier to get a simmer to run fast than a runner to swim fast. Swimming is so much more technique driven.

Nutella1 wrote:

pr100 wrote:

Note that the "being an American" bit counts... not just the winning - because a lot of the money comes from sponsorship and Nike & co. are much more interested in an American than they are in e.g. some Spaniard (cycling) or Kenyan (running).

It adds a bit but if LA would have been European then maybe Adidas would have sponsored him. There is a lot of money in cycling, AC makes a lot of money, Indurain did too. Ullrich was reported to bring around 5 million USD home every year and he won the tour only once. Haile Gebreselassie makes a sh_tload of money, so does Usain Bolt - both from poor countries.

You don't have to be white American to make tons of money in running or cycling. But you gotta have charisma.

Sure... I'm not saying that those people didn't make big bucks; or that there's not money to be made in cycling. But I was questioning whether Lance made more money out of cycling than he would have as world dominating marathon runner.

Of course top people get good sponsorship money. But the way the economics stack up at the moment you're probably better off being American than anything else for that kind of thing because people get all nationalistic about this kind of thing and the US is the biggest value market. A few years down the line and probably China will be a much bigger market...

please explain further wrote:

I've never heard anyone claim a triathlon is biased toward the swim. How could that be possible?

I wouldn't say Olympic (ITU) triathlon is biased toward the swim, but you've got to be able to stay with the pack to have any chance. The reason is that under ITU rules drafting is allowed in the bike leg. Since one can ride much faster in a pack (or as fast with considerably less energy) there's basically zero chance of winning a competitive ITU event if you don't make the main bike pack. By the same token, it doesn't help much to be so fast in the swim that you get out of the water well ahead of the pack because you'll expend more energy than the pack trying to maintain that advantage. ITU really comes down to who can stay with the pack through the swim and bike and then kill it on the run. To excel at ITU rules and athlete should be biased toward run, swim, and bike in that order.

For non draft legal races (e.g. Ironman) swimming is far less important and guys who excel at cycling (e.g. Chris Lieto) can do well. That said, there have been a lot of top triathletes who came primarily from a swimming background (e.g. Dave Scott and Mark Allen). Not sure if that's specifically because of the act of swim training so much as from the discipline of swim training.