Le Grand Bornand, France (GenevaLunch) – Younger men are getting ahead of 37-year-old Lance Armstrong, seven-time winner of the Tour de France, who slipped into fourth place overall Wednesday 22 July as riders took on the challenge of five mountain passes. The two Schleck brothers from Luxembourg, Andy and Frank, who ride for the Saxo bank team are now behind leader Alberto Contador in the overall rankings. Armstrong could not maintain the pace but came back strongly later as he stormed up the final mountain.
Bradley Wiggins, British three time Olympic champion, started the day in third place but slipped back to sixth, although this was not clear to television spectators who were forced to watch an interview with President Sarkozy on the Tour while the riders came in.
Armstrong’s fight to win can be viewed another way, reports Minnpost:
Stacy Ingraham, a University of Minnesota specialist in exercise physiology who spoke to Armstrong’s longtime doctor, has analyzed how and why the older athlete’s body is able to stay near the front of the pack despite years of difference in age. There are two schools of thought, that he either has terrific genes or he trains harder than anyone else. It’s a bit of both, she argues. One thing is clear, she says: Armstrong is a man with a big heart.
Race details, New York Times
This work by genevalunch.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
News story, GenevaLunch, 22 July 2009.
Filed under: Sports
Tags: Alberto Contador, Andy Schleck, bike racing, Bradley Wiggins, cycling, France, Frank Schleck, Lance Armstrong, Minnpost, Nicolas Sarkozy, Stacy Ingraham, Tour de France, University of Minnesota
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 22nd, 2009 at 9:22 pm
[...] Le Grand Bornand, France (GenevaLunch) – Younger men are getting ahead of 37-year-old Lance Armstrong, seven-time winner of the Tour de France, who slipped into fourth place overall Wednesday 22 July as riders took on the challenge of five mountain passes. The two Schleck brothers from Luxembourg, Andy and Frank, who ride for the Saxo bank team are now behind leader Alberto Contador in the overall rankings. Armstrong could not maintain the pace but came back strongly later as he stormed up Read more at http://genevalunch.com/2009/07/22/armstrong-may-not-be-winning-le-tour-but-what-a-body/ [...]
July 24th, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I did not speak to Lance Armstrong’s “longtme doctor.” I attended a conference in which his vital stats retrieved from a performance lab in Texas were given to the audience by the testing exercise physiologist.
July 24th, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Thanks for the clarification and correction – and my apologies for getting it wrong. It’s a subject that has interested a lot of us, from athletes to just plain aging people, and I think we’ve found your input interesting.