Miguel_garcia83 said:
we are not jealous, we just wonder why he got this change, and we dont see any other reason than ones based on doping, because there are no miracles in sport, and the differences are not that huge
Cannot see any reasons other than doping? Maybe this will help to shed some light on the subject:
Q&A w/Chris Carmichael:
Q:You seem to peak Lance so perfectly for the Tour every year.
A: It's pretty simple, but a lot of hard work. Lance is a 365, 24/7 athlete. There are virtually no days during the year he's not training. It really comes down to the fact his opponents have such varied ranges of physical conditioning throughout the year. It is incredibly stressful, both mentally and physically, for an athlete to attempt going from a terrible condition to a thoroughbred repeatedly. He's in good condition and he's going to be in better condition come the Tour de France. But in any one point of the year he's never far away from his peak condition and he's basically always training. As I said earlier, he's a 365, 24/7 athlete.
Q:Lance has developed a high cadence in the past few years. Is that a factor in his Tour success?
A: He was a bit of a masher-it was something we always worked really hard on, to get him away from that style. His Directeur Sportif, Johan Bruyneel, really stressed this when he first became Lance's team director. High cadence is something well suited to Lance. There's a lot going on in pedal cadence. Faster the pedal cadence at higher wattages means you are reducing the watts per pedal stroke the athlete is putting out.
Q: Do you think that going through the ordeal of cancer makes an athlete tougher?
A: Tough is a hard thing to define. I think what happens, probably more importantly, is that if you're an elite athlete and you make it through the disease, and there is no guarantee you will, you now realise you've got a second chance and you don't take things for granted. I think that's the main thing. When Lance got back to racing professionally I think he realised, 'Hey, I'm not going to take any day for granted, I'm going to live each day to its fullest, because you know what, it may be my last.' We all live with the expectation we're going to continue to be alive tomorrow, next week, six weeks, six months, six years from now, but somebody who's battled with a disease like cancer understands, there are no guarantees they will be around in six weeks or six months. So, when they make it through, they kind of live each day to its fullest and I think that is the major driver for them.
Q:There's been a lot of discussion that Lance's body shape is different since cancer. Do you think he has changed all that much?
A: Lance was always a gifted athlete. Before cancer he did little to develop his gift. After cancer, he focused intensely on developing his gift. The other thing of benefit is he lost a lot of upper body mass from the amount of inactivity due to the cancer. That's favourable for an event like the Tour de France. And he's maturing. Let's not forget who Lance Armstrong was when he was 19, 20, and 21 years old. At 21 years old, in 1993, he finished 18 seconds ahead of Miguel Indurain to win the professional World Road Championships. There's been only one rider ever in the history of cycling to win the Worlds at such a young age. He has won World Cups, he's won Classics, he won big races well before he had cancer and he was doing this in his early 20's. At 28, 29, with the maturity of his body, he's only going to be stronger.
- Lance Armstrong's heart is almost a third larger than that of an average man. During those rare moments when he is at rest, it beats about thirty-two times a minute—
- By 1987, when he was sixteen, he was also winning bicycle races. That year, he was invited to the Cooper Institute, in Dallas, which was one of the first centers to recognize the relationship between fitness and aerobic conditioning...Armstrong was given a test called the VO2 Max, which is commonly used to assess an athlete's aerobic ability: it measures the maximum amount of oxygen the lungs can consume during exercise. His levels were the highest ever recorded at the clinic. (Currently, they are about eighty-five millilitres per kilogram of body weight; a healthy man might have a VO2 Max of forty.)
-Chris Carmichael, who became his coach when Armstrong was still a teen-ager, told me that even then Armstrong was among the most remarkable athletes he had ever seen. Not only has his cardiovascular strength always been exceptional; his body seems specially constructed for cycling. His thigh bones are unusually long, for example, which permits him to apply just the right amount of torque to the pedals.
- Although Armstrong was talented, he wasn't very disciplined. He acted as if he had nothing to learn.
- He would get out in front and set the pace. He would burn up the field, and when other riders came alive he would be done, spent." Still, Armstrong did well in one-day races, in which bursts of energy count as much as patience or tactical precision. In 1991, after several years of increasingly impressive performances, he became the U.S. amateur champion, and the next year he turned pro. In 1993, he became the youngest man ever to win a stage in the Tour de France; he won the World Road Championships the same year.
- Armstrong now says that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to him. Before becoming ill, he didn't care about strategy or tactics or teamwork—and nobody (no matter what his abilities) becomes a great cyclist without mastering those aspects of the sport.
- As Carmichael pointed out to me, Armstrong had always been gifted, but "genetically he is not alone. He is near the top but not at the top. I have seen people better than Lance that never go anywhere. Before Lance had cancer, we argued all the time. He never trained right. He just relied on his gift. He would do what you asked for two weeks, then flake off and do his own thing for a month or two.
If you need more...
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?020715fa_fact1[/url]
