pgreene

i posted this on another thread, but thought i'd share with all. it's an interesting and insightful look at the world of professional cycling.
/sarcasm

i found the line about "lets see him try it with someone playing defense" particularly funny. almost as funny as the beat this guy normally covers.

https://www.msnbc.com/news/785267.asp

SteveE

Go to the site and vote on whether or not you agree with this idiot.

pgreene

or, take it a step further (i did) and write them (msnbc and the writer) a nice letter saying how you disagree with them. he write for the boston globe, i believe. address on their site.

bac

So far, almost no one agrees with this fool. Here's a quote from his article:

"Praise Armstrong’s grit, his determination and his cardio-vascular system. But don’t try to convince me he’s the world’s greatest athlete. First try to convince me he’s an athlete at all."
-Ron Borges

This quote alone is very telling in terms of the writer's obvious lack of knowledge. Lance Armstrong is not even an athlete?

Okay ... now try and convince me that this Ron Borges is a sports writer.

SteveE

He writes about "boxing", for god's sake!

pgreene

as i said before, my favorite line was "could he do it if someone was playing defense?" clearly, our friend here is a moron, and should be told so much by those of us who understand that cycling, especially on that level, involves a bit more than just "pumping your legs up and down." i don't even need to do an interval ride tonight. my heart rate spikes when i even think about this idiot.

oh, and steve, don't forget the NFL.

bentrox!

Do I care how Ron Borges defines "athlete"?
Not!

lotek 

I read about this on the Serotta Phorum,
I wrote to the ******* and posed the following:
If what Lance is doing isn't athletic, lets see
him (the writer) get on a bike and ride 2000+
miles over a 3 week period.
So far he hasn't answered.

Marty

RegularGuy

Not only does this alleged sports writer show a complete lack of understanding of the sport of cycling, but he is incredibly parochial in his outlook.

"A few skinny men and women seem quite excited about this prospect, although Armstrong has done it with the kind of regularity that has made more than a few advocates of this fringe sport wonder if he’s pedaling on premium fuel while his competitors are (mostly) using regular."

He shows no knowledge of a world beyond the shores of the United States. He parrots unfounded accusations. He apparently does no research. He is easily dismissed.

Is Lance the world's greatest athlete? That's debatable. Good debate requires some attention to the facts. This is not good debate.

RegularGuy

Boxing, brutal as it is, may be the purest form of sport. Two people each set out to prove that they are better than the other. With minimal equipment and few rules, they pummel each other until the point is proved.

Now golf...that's another matter.

pgreene

i think we can all agree that we disagree on what's a sport. but this guy said lance is not an athlete. that's what blows my mind. That, and the arrogance of US journalists in dismissing out-of-hand the second most popular sporting event on the planet in the same manner they dismiss the first (i'm a soccer fan too. tell me i should've been born european!).

and simply because this guy was so uninformed, i took it upon myself to try to inform him some. i hope others do the same.

SteveE

RegularGuy - I used to like to watch guys who really could box -- Sugar Ray Leonard, Tommie Hearns, Marvin Hagler, etc. Welterweight and below are the only boxers actually worth watching. I could care less about two brutes standing toe-to-toe punching the lights out of each other. I dunno, there don't seem to be have been any real heavyweight "boxers" since Ali and Teofile Stevenson (sp?) from Cuba.

bikeman

I read the article too and was truly astounded that any "Sports writer??" could hold such opinions about cycling in general and Lance Armstrong specifically. Unbelievable!! He obviously knows nothing about the sport or life outside of his little US world of team sports.

It seems like every year during the Tour some know-nothing sports guy spouts off about how cyclists are not really athletes. I remember similar comments made during Greg LeMond's Tour wins. I think I even heard that Greg challenged one top sports writer to a bike ride just to show him how tough it really is. I don't believe the guy ever took him up on it.

The most disturbing thing is that the editor at MSNBC allowed it to pass onto the site without any apparent editorial overview. I think these sites are so desparate for material that they will take any kind of crap they can find.

A friend of mine recently told me about an article he'd read that defined a great athlete strictly on upper body strength and never took into account lower torso or aerobic capabilities. He was judging it by what he saw in baseball and football and we all know that a lot of that strength and bulk is suspected to come from some type of chemical enhancement. Why must so many US sports writers judge the world's athletes strictly on their own narrowly focused knowledge?

I can't stand it anymore. MSNBC is at the bottom of the list for me from now on.

Coppi51

hahaha...take away the clubs...and its just walking

green lion

25658 responses, 4% agreed with him, which is a little over 1000 people. This means about 23500 people DO NOT agree with him.
I guess it is somewhat normal that Armstrong will have "enemies". Just as the sport of cycling will have its "enemies". I for one DO NOT consider football players "athletes". I hate football!
I would say Ron Borges or whatever his name is should stay out of the world of cycling and go to where he belongs, learn how to play golf, but that's probably above his "athletic" capacities anyway!

Jack Russell

Great Rebuttal
https://www.dailypeloton.com/displayarticle.asp?pk=1324

Joe Gardner

https://www.msnbc.com/news/785614.asp

https://www.msnbc.com/news/785627.asp

Anybody here get published?

moo2

Wel, after that choice bit of drivel, all I can say is that it must be nice to be a paid troll.

Weasel

IMHO golfers should also pummel each other with their clubs.

Is this guy a late April Fool joke or what? How can the blithering idiot actually write that LA is no athelete? I'm sorry, but these guys are atheletes - just judging by their heartrates alone (180+) over a sustained and often long period of time. Pumping your legs up and down - for God's sake. Someone do us all a favour and put him out of his misery.

What a prat!

bikeman

I think if you do some research on this "Sports Writer"(?), ron Borges, you will find that this isn't the first time he stuck his foot in his mouth. Apparently he and others of his ilk were banned from a Boston radio station (complicated politics) for using an ethnic slur against a baseball player. This guy is a world-class jerk along the lines of Howard Stern and others. His mission in life is to be controversial and piss people off.

Here is the article.Read it here

Ignore him and maybe he'll go away. This whole thing is designed to draw people to the MSNBC site and is manipulative in the extreme. So goes the world of the media and the internet. He's probably getting paid based on the number of hits on his column. I hate to think that I've contributed in any way to his financial future. He really needs to be dope-slapped and then made to ride a bike up the Alps.

pgreene

i didn't get published, but i notice many responders used some of the words i used, i.e. "drivel." i can't tell y'all how much i'm enjoying watching this guy get torched!

moo2

I started to write a nasty letter, but then I changed my mind.

This guy and his story are nothing more than a classic internet troll. This exploited one of the oldest tricks in the book: Say something so ludicrous, that people take notice, and respond.

This was simply a troll to generate traffic to the msnbc.com site. And the little ocnflicting opinion story they ran later, was just to quell the PC people out there.

If you ask me, I say this fool doesn't deserve our time or energy. Do a search on deja.com, in the rec.bicycling newsgroups, and you'll see some interesting stories showing that this isn't the first time he's trolled the world for a response.

I really hate people who do things like this just to get a rise out of people like us.

Oh, and just to go along with the trend, I'd love to see this schmuck try to get his hairy a$$ up Mt. Ventoux, and then tell us it's just pushing pedals.

roadbuzz

It worked. So now, there's this:
https://www.msnbc.com/news/786724.asp

And while at the site, I discovered This and this.

fubar5

Well, if he doesn't think Lance is an athlete, I don't think baseball, football, or basketball are sports, I think they are games that take athletic ability.
All Lance does is pump his legs? Whatever!!!!

RonH

This Ron Borges guy is an idiot!! He says in the article:He has stronger legs than me, yet most of my non-cycling friends "praise" my meager cycling feats.
Speed - I can't pedal at the same cadence as Lance and for that length of time.
Agility and hand-eye coordination are both required to ride in a fast moving pack of riders.
Mental toughness and the ability to make your body do things that defy description are foreign to me.

Like I said, what an idiot!!