Voodoo76

Perhaps, perhaps not. You are basing your whole argument on an assumption. Power to weight really matters.

smarkinson

furiousferret

Cycling is about having a massive V02 Max and Lactate Threshold. Basketball is about being tall. Less than 20 players under 6 feet have played in the NBA. One out of every 4 people in the US over 7 feet either play or played in the NBA.

sgtdirt

not one cyclist, NBA, NFL athlete on the list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superstars

sgtdirt

on this list..different story.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supers...tes_Superstars

still no cyclist though.

bengreen79

63"? There was only one NBA player who was 63". Muggsy Bogues.

Homebrew01

That's a bit much to expect of an 11 year old. Good way to discourage him.

Homebrew01

Because it's not relevant.

69chevy

Thanks.

Homebrew01

I was a cat 2 also. No, I could not have made the pro peloton. I think that if I had done things differently, I could have been slightly better, from a lousy 2 to a half-way decent 2. That's about it.
You realize the difference when you race with top guys. When Davis Phinney and Harvey Nitz showed up, the question was how many laps would I last before getting dropped, not if I could beat them.

We also had a promising junior on our team. 1st year senior he started placing & winning races. Next year, a bigger team lured him away. 2 years later, rode on LeMond's team in the Giro D'Italia ..... just a whole different class.

colnago62

Basketball and football players relate more to the speed events at the velodrome more than the road. Some of our country's best sprinters came from a football background. Bill Walton used to race at the velodrome outside of Porrland, Oregon.

colnago62

My friend's brother rode for Garmin and Giant/Shimano. He was a domestic. He was making six figures.

growlerdinky

Evelyn Stevens

redfooj

don't forget aerodynamic handlebars and drafting in a 200-pack!

PepeM

Like those baseball players right. And those race car drivers.

baribari

Mostly it's because the peleton moves WAAAAY faster than any single rider could for those sort of distances. But the ability to put out 400+ watts for an hour basically comes down to genetics and years of dedicated training since childhood.

therhodeo

Indurain was 74" tall. You're as bad at math as you are logic.

ColaJacket

For the most part, I don't see athletes that play basketball or football being the type that would do well at cycling, due to the sizes of the average participant.

On the other hand, I could see someone that was cut from the HS football or basketball team being pretty good at cycling. As the reason why they could have been cut, could have just been that they were not beefy and/or tall enough to play those sports at the HS level and above. Someone 5'7" and 125# or so would be too small to play HS football or basketball, but that lack of size would help them in cycling.

Now, for track, tennis, baseball, and wrestling the smaller size would not be as much of a disadvantage, as those sports are either more skilled based, or have weight classes. And quickness is more important than sheer speed. Now, we'd have to look at muscle groups to tell how much overlap those sports have with cycling.

GH

Dan333SP

Maybe this is relevant, maybe not.

My high school's big rival when I was growing up typically had better athletes because they recruited from all over the city for sports, while we just went with whoever was admitted on academic grounds.

While I was in HS, they recruited Sean Taylor to play football. I played against him, and he was clearly a man amongst boys. He crushed us and was physically clearly superior to everyone else on the field with speed and size and talent. They won the state championship, he went on to play for UM and would have been an NFL hall of famer if not for his untimely murder.

That same HS also recruited a super-talented runner for their cross country team a few years later, Andrew Talansky. Much skinnier and with great endurance, he won a ton of cross country races and then took up cycling in the offseason. He ended up being recruited by a college cycling team, won the national championship the next year, and has now made a name for himself at the TdF as a pro tour rider.

Point is- Andrew ran from a young age and knew he wanted to participate in endurance sports. He didn't try out for his school's football team and get cut, he specialized in his preferred discipline long before he got recruited. Same story with Sean. He played peewee football and excelled, and he focused on that for the rest of his life. Both of them had genetic predispositions to excel at their chosen activities. Sean would maybe have been a decent amateur sprinter on a bike if he'd taken that up from a young age, but he would never have been able to make it to the professional level, even if he'd worked just as hard as Andrew.

ColaJacket

Agree.

There have been a few Pro players that have been drafted or played in multiple professional sports.

Deion Sanders, Brian Jordan, Bo Jackson, Dave Winfield, Tom Glavine (drafted in hockey)

I'm sure that there are more, but this list is extremely small. And these guys are very gifted athletes, and less than 1% are good enough to play or get drafted in multiple sports.

GH

Dan333SP

Right, even Jordan was just a mediocre minor league baseball player when he tried to give that a shot. Everyone says Lebron James could be a professional football player if he spent a couple weeks practicing. I don't think that's true, there is so much more to going pro in any given sport than basic athleticism.

therhodeo

Lebron whines when he gets touched. Me thinks there's not a football player hiding in there.

kc0bbq

In the ESPN article about Barry Bonds sponsoring a women's team that went around a bit ago was a description of the first time he tried to ride the new road bike he got himself after retiring.

It goes exactly like I would expect, not as you would. He thought it would be easy, but I think now he'd be the first to admit he isn't going to be fast relative to the fast guys.

Someone here did the trip that Andy Hampsten runs that includes Stelvio. One of the posts was this great story of Hampsten riding up and down the road up the pass, no handed carrying an armload of water bottles not even winded checking on all his riders who were suffering away. He's in his 50s and long retired.

If money is an indicator of how good of an athlete you are, Donald Trump must be bleeping amazing.

redfooj

good point

BillyD

Many, many of you guys need to stick with cycling, because you don't know squat about the ball sports.