Biggest Pro Cycling Myths

[powderpuff]

Cycling the hardest sport?

How about this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKe4EkuhMYE

Not a long race but damn I wouldn't ever enter.

 

[jimmypop]

Cycling the hardest sport?

How about this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKe4EkuhMYE

Not a long race but damn I wouldn't ever enter.

Sadly, that looks more legitimate than cycling.

 

[Black-Balled]

Lance had to earn the Milliion Dollar bonus in '93!

http://www.bicycling.com/tour-de-fr...ce-armstrongs-greatest-tour-de-france-moments :
"...1993, he began showing his first signs of cycling greatness. In June, he took home the $1 million bonus as the winner of the Triple Crown of Cycling (the Thrift Drug Classic in Pittsburgh, the K-Mart West Virginia Classic and the CoreStates USPRO national championship in Philadelphia)."

 

[galaxy1]

"the tour de france is the most interesting cycle race."

i would personally start novice cycling fans on the spring classics, if available.

 

[NashbarShorts]

Not a myth, but I read somewhere that the professional men's sports which are most demanding in terms of fitness are (no order):

Boxing
Cycling
Tennis

Boxing may seem to only go a few rounds, but if you say the training these guys do, it's pretty amazing. Yeah, cyclists might go out for a 6hr training ride, but we don't RUN 10miles a day as well.

Tennis, seems odd, but to go 5sets I guess you do need to be pretty fit.

Cycling was mentioned as the one sport where since you don't have to support your own body weight (sitting on saddle), you can actually push yourself FURTHER than in the other sports (where you reach an exhaustion point and your legs just buckle). Makes sense.

I'm an avid XC skier, but it's just not as "hard" as cycling, even in a marathon event like a 50k. If I crash, I'm not gonna get too hurt. And the descents are just balls fun!

 

[The Hitch]

ESPN compiled this list several years ago, creating some silly formula that ranks different sports based on difficulty. While its a nice idea, ESPN proves they are still in love with the big 4 American sports.

Cycling distance ranks 20th and cycling sprints ranks 27th for those who don't want to follow the link.

Boxing is listed as number 1 (no complaints with that).

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/sportSkills

What that list gives is the variety of skills needed for a sport. In that, boxing is the hardest sport and all the others are above cycling as well since cycling only really needs.

Its easier to learn how to kick a ball well (especially if you are trained from very young age) than it is to learn how to spend hours every day in the red, taking your heart and lungs and legs and often mind to the limit.

the hardest sports are the ones where only 1 skill is needed. If a sport needs many different skills then you can spread out your training time, makes it more enjoyable. Endurance sports like cycling are the hardest because all your competitors spend all their time training endurance. All that time pushing themselves to the limit. All that time training how to experience extreme suffering.
Cycling is the ultimate endurance sport.

 

[The Hitch]

Tennis

I agree that tennis is really hard ( i play it every day) but i will make the point that the top tennis players make the quarter finals, semi finals, finals of every grand slam, all year round.
Our thing only has 3 grand tours, but we have already established that in 2 grand tours in a year is the limit. Some people might do all 3 but will definately not be near the top in all 3.

Also the height helps in tennis. These days those under 180 need not apply, and those under 185 have significant disadvantages. This makes the sport easier for those who meet the height requirments as it means that 1 of the skills required you are naturally born with, and it eliminates a lot of the potential competition (people like nalbandian, hewitt who would have won many many grand slams if they had just an extra 5 cm).

 

[NashbarShorts]

Back to "myths" of cycling....

2003 TdF, stage 12. 47km ITT, which if I recall, LA was beaten pretty soundly by Ullrich. 1min36sec.

After the stage, "hey, it was hard. Jan rode well." It wasn't until the NEXT day that the following MYTH was offered up by the LA camp: Capt. Pharma had suffered dehydration, losing 15 POUNDS of water weight, or "roughly 9% of his body weight."

Anybody have any thoughts on this. This has to be one of the great "myths" of recent Tours. 47km...it's a 1hr. effort for these guys. How the hell does anybody lose 15lbs in ONE HOUR?

I remember debating this w/ my LA-fanboys friends in the following days. I said it was ridiculous. Of course, talking common sense to fanboys never goes well.

 

[NashbarShorts]

Cipo: sex during a race?

Anyone ever hear the story about Cipo stopping mid-race and having "relations" w/ a female supporter by the roadside??

I wonder if this could actually happen. Perhaps in a circuit race, many laps...hottie by the roadside....notice her every lap....next time around, tell your mates to ask the peloton to soft-pedal for a bit while you take a "nature break"

I suppose this could happen if it was early in a long race. Group unmotivated to ride, and those Italians like the "piano" pace anyways...

 

[Maxiton]

Anyone ever hear the story about Cipo stopping mid-race and having "relations" w/ a female supporter by the roadside?

Now this is a myth I like. Were they giving time bonuses that year?

I wonder if this could actually happen.

So this is what they really meant when they called him fastest in the peloton.

 

[Maxiton]

Another myth: Lactate is bad; lactate causes pain.

 

[woundedknee]

Not a fanboy but...

Back to "myths" of cycling....

2003 TdF, stage 12. 47km ITT, which if I recall, LA was beaten pretty soundly by Ullrich. 1min36sec.

After the stage, "hey, it was hard. Jan rode well." It wasn't until the NEXT day that the following MYTH was offered up by the LA camp: Capt. Pharma had suffered dehydration, losing 15 POUNDS of water weight, or "roughly 9% of his body weight."

Anybody have any thoughts on this. This has to be one of the great "myths" of recent Tours. 47km...it's a 1hr. effort for these guys. How the hell does anybody lose 15lbs in ONE HOUR?

I remember debating this w/ my LA-fanboys friends in the following days. I said it was ridiculous. Of course, talking common sense to fanboys never goes well.

...I was at that stage and it was ridiculously hot. I was staying at a hotel 30miles away and cycled there and back - I've never been so dehydrated in my life. While watching the time trial in the town I got my girlfriend to buy 10 x 500ml bottles of water (I didn't want to miss any of the race ) as vendors were running out of water. It was a proper heatwave.

 

[jimmypop]

Back to "myths" of cycling....

2003 TdF, stage 12. 47km ITT, which if I recall, LA was beaten pretty soundly by Ullrich. 1min36sec.

After the stage, "hey, it was hard. Jan rode well." It wasn't until the NEXT day that the following MYTH was offered up by the LA camp: Capt. Pharma had suffered dehydration, losing 15 POUNDS of water weight, or "roughly 9% of his body weight."

Anybody have any thoughts on this. This has to be one of the great "myths" of recent Tours. 47km...it's a 1hr. effort for these guys. How the hell does anybody lose 15lbs in ONE HOUR?

I remember debating this w/ my LA-fanboys friends in the following days. I said it was ridiculous. Of course, talking common sense to fanboys never goes well.

This one didn't even pass the sniff test. I say a botched transfusion led to that disastrous day.

 

[NashbarShorts]

...I was at that stage and it was ridiculously hot. I was staying at a hotel 30miles away and cycled there and back - I've never been so dehydrated in my life. While watching the time trial in the town I got my girlfriend to buy 10 x 500ml bottles of water (I didn't want to miss any of the race ) as vendors were running out of water. It was a proper heatwave.

Right, so you rode twice as far as the pros, and it probably took you 4x as long (assuming 15mph pace). So you put in a 4hr effort. And you also did not have the luxury of team bus, trainers setup under a shade awning, and personal assistants/coaches tending to you.

So let me ask, did YOU lose 15lbs that day?? When you got back to the hotel, did your gf say, "wow, you look GREAT honey -- have you lost weight??"

Myth, myth, myth.

 

[woundedknee]

Right, so you rode twice as far as the pros, and it probably took you 4x as long (assuming 15mph pace). So you put in a 4hr effort. And you also did not have the luxury of team bus, trainers setup under a shade awning, and personal assistants/coaches tending to you.

So let me ask, did YOU lose 15lbs that day?? When you got back to the hotel, did your gf say, "wow, you look GREAT honey -- have you lost weight??"

Myth, myth, myth.

No - just asked me what took me so long and told me that if I could just lose say 15lb and pedal at 90-100rpm I might win the tour one day. I told her not to believe in myths.

 

[hiero2]

My pick would be boxing, what other sport has inflicting potential brain damage ( knock outs) as a desired way to win?
. . .

Football -- American football. You can slam me for including a larger injury picture, but all the protective gear has insured that we have a greater injury rate, that includes potential brain damage. Not to mention a higher percentage of life-damaging doping than cycling (more steroids). Most fights don't end with ko's. Most fighters don't end up with brain damage - these days. Possibly brain damage as a rule was truer in the 1st half of the 20th century - but I've never heard of any stats from that era - just anecdotal tales.

 

[Merckx index]

Football -- American football. You can slam me for including a larger injury picture, but all the protective gear has insured that we have a greater injury rate, that includes potential brain damage. Not to mention a higher percentage of life-damaging doping than cycling (more steroids). Most fights don't end with ko's. Most fighters don't end up with brain damage - these days. Possibly brain damage as a rule was truer in the 1st half of the 20th century - but I've never heard of any stats from that era - just anecdotal tales.

Most elite fighters win more than half their fights by KO, but being KOd isn't the problem. The problem is the accumulation of hits to the head, hundreds in a single fight often. Going the distance generally results in much more trauma than getting knocked out, especially in the early rounds. Many fighters do end up with brain damage--Ali and Freddie Roach are two examples that come to mind, there are many more.

A recent study has found evidence that head trauma can result in symptoms like ALS, which may account in part why athletes seem to get this disease at a higher rate than the rest of the population.

 

[hiero2]

Back to "myths" of cycling....

2003 TdF, stage 12. 47km ITT, which if I recall, LA was beaten pretty soundly by Ullrich. 1min36sec.

After the stage, "hey, it was hard. Jan rode well." It wasn't until the NEXT day that the following MYTH was offered up by the LA camp: Capt. Pharma had suffered dehydration, losing 15 POUNDS of water weight, or "roughly 9% of his body weight."

Anybody have any thoughts on this. This has to be one of the great "myths" of recent Tours. 47km...it's a 1hr. effort for these guys. How the hell does anybody lose 15lbs in ONE HOUR?

I remember debating this w/ my LA-fanboys friends in the following days. I said it was ridiculous. Of course, talking common sense to fanboys never goes well.

I'm not an LA fanboy. But I have lived, and cycled, in the desert (both Nevada and Arizona). This is not, afaik, beyond reasonable expectation. Storing carbos requires water - large quantities of it. {I hope we have a nutritional expert chime in on how much, cuz I forget, but I seem to remember that it was something like 4 to 1 by weight. One oz of food, 4 of h2o.}. Additionally, an intense effort on a hot day can require LARGE quantities of H2O. I recall drinking 2 gallons of water (= approximately 16 lbs) on a regular basis to stay hydrated. If I recall correctly, I read some trivia somewhere that the workers on the Hoover dam would drink up to 10 gallons of water a day. HUGE amounts of water can be sweated out when it is dry or you have some way to evaporate the sweat.

All that aside, I actually agree with your conclusion that something other than dehydration caused the LA bonk.

 

[Libertine Seguros]

Football -- American football. You can slam me for including a larger injury picture, but all the protective gear has insured that we have a greater injury rate, that includes potential brain damage. Not to mention a higher percentage of life-damaging doping than cycling (more steroids). Most fights don't end with ko's. Most fighters don't end up with brain damage - these days. Possibly brain damage as a rule was truer in the 1st half of the 20th century - but I've never heard of any stats from that era - just anecdotal tales.

What about Zesta Punta (aka Jai-Alai)? "sling a hard ball at over 200km/h at a wall and try to catch it as it rebounds at your face"...

 

[hiero2]

Most elite fighters win more than half their fights by KO, but being KOd isn't the problem. The problem is the accumulation of hits to the head, hundreds in a single fight often. Going the distance generally results in much more trauma than getting knocked out, especially in the early rounds. Many fighters do end up with brain damage--Ali and Freddie Roach are two examples that come to mind, there are many more.

A recent study has found evidence that head trauma can result in symptoms like ALS, which may account in part why athletes seem to get this disease at a higher rate than the rest of the population.

Yes, accumulation of hits - definitely causative - no question there, mate. So you must be thinking of something like this:

Or this:

Tongue in cheek. I couldn't find a reference, but I do remember a ranking of injuries incurred by sport. American football was #1. Basketball was #2. Boxing didn't come in until #5 or something. My point is that boxing is highly over-rated as an injurious sport, and that most of that comes from an emotional response to a seemingly rational argument - as stated "what other sport etc".

From the same page http://www.scientificpsychic.com/fitness/sport_injuries.html where I found those pix, and where you will also find a boxer getting his bell rung, you will find this statement:

A 2009 study commissioned by the National Football League reported that Alzheimer's disease or other similar memory-related diseases appear in the league's former players at 19 times the normal rate for men ages 30 through 49. Other studies have found that football players who suffered concussions were more likely to suffer from depression. In general, it is a good idea to avoid sports that expose the head to repeated impacts, such as boxing, soccer, and football.

American football is the most violent of contact sports, where impact and injury are desired with every play. Basketball ranks very highly in terms of emergency room injuries, but not so many brain or spinal cord injuries. Cycling is also extremely high in emergency room visits - but not necessarily brain or spinal cord.
http://www.nyssf.org/statistics1998.html

And, if you can figure out how to make it work for you:
http://www.cpsc.gov/LIBRARY/neiss.html

And, btw, the photo of the boxer on that page with the pix is actually an mma fight (mixed martial arts), where, I'm convinced, you have to be pumping mainline steroids to compete, and the rules are a lot more like bare-knuckle stuff at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Real mauling. Not that I don't watch on occasion, since I was once a karateka.

 

[Merckx index]

Tongue in cheek. I couldn't find a reference, but I do remember a ranking of injuries incurred by sport. American football was #1. Basketball was #2. Boxing didn't come in until #5 or something.

First, there are injuries, and there are head injuries. Boxers do not often break their arms, legs or shoulders.

But more important, there are many more people playing football than boxing. If you look at brain injuries as a proportion of number of participants, I'm quite sure that boxing is right up there with football. And not to downplay what you said about football (American if not soccer also), because, yes, players on the line in that sport do suffer constant blows to the head. In fact, the same study that showed ALS symptoms in athletes found that the symptoms began much later in boxers.

 

[Merckx index]

I should have added that any list of injuries misses the point, because we're not talking here about injuries that affect the athlete while he's playing the sport. We're talking about long-term damage to the brain that doesn't show up until decades after he retires.

It's fairly rare that a boxer is hospitalized or otherwise incapacitated after a fight. The real problem comes during old age.

 

[velosopher54]

Football -- American football. You can slam me for including a larger injury picture, but all the protective gear has insured that we have a greater injury rate, that includes potential brain damage. Not to mention a higher percentage of life-damaging doping than cycling (more steroids). Most fights don't end with ko's. Most fighters don't end up with brain damage - these days. Possibly brain damage as a rule was truer in the 1st half of the 20th century - but I've never heard of any stats from that era - just anecdotal tales.

We're talking the hardest sport, not the most injurious. I mean, American footballers play for only 12 minutes per game with lots of rests, including a halftime. Imagine stopping to take breaks during a Tour stage, and stopping halfway through for an extended break.

 

[Cobblestoned]

Just watch at the energy burned. Can anything top cycling ?
I think boxing ?
But when you crash in cycling at any speed, it can be harder than a Klitschko-punch.


And I think I heard on german Eurosport, that (only watching the energy burned) one Tour de France is equal to 60? soccergames.

 

[redtreviso]

motocross if very demanding,,and dangerous,,and injurious ,,especially in the old days of 40 min motos..

God