Originally Posted by
Maelochs
Minus Seven was an incredible specimen, but he also had by far the most sophisticated doping program.
That's the thing about Lance... he wasn't an incredible specimen. Not within the tiny, tiny right-hand tail of the human-being-riding-a-bicycle distribution where every single person who's ever been paid to do it hangs out. In the upper 10-15% of that however-many-sigma slice, but by no means the physical specimen that we saw in the early Naughties.
Without that "by far the most sophisticated doping program," he would have been a better version of the rider he was in the mid-1990s. World Road Champion Lance Armstrong never wins a Tour de France. More Kelly than LeMond, ya know? (Not that he would have been "the next Sean Kelly," because there can be only one, but when he was being touted as "the next LeMond," just about everyone was rolling their eyes.)
I'll say it flat out: If either of these things were possible, which they weren't, an undoped Lance Armstrong could not have won a clean Tour de France. Paris-Nice? Milan - San Remo? Another rainbow jersey? Maybe even a Giro or Vuelta in a weird year? Yeah, I can see all of those. But the Tour? Nope. Not buying it.
--Shannon