{"id":25392,"date":"2009-12-15T14:16:47","date_gmt":"2009-12-15T21:16:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/?p=25392"},"modified":"2009-12-15T22:04:02","modified_gmt":"2009-12-16T05:04:02","slug":"cycling-road-lance-armstrong-steel-on-two-wheels","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/?p=25392","title":{"rendered":"Cycling Road &#8211; Lance Armstrong: Steel on two wheels"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left;\">If, for a dare, the likes of Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps and Roger Federer were asked to race the Tour de France, how long would they survive? A day on steep uphills in the thin air of the Alps? A week on roads so sun-scorched that the tarmac melts?<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Which is why, if judged solely on physical endurance, Lance Armstrong would hands-down win The Associated Press\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Athlete of the Decade award.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\">Perhaps never again will any athlete, let alone a cancer survivor, dominate the most grueling event in sports like he did. In winning seven consecutive Tours from 1999-2005, Armstrong not only made history, obliterating the previous record of five wins. He also transformed cycling, gave a kiss of life to the legendary race that had nearly overdosed on drug scandals and raised the bar on the definition of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153exceptional.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 &#8230;\u00c2\u00a0 <a href=\"http:\/\/sports.yahoo.com\/sc\/news?slug=ap-athleteofthedecade-armstrong&amp;prov=ap&amp;type=lgns\" target=\"_blank\">Details<\/a><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\">www.stokednews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p><center><a href=\"http:\/\/click.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/click?id=SZ7wAI9J8G0&#038;offerid=171598.10000008&#038;type=4&#038;subid=0\"><IMG alt=\"Logo_468x60\" border=\"0\" src=\"http:\/\/www.nautica.com\/graphics\/promo\/NAU\/naut_logo_468x60.jpg\"><\/a><IMG border=\"0\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" src=\"http:\/\/ad.linksynergy.com\/fs-bin\/show?id=SZ7wAI9J8G0&#038;bids=171598.10000008&#038;type=4&#038;subid=0\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If, for a dare, the likes of Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps and Roger Federer were asked to race the Tour de France, how long would they survive? A day on steep uphills in the thin air of the Alps? A week on roads so sun-scorched that the tarmac melts? Which is why, if judged solely [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-road-bike"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25392"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25392\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25394,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25392\/revisions\/25394"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.stokednews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}