I am currently awaiting delivery of some statistical analysis of for the 1989
GregLeMond TDF route and a comparison to 2003 Armstrong TDF route.
While awaiting this data, a colleague has kindly reminded me of the
excellent site
www.cyclinghalloffame.com.
For all the overly emotive Armstrong fans, this site provides some more objective analysis regarding their hero and illustrates the dearth in his palmares and his lack of cycling pedigree.
This site applies a rating to all the major cycling races in the cycling calendar.
Applying an equal rating each year to the placement of cyclists,
this site calculates that Eddy Merckx has a rating 21,730 points.
Way, way ahead of Hinault, Anquetil and Indurain etc.
Our Texan friend has a rating of 6930 points and is rated at position 10 on the alltime list, as weighted on the selection of race results in the cycling calendar.
With 1200 points weighted for a TDF victory - 6000 points accumulated in the TDF, account for 86% of his overall rating.
Factor in his (one day) victory in the World Championships (weighted at 400 points)
and you have a total contribution to his palmares of 92.3%.
The other 530 points come from the rest of his, er, impressive palmares.
WWW.Cyclinghalloffame.com shows, in statistically terms, what I have said all
along : 1992-1996 casts a long shadow over the Texan’s career from 1998- onwards.
From his debut in 1992, he managed to contribute only 530 points to his all time rating.
Jan Ullrich, by comparison, is listed at 19 place on the all time list : at 5300 points.
His quality palmares contains victories in the TDF, Vuelta, his 5 second place placements in the TDF, Olympic Road Race title.
In addition, if you analysis his palmares, his results are consistent from his debut in 1996.
For me this is the crux of this whole discussion on this thread.
Something changed in Lance Armstrong between 1996-1998.
His fans advocate that his brush with death, training,weighing food etc can adequately explain his form since 1998.
I don’t happen to believe this – and statistically, it’s been proven that he’s not
even in the same universe as regards performance comparisons (1992-1996 compared to 1998-to now).
His pedigree (or rather his lack of pedigree) casts this shadow of doubt.
His fans maintain that he was a great talent from day 1.
He may well have been – but statistically, it’s been shown that he never delivered on that talent, from day 1.
His explanations concerning this apparent improvement, simply don’t ring true.
He was a very ambitious professional from day one and he was trying his damndest in those years to try to win (1992 onwards)
(read David Walsh’s book Inside the Tour DeFrance published in 1994)
It’s up to everyone to judge Armstrong’s career on it’s merits