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Probably corrected for inflation, it's worth less now than it was when the likes of Greg Lemond, Jan Ullrich, Lance Armstrong, etc. still dominated the sport. O

Probably corrected for inflation, it's worth less now than it was when the likes of Greg Lemond, Jan Ullrich, Lance Armstrong, etc. still dominated the sport. Of course doping scandals eroded the value a bit in recent years. That kind of stuff depressed ratings quite a bit in recent decades. But that happened long after that became a public secret in the early eighties. My grand parents when they were still alive absolutely loved the Tour de France. They'd be glued to the radio and later the TV for three weeks in a row while it happened every year. It was a very commercial event even in the seventies and eighties. The the whole circus would plow its way across France in that time and there would be heroes, drama, falls, etc. These days it has to compete with the day to day madness elsewhere and it's just not the same anymore. But I have good memories watching men like Lance Armstrong, Miguel Indurain, Greg Lemond, etc. do their thing on some mountain top. Just the brutality of them crushing their opponents and leaving them behind driving uphill on the fifth mountain of the day after a grueling 200km bike ride is amazing to watch. Never mind they were more than a bit chemically and bionically enhanced. It was the closest thing to super human performance you could watch outside of the cinemas.

arp242 3y ago
> It was the closest thing to super human performance you could watch outside of the cinemas. That's kind of the problem, right? The tour was (is?) set up in such a way that you practically need to be "super human" – even by professional athlete standards – to even finish it. This is different from, say, the 100M dash or even a marathon which anyone can finish with a bit of training, and you only need to be "super human" to set world records.
- parthdesai 3y ago
  How is that a problem? It’s the hardest sporting event in the world bar none for a reason. You don’t need to be in tour to do a 200km bike ride. As far as I know, you need to qualify for Boston and NYC marathon, olympics and all. This is similar
- devilbunny 3y ago
  I knew a professor of physiology who claimed to have spoken with another professor (somewhere) who had actually done some measurements on Miguel Indurain. IIRC, his resting heart rate was 25. The average human heart at rest pumps ~5 L/min, so his was pushing out ~200 mL/beat. According to the story, his wife wouldn't sleep in the same bed as him because his heart shook the bed so much every time it beat. Since the stroke volume of the heart is more or less fixed in the short term, the fact that he could meet his needs at such a low heart rate indicated that his maximum cardiac output was in the neighborhood of 35 L/min (max heart rate 175 x 200 mL/beat, he could probably get his rate higher but the heart would not fill completely and so stroke volume would be a bit less). I have no way to know if this was true, but he wasn't known for exaggerating.

arp242 3y ago

> It was the closest thing to super human performance you could watch outside of the cinemas. That's kind of the problem, right? The tour was (is?) set up in such a way that you practically need to be "super human" – even by professional athlete standards – to even finish it. This is different from, say, the 100M dash or even a marathon which anyone can finish with a bit of training, and you only need to be "super human" to set world records.

parthdesai 3y ago
How is that a problem? It’s the hardest sporting event in the world bar none for a reason. You don’t need to be in tour to do a 200km bike ride. As far as I know, you need to qualify for Boston and NYC marathon, olympics and all. This is similar
devilbunny 3y ago
I knew a professor of physiology who claimed to have spoken with another professor (somewhere) who had actually done some measurements on Miguel Indurain. IIRC, his resting heart rate was 25. The average human heart at rest pumps ~5 L/min, so his was pushing out ~200 mL/beat. According to the story, his wife wouldn't sleep in the same bed as him because his heart shook the bed so much every time it beat. Since the stroke volume of the heart is more or less fixed in the short term, the fact that he could meet his needs at such a low heart rate indicated that his maximum cardiac output was in the neighborhood of 35 L/min (max heart rate 175 x 200 mL/beat, he could probably get his rate higher but the heart would not fill completely and so stroke volume would be a bit less). I have no way to know if this was true, but he wasn't known for exaggerating.