Subject:  a sports and/or political riddle |
Author:
schilda
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Date Posted: 01:44:09 07/23/04 Fri
from Daily Peloton <a rel=nofollow target=_blank href="http://www.voy.com/75098/43307.html">http://www.voy.com/75098/43307.html</a>
Rob -- this thread could turn nasty -- so I thot I would give it life over here -- I take particular exception to the implications of "Dictators were never too popular in Europe." By my inference, the author seems to imply dictators are popular in the USA. I just don't see that. At least we never had the divine right of kings over here.
Couple that with the assertions that Lance Armstrong should somehow not try so hard in the TdF, and I am at a loss to understand some sports fans. Quite often, sports casters will say team A needs team B to beat team C so Team A gets to play team D rather than Team C in the next round. It is nearly always about someone else not winning, isn't it, among you males? Isn't that what sports (and war) and mega-mergers are about?
Anyway, if this is seen as an attempt to hijack your message board, just delete the thread in your beloved dictatorial personage.
markruss:>>Yes, or at least the babelfish version. Did I assert
>>something that is inconsistent with what he said?
>>Either way, the main thing I was responding to was the
>>part about riding this way making them unpopular in
>>Europe.
>
Keiser:>It's not a question of panache. I don't think that
>this is what the French understand by that word
>panache.
>Lance gave them the opinion that he wanted that
>victory because he didn't want Kloeden to win it. I
>assume that this is Jalabert's problem. The way he
>returned to Kloeden and threw his bike across the line
>as if to say: "no, you're not going to win this" .
>
>Jalabert says (I'm paraphrasing quite a bit here): he
>didn't need to do so. It's been clear for quite some
>time that Lance is going to win this tour and he has
>quite a few stage victories and he's going to have the
>opportunity to dominate Basso in the coming TT. This
>seemed like a victory not just to win it but to
>prevent another guy from winning something.
>I know that some might argue that this is the point of
>sport: trying to win things but if you're already such
>a big winner...this seems like being greedy to some
>people.
>
>I don't think that Lance did anything wrong, by the
>way. He's clearly the best and it's his right to win
>everything he can. I just didn't like the way he came
>back to Kloeden but it's not a wrong thing to do.
DJ: Up to yesterday there was always an explanation to be found for him grabbing the win at all costs, there was none for yesterday. Yesterday's win was all about retaliation and sheer dominance. That he would never become a darling of the french is clear, but exploits like that will make him unpopular for eternity.
Those antics, which also made Merckx non too popular (and earned him a knock off his bike), never go down too well with the europeans. Armstrongs and Landis' comments post-stage show that the whole thing was simply down to anger that T-Mobile didn't accept Lance's wish to hand the stage to Landis. Floyd attacked on the descent and Ullrich chased him down - thats when Armstrong decided to go for it I suppose. That "only we or nobody" approach is not a display worthy of a champion team tho. May Europeans have the impression, that USPS with the dominating iron grip on the race decide everything - they decide who is allowed to break away, they decide how much time the break is allowed to gain and they ultimately decide who is allowed to win a stage (LA gave a crucial stage to Basso, but denied Klöden when everything is already sealed). <b> Dictators were never too popular in Europe. <b/> (emphasis added by shilda)
There's only one more sport where you see a similar dominance - Formula One. And it shows the same result. German Michael Schumacher and his incredible domination makes him even more and more unpopular in his home country.
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