Originally Posted by
chrisvu05
Thanks for the clip.
I thought you were mistaken, I was wrong obviously.
Then you go too far though. All that I said was that I couldn't find any other references than wikipedia.
I knew Pharmstrong had paid the UCI 500k but it was another poster that brought that up. It's no secret that the UCI, at least at that time, was a corrupt organization.
Jeez, a sprint triathlon. In that video it looks like a NYRRC race in Central Park. 52:39, that's even shorter than Olympic distance which I think has a 10k run. I don't follow triathlon except casually. So a sprint is what, a 750m swim, 20km bike and 5k run? Was that the distance 20 years ago? Obviously, no matter how you break down the splits that's very fast, but guys who are winning the local 5 k's in the 15 minute area are very fast too. There are a lot of these people.
Do you know how fast a 4 minute mile is? Incredibly fast, maybe 1 in a million fast, but literally hundreds if not over a thousand people have done it, who actually knows how many people have run this incredibly fast? It's done by college athletes quite often and hardly anyone knows the names of these people.
So do you want to say that Armstrong's sprint triathlon championships are on the same level as a 4 minute mile? I wouldn't.
No one is saying it's not impressive, but it's not the indicator of potential athletic immortality that you believe it to be. Jim Ryan was running insanely fast miles in HS or even Alan Webb for that matter, and hardly anyone outside of T&F fans knows who those guys are. Sure Ryan was famous for a short time, but no one talks about him now except people who follow politics very closely. Pharmstrong will be remembered by cycling fans many years from now and he doesn't deserve to be.
This achievement of Armstrong's is on par with making it to MLB. Very impressive, but there are probably 700 guys each year on MLB rosters. Moonlight Graham and Crash Davis made it and no one is saying they're athletic legends.
You're giving entirely too much weight to "sprint triathlon." I wonder who won sprint triathlon National championships from '91 to '95?
All sprint triathlon means is that the guy has talent. So do hundreds if not thousands of people every year.
I'd venture to guess that just about every male runner in a 5k competing in college is running faster than, 16:30, I'm even talking on the community college level. That's decent speed for any normal person, but as for being the best, it's laughably slow. There are literally hundreds and hundreds of college athletes competing in college running, cross country or track who easily have this kind of talent.
If you're impressed by this kind of thing, the only thing you're accomplishing is
showing how good you are.