Athlete of the Year?
Athlete of the Year?
12-15-2003 | 04:24 AM
#7
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I actually feel Tyler Hamilton achieved more this season than Lance. Tyler was present from early on in the season, riding a good one-day classics campaign with a fantastic victory in Liege-Bastogne-Liege where he beat Lance, then doing well in one-week races, winning Tour of Romandy in the process and then going on to ride a very courageous Tour de France. With a broken collarbone after stage 2, most riders would have packed their bags but not him. Riding through the pain, he managed to attack a few times on major climbs even though he could not really get out of the saddle and use his arms effectively. Then, he broke away with a small group with about 90 miles to go in one stage and went at it alone with 60 miles to go. He kept the whole peloton at bay for 60 miles and even though strong teams like ONCE and Telekom started chasing behind him, they were not able to reduce the gap by much. This enabled him to finish 4th overall. After the Tour, he was actually thinking about the World Championships but fell off his bike and damaged himself again so he called it a season... I love Lance and now that we know about his family problems, we can put it all into perspective but apart from 3 weeks in July, he really did not do much else. And his performance in the Tour was not his usual stuff. He suffered through it, supported by a very strong team with the likes of Ekimov, Hincapie and Pena for flat stages and Heras, Rubiera and most of all, Manuel Beltran in the mountains. Tyler did not have that team depth behind him in the Tour and this is why I feel Tyler Hamilton is more deserving this year. IMHO.
