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The ESPN comment piece is here: http://sports.espn.go.com/…/041230
Don’t click the back button when you get there, the column is called Page 2, you haven’t missed the first bit.
He may win award after award – including, the latest, the AP Male Athlete of the Year third time in a row – but Bayless reckons Lance Armstrong is not enough of an all-rounder to warrant the ‘best in the world’ tag.
Disagree with Bayless and you’re a ‘nut’.
Baseball’s Ichiro – he plays for the Seattle Mariners – is a better global athlete than Lance Armstrong, according to Bayless, because he has better "throwing ability than Armstrong."
Bayless is at pains to point out he believes Armstrong is the"world’s greatest endurance athlete" but because he can’t throw a ball he shouldn’t be voted best athlete in journo polls. Go figure.
But here’s where the marathon-running, ‘e-rant’-hating agent provocateur starts to get low and dirty: he lambasts our totally healthy fetish for wearing skin-tight Lycra:
"Cyclists are the world’s most zealous sports cult. Unlike marathoners, cyclists battle an inferiority complex. They cannot stand anyone suggesting they’re not superior athletes. It’s as if their manhood has been questioned. Maybe they’re just self-conscious about those Euro riding costumes."
