Cycling guy wrote:
Makes You Wonder wrote:I have no trouble believing he could achieve a 2:46 marathon without doping. You're an idiot if you believe otherwise. Doping or not, Lance Armstrong is one of the most talented endurance athletes in the world.
How would you know if he NEVER competed clean?
Does he have the same VO2Max as Patrick Makau or Wilson Kipsang? No way.
It doesn't matter if you never competed clean. And athletes like Makau and Kipsang have NOTHING to do w/ Lance, since they are 2:03-5 marathoners. We're talking about him running over 40 minutes slower. Plus his vo2 max is quite high...you do realize just b/c an athlete runs super fast doesn't mean their vo2 is higher than the 82 lance has been tested at, right? vo2 max isn't that linear of a predictor of performance.
even if he's been doping since age 15, you have to have a high level of talent to start with to have any chance of becoming a tdf champ. A VERY high level. Doping allows you to train much harder and w/ less need for recovery...it doesn't turn you from a scrub into a great athlete. If you don't understand that, you're going to be hopelessly misinformed any time doping talk comes up.
I could take all the drugs Lance took and chances are I still wouldn't be able to be a professional cyclist -- or, if I was (I did race at an amateur level when I was young), I'd be at the bottom of the barrel. Drugs don't make you good enough; they may, however, make you great.
It's like all of you are insecure about the suggestion that someone wouldn't need a great deal of talent OR dope to run a 2:46. 2:46 just isn't that good, sorry boys. Maybe he was on dope to do it, but it wasn't b/c he wasn't talented enough to do it anyway if he trained right. It's an OK time for a high caliber athlete at best. It's not like he was a football player. You guys keep talking about how "big" he is...dude weighed under 160 lbs when he was racing. That's not big.