Just how amazing is this guy? Lance will go to bed tonight knowing he is walking away from his sport with 7 consecutive tour-de-Frances....a shattering record.

Where does he rank among the greatest atheletes of all time?

Pretty damn high.

Allez Lance!

Obviously the fact that he beat cancer and came back to even race through the incredibly draining tour is phenominal.

The fact that he won it was phenominal.

The fact that he came back and won it again was phenominal.

The fact that he won it 5 times was incrediably phenominal.

And now that he is going to win its 7th...well I think it signifies that he is the greatest athelete of all time.

'greatest athlete of all time?!'
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i can tell you're not a big follower of cycling... yes coming back from cancer is a really great thing! but within fans of cycling there's a very valid arguement saying he may not be the greatset cyclist let along 'greatest athlete of all time.'

The thing about Lance was he only really raced the Tour de France he shunned other races & saved most, if not all of his energy to the French tour... if you look at other great riders of the past, as well as winning the tour de France they where also winning the tour of Italy & tour of Spain ontop of the French tour all in the same year!... doing a tour is very energy zapping, remember! look at this years race ivan Basso was running out of energy at some stages because he did another tour not so long ago.

don't get me wrong i'm not a hater i'm a big fan of his! i had a tear in my eye last weekend, i knew it was an end of an era! in the history of the tour de france yes he's the greatest but in the history of cyling in a whole he's 'one of the greatest greatest'

put it this way if legends of the past only concentrated on the french tour they would have probably won it 10 times!!

he's still a legend though.

Originally posted by Awesome_Man
The thing about Lance was he only really raced the Tour de France he shunned other races & saved most, if not all of his energy to the French tour... if you look at other great riders of the past, as well as winning the tour de France they where also winning the tour of Italy & tour of Spain ontop of the French tour all in the same year!

Quite true. On the other hand, Merckx and Hinault were competing against riders that had participated in the other big races just like they had, so they were all equally tired. Armstrong's major competitors also concentrated mainly on the TdF as well, so relative to his competition, he's had roughly the same schedule.

Isn't he the one that left his wife who helped him through his cancer for some stupid bitch because he became famous and got rich? Yeah I respect him for what he's been able to do "sports" wise, but from a personal standpoint, the guys a stupid jackass.

Do you know that for a fact?.....or just speculating based on the fact that he left her and is with a more famous woman now?

sounds like speculation to me. I've heard that he left her for the more famous woman (Cheryl Crow) and i've heard that she divorced him because she couldn't handle the attention and that he left her because she had no love for him.

Anyways.............if the personal lives of celebrities (athletes, actors, musicians, etc) were how we are supposed to judge them then 98% or more would be despised with a firey hatred.
Judge them off their accomplishments, not off how their marriages go.

Very good point. Something as petty as his love life has nothing to do with his athleticism...but OD did point that out.

He has alot of heart and desire to go out and win 7 years in a row but what is more amazing is in 7 years none of the other riders in the tour de france could beat him

That's the same thing, I think. lol.