Originally Posted by
tomato coupe
I'm only going by what he wrote when he clarified his position. Are you now saying that cycling at an above-average level is not the equivalent level of competency as playing tennis at an above average level? In that case, you're defining "above average" differently for two sports.
No I'm not saying that. Not even close.
Originally Posted by
tomato coupe
It would be about the same, actually. I have the same reaction to riders who are erratic and can't pull smoothly in a pace line, as I do to tennis players that are erratic and have poor shot selection. To be honest, however, lower level tennis players rarely scare me as much as lower level cyclists.
I'm going to go ahead and call BS on this.
I don't get why this is so difficult for some people to grasp. Some sports have a steeper learning curve than others. Mike Woods became a pro cyclist a couple of years after he started riding and was on the World Tour a couple years after that. He could do this because his w/kg mattered far more than his lack of skill. He certainly wouldn't have been able to succeed as an elite mountain biker so quickly. A track star can become a good wide receiver pretty quickly, he can't become a quarterback. No golfer ever was able to be a pro after only a couple of years. High skill sports take years to develop. Road cycling is not a high skill sport. It just isn't.