After World Championships win, Lance Armstrong and Johan Bruyneel agree: "Many put Pogacar and Vingegaard on the same level, but that's not true"
Cycling
Tadej Pogacar put in a masterful ride at the 2024 World Championships in Zurich to take for the first time in his career the World Championships. He will be putting on the rainbow jersey after an attack over 100 kilometers away from the finish and among those that were impressed is Lance Armstrong.
The man who won and then lost 7 Tour de France spares no praise for the Slovenian, whom he already considers one of the best of all time. It is clear to him that his physical superiority is so high compared to the rest that he has a confidence out of the ordinary in professional sport:
"Tadej Pogacar is a generational talent, he's in the pantheon of all-time greats. Obviously physically the guy is so superior and the confidence level so high, he looks like he's racing a junior race. In my day I wouldn't attack at a hundred kilometers even in the under-23's, it's a beastly confidence."
Johan Bruyneel, co-host of 'The Move', for his part highlighted the comments of his great rivals after his exhibition and described what he had achieved as 'unique': "In the interviews of the other two favorites, Remco Evenepoel and Mathieu van der Poel, both agreed that they could not believe what had happened; Evenepoel said it was 'suicidal', they could not believe what they had seen. I think Pogacar's achievement is the most deserved World Championships in the history of modern cycling, it's so unique to see a rider win such different races.
He makes it clear that he is way ahead of Jonas Vingegaard as a complete cyclist and that he only has Paris-Roubaix as a real challenge in his career:
"Many put Pogacar and Vingegaard on the same level, but that's not true, they are not on the same level, Vingegaard can't do what Pogacar has done in the World Championships in a one-day race, he has already beaten the big specialists in the Tour of Flanders, Van Aert and Van der Poel, on the cobbles. He only has one thing left which is Paris-Roubaix and I think he can win that too."
I think so far we've never yet seen Tadej and Jonas on a level playing field in a GT. Every time there was something with one of them, either bad preparation because of injury, or one had a much stronger team.
No decent person on this planet should listen to anything Armstrong says. When you combine the level at which he was doping with his determination to destroy anyone even close to those who would question him, you have to wonder why he has a platform at all. I’m guessing many of his apologists on here are sociopathic as well. After Bernie Madoff was caught do you think anyone was sending him letters in prison asking for financial advice? Why is this website even asking him?
Unfortunately, knowing what % of people aren’t so moral, I expect quite a few would ask both of these for advice, if they knew it was confidential.
Jonas and Tadej are in the same level racing 3-weeks tours, but Tadej can ride (and win) all kind of races. He is the absolute best. The most completed, polyvalent rider. The others are SPECIALISTS, Tadej is awesome at EVERYTHING.
When it comes to grand tours, which is what most people think about when discussing Jonas and Tadej, they are on a very similar level. When you think about the classics, you really can't consider Jonas. I think Jonas might even be able to win a lot of the spring classics, but he doesn't attempt them. He and Remco aren't that different in size, this year he was lighter as he lost weight after that crash, but if you use Remco as a template Jonas is pretty close in terms of size and we know Remco has won most of them already.
So you have only identified two? 99% did it at the time. Take a day off please.
Probably because they are not frauds. Lance was a cheat just like many in his day, it doesn't mean he doesn't know what he's talking about. Johan Bruyneel is a brilliant strategist in his time. You may not like them, many don't, but they are not wrong about much concerning cycling.
Lance was nothing without doping. As for Bruyneels “brilliant strategist “ role- take a team of guys juiced to the gills and you can win anything. Lance is and always will be a scumbag.
Since his second Tour win in 2000 everyone on those podiums until he retired for the first time in 2005 was implicated in Operation Puerto or had doping cases except one athlete, Andreas Kloden. Andreas Kloden however did do a blood transfusion reportedly in 2006 at the Freiburg University Clinic. He made an agreement with german prosecutors to make a charity donation for the case being dropped. I bring up Kloden because many think he was clean. So maybe all of these guys are scumbags, not just the one...
This is utterly asinine. Of course Armstrong is a fraud: he lied and he acknowledged he lied. Subjective judgements aside, you are simply wrong.
Because they understand this stuff, inside out. I'm not justifying their past actions, but they were clever tactitians.
Why would any news or cycling media give any credence or even report whst lance armstrong or johan bruynel say. Armstrong admitted to cheating to win do why should we listen to him?
Because he is very knowledgeable. You may not like him but it doesn't mean he is wrong.
There are plenty of knowledgeable cyclists. Some of them aren't narcissists too.
His only racing knowledge is how to do it doped up! Not relevant here !
Regaining his wins? Even a (Trump) presidential pardon won’t swing that one ;-) He may be knowledgeable but nobody ever reports him saying anything groundbreaking that not every 2nd other past cyclist would also say. Perhaps because the questions are always so boringly predictable?
Trump could threaten a nuclear strike on France and he still wouldn't get those Tour wins back lol.
Do you understand the significance of the word could? Besides, he was and COULD very well be again so COULD resort to it (and if it made business sense that likelihood would rise). No-one is threatening France, English is not such a hard language to understand if you ask me, unless deliberately. I will grant you that it would have been more logical to say Switzerland.
Also, a lot of people aren’t convicted of a crime but are criminals and worse, even today and especially in the US and less developed nations*, a lot of non-criminals are convicted for crimes which are either fake, distorted, committed by another or symbolic *I would be tempted to add England and maybe even Germany after a few of the recent polemical rulings.
Because they all doped when Lance was winning multiple TDF titles. Jan has said he doped and most of Lance's wins...Jan was 2nd at worst 3rd. As another person commented, only 1 or 2 riders in the top 10 (when Lance was winning) were not caught doping. What is that saying? That about 98% of the TDF in the years Lance won were also on something. You also have to give credit to Lance as likely the best bike handling riding in the race. He knew when to do what he needed to do to beat the other doped riders. As for Johan, he was the man calling the statagy in the race. So, like it or not they both know more about cycling than most people do to this day. Watch a podcast on the TDF and pay attention to what they say. Chances are very good that the following day if a rider is doing what they said...they win. They called a 3 grad tours this year based on what they knew had to be done over the next stage or stages to seal a win. And then the riders who won were doing exactly what was said. That's knowledge of how to race and position yourself to win. No question. Meaning that while you may not like it. They knew everything needed to win. Right down to what Stage Roglic was going to have to do in it to take the win and red jersey (and win the overall) and like it or not he did just that. Pretty much exactly. Like them or not they know
why bother arguing about LA & Co. ? erased from the books, man- they dont belong, just fictional characters that robbed the honorable of their rightful place and tainted cyclists in the eyes of the public.
So during WWII the media and politicians shouldn’t have reported stuff Hitler was saying either? There is a difference between giving someone a platform and reporting his words. If that isn’t understood then there’s another thing unlikely to be understood, all those voicing their opinion to remove LA’s platform are ensuring it stays! It’s like using aircon because of global warming, doing exactly the opposite of what could work.
There’s still a huge difference between a doper winning by his means and a doper doing his own thing. That’s like saying every uncaught big tax cheat is as bad as Madoff who ruined people’s lives. The courts certainly wouldn’t hand out similar sentences. Yes, they may predict a lot of outcomes right but so do many fans, and you only have to follow the betting odds to notice how many and how easy it often is. It’s not exactly like they predict an UNEXPECTED result is it?
Except Jonas himself, who has repeatedly said Pogacar is the best rider in the world. I also find the statement to be untrue. People have said they believed Jonas is the best GT rider in the world, and Pogacar being the best rider in the world. Because of Jonas' injuries this year, we are still unclear if this is true, but it certainly has been true for the last two years. Perhaps Jonas cannot take a step up like Pogacar has done, and Pogacar is now also better in GTs. We will see in 2025 if both of them, hopefully, make it through the season without injuries or illness.
Did they ever have a fair race in which both they and their teams were healthy? In 2024, Vingegaard was injured and couldn't prep the way he wanted, and came in second. In 2023, Pogacar was injured and couldn't prep the way he wanted, and came in second. In 2022, Pogacar's team had covid at the wrong time, and it got worse as he tried to catch up, and he came in second. A teamless rider usually can't compete with a team that has Roglic, van Aert, and Kuss, so again not quite the same comparison. The thing is that Pogacar was more or less teamless in '20 and still won, so they expected him to do it again in '22. In 2021, Roglic crashed out and Vingegaard arrived more or less out of nowhere, was unprepared for the role, and got second. In sum, they've almost never had a real fair fight as equals, with equal teams.
Let’s hope 2025 is that match up. Jonas and Tadej both on peak form and both with killer teams!
People forget that Visma only ended the 2022 Tour with 5 riders as well. Yes, they were the better team absolutely, but they also lost several strong riders and were pretty decimated in the end. But other than that, I agree. This year was also not equal on teams, with UAE being much stronger. I really hope we will see two teams of equal strength, and Tadej and Jonas at their absolute best next year.
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