Given how unpopular distance/endurance sports tend to be, why was Lance Armstrong so popular?

sillyman wrote: Lance was the ugly American. And France hadn't had a winner for a while. LA is still an ugly personality.

and France still...

people may not understand or appreciate endurance events, but they do understand and appreciate WINNING. He was popular because he was the BEST in the WORLD many times over. And Nike.

Fast Guy wrote:

There for sure was a lot of us vs them to Lance's popularity. You'd hear about the european media trashing Lance (true or not, fair or not) and Americans ate that up. Part of the allure was that cycling wasnt popular here. It's a fringe sport in the US and not usually one we excel at. So was certainly a draw about Lance taking it to the Euros on their own soil

LANCE ARMSTRONG IS ON THE VERGE OF JOINING CYCLING'S LEGENDS AND EVEN GAINING GRUDGING ACCEPTANCE IN FRANCE

SUZANNE HALLIBURTON

American-Statesman Staff

July 4, 2002

Since last July when Lance Armstrong won his third consecutive Tour de France, his fame in the United States has grown considerably. New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani invited Armstrong to take a helicopter tour of the World Trade Center ruins. He has dined with President Bush and former President Clinton. Burns Sports and Celebrities Inc., which publishes a yearly survey of business and advertising executives, said Armstrong was the third most-popular product endorser in all of sports after Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan.

Armstrong, an Austin resident, is favored to win this year's Tour, which begins Saturday in Luxembourg when 189 riders from 21 teams compete against the clock in a time trial. If he wins the three-week race, he would become only the fourth cyclist ever to win four consecutive titles.

Yet only now - and begrudgingly - is the European cycling establishment beginning to accept Armstrong as one of the sport's all-time greatest.

"It's the French who get uptight because he keeps winning their race, and they are particularly conservative," said Jeremy Whittle, editor of London-based Procycling magazine. "The French, particular, don't really like change. The Tour is seen as a cornerstone of continuing and unchanging French cultural life, like cheese, sunflowers, wine and pate. The French don't want the Tour turned into an American corporate jamboree."

I find that Americans only get behind an international contest if there's a clear, well-identified villain, the French, in this case.

^

This.

Exactly. My point isnt that 9/11 was part of the narrative, the point is that how America acted and presented itself after 9/11 was in line with how Lance acted and presented himself.

And the team was presented as THE American team, regardless of whether Livingston was first pulling for Lance or later pulling for Jan (but also telling the peloton to slow down for Lance when he had a mechanical). The narrative was Lance was taking it to the rest of the world and shoving it in his critics' faces (including the British papers, not just the French) at a time when the a US consciously or subconsciously felt like it needed to take it to the rest of the world and shove it in its critics' faces.

Even though I am not sure many people (the average public who don't follow cycling) realize the gravity of what he did, winning the TDF 18 months after being on a surgeons table having cancer cut out of his brain, lungs, abdomen as well as losing a testicle and being given basically zero chance of survival is, irrespective of drugs, the most ridiculous and amazing comeback and survival story the world of sports will ever see. Ever.

The "doping" argument is completely and utterly void because even if he doped and won against a clean field this would be amazing in it's own right but the fact that maybe, maybe 2.5% of the field was not using PED's (this number derived from Tyler Hamilton saying in that era that if 5 tour starters were clean he'd be surprised), makes it utterly mind blowing.

As I have grown older the fact Armstrong used PEDs has become almost completely irrelevant. The issue with Lance also isn't that he defended his castle, it's the way that he did. And if the extent of that was sh$tballing people and calling them names then no this isn't cool - but he's no OJ Simpson. By the way, on the notion he destroyed lives? I'm pretty sure the Andreau's, Greg LeMond and Emma O'Reilly are doing just fine and the amount of lives he gave hope to and supported through his completely legit foundation is more than enough for me.

LA is worse than OJ. I don't believe that OJ ever was petty enough to cheat as sports.

SDSU Aztec wrote:

Were any of you around to watch his TDF wins? His violent surges during the climbs and his time trialing were awesome to watch. That downhill where Lance veered into a field to avoid a rider that crashed in front of him, rode across the field, carried his bike across a ditch and got on the wheel of the next group of riders was of the most exciting things I've ever seen in sports.

I watched every stage of every tour he rode starting in 1999. He was not just the best in the field (and I think he would have been the best clean rider in a clean field if it wasn't a dirty sport) but he had a dominant personality. Much like for Froome's wins US Postal rode high tempo on the climbs but Lance also had some epic days that drew in fans. The look back, the day he was knocked over by a fan and ride back with a broken clip, his mountain time trials that the tour badly needs to reintroduce

I don't miss many stages at all any year but with few exceptions there aren't many singular performances like some of Lance's days on the bike. The day Andy Schleck attacked two climbs from the finish in 2011 (stage 18) is the only one that comes to mind. Lance had attacks that epic multiple times. He didn't just ride tempo, knock out a time trial, and snooze to the finish like some more recent winners.

And for those that think that maneuver through the field wasn't great bike handling you don't know much about cycling. Even other pros were impressed by that save.

Sorry in advance for typos, doing this on a phone while the kids takes a bath.

The fascination with Lance is due to his supposed backstory of being the cancer survivor. The U.S. had Greg LeMonde win the tdf and it got zero attention by the average American just like Olympic success in distance running gets zero attention from the average American.

The Tour and pro cycling is arguably more popular than the Olympics. More money in pro cycling, it happens year round every year, gets more overall press coverage.

All the Tour stages were shown live and also tape delayed l later in the day on national cable TV (ESPN), Network TV had taped delayed partial coverage every weekend.

The race and coverage went on for over 3 weeks. A big running event like the London Marathon is only a day event.

Compare this with running, where you have to sign up for a special premium service to see coverage of the big events.

The coverage played up the USA vs the world nationalistic aspects of Lance. He was from Texas. He was from the USA. His Team was sponsored by the USA Postal Service.

The public was fascinated by an athlete from the USA beating the Europeans and the rest of the world at their own game.

The Tour is a huge extremely popular event, in Europe, and that showed on TV. This added to the allure of beating them at their own game.

The cancer survivor aspect was a story that transcended sport. Also the boy raised by a single mom.

The only thing that might be similar is if a US born cancer survivor became a striker and leading scorer for FC Barcelona or Manchester United, and he/they won the Premier League title for 7 straight years.

Ultimately, all this was too good to be true, and the full story ended up being fictitious.

another old person wrote:

The fascination with Lance is due to his supposed backstory of being the cancer survivor. The U.S. had Greg LeMonde win the tdf and it got zero attention by the average American just like Olympic success in distance running gets zero attention from the average American.

Hold on what?! "Supposed back story of being a cancer survivor"?!?!? You think the cancer "story" was some manufactured front to cover for his future indiscretions?

Dude.....

All of the bolded text is absolute rubbish. Cycling is still very much a minority sport in Europe, nowhere close to football/soccer.

The only part that is accurate is that the Tour is televised on obscure channels like Eurosport’s.

You’re clearly not a European.

And another one - "Ultimately, all this was too good to be true, and the full story ended up being fictitious".

WHAT?! The fully story was fictitious? The only element of the story is that he did it without PEDS. That doesn't change the fact he was basically dead to rights and ended up winning the Tour vs everybody else that cheated.

You know I once (when I was much younger and immature and thought sports defined everything in the world) was like a lot of you guys - super hung up on the cheating element. "Makes the whole thing a fraud wah wah wah". But as I mentioned I then grew up and became a lot more of understanding of Lance as a human - his background, his childhood, what he became a symbol of almost by no choice of his own and the things he ended up contributing that must have taken a huge toll on his life. I actually find Lance refreshingly human.

Which makes me wonder why so many people seem still so butthurt by Lance as if he slighted them personally. I can only deduce it comes down to people who were so stupid to believe that Lance could possibly be winning the TDF clean to begin with - the ones that defended him vehemently and then were made to look like idiots when he finally came clean. So insecure in themselves that they can't just concede they were dumb enough to be duped and so have flipped so hard that they can never get over Lance using EPO. Kind of pathetic yet at the same time funny. I guess it's easy for me to forget the doping because I never for one second thought that he did it without taking the same drugs everyone else did (and I still don't believe for one second anyone is winning that bike race without jetfuel in their blood or somewhere in their bikes).

Loved the story, it was great, read his book and all the rest.

But alas it was too good to be true. Stole a lot of sponsorship and prize money.

He was American and he dominated. Enough said.

If we had some distance runner that could win 7 or 8 straight world championships they'd be popular too.

I feel like a US distance runner could easily become as popular as Armstrong if they absolutely dominated the sport for 7 years like he did. Imagine if Rupp's resume looked like Bekele's. He would be a god. Lance Armstrong was very lucky that the East Africans aren't into bicycling.

It was mainly the made-for-Hollywood cancer comeback story that was flogged incessantly by Armstrong's megabucks sponsors (mainly Nike) to get him saturating mass media exposure.

Absent that, even with 7 Tour wins he'd be nothing more than an American succeeding in an "obscure" European sport. (Remember, when Armstrong won the world Road title in 1993, it hardly made a ripple here.)

Contrast that with the fate of Greg LeMond, whose comeback from a near-fatal shotgun blast to win the Tour for a second time in 89 (and again in 90) was even more miraculous and improbable than Armstrong's. However, due to the unfortunate ubiquity of cancer, prevailing over that disease is a lot more relatable to most people ( and sellable) than recovering from being riddled with 60 shotgun pellets.

An LA Times article in 1990 said this about LeMond:

"He has reigned for years as a sports hero in Europe, has twice won bicycling’s most prestigious race and has graced the cover of Sport Illustrated as last year’s “Sportsman of the Year.”

But drop Greg LeMond’s name in this country and you might see a few blank stares.

"

The most "cashing in" LeMond did stateside from those 3 Tour wins was a patronizing Taco Bell commercial where he was made to look ridiculous via sped-up video effects.