Paul Lewis: Greatness will sometimes grate

Watching the almost regal procession of Lance Armstrong in the Tour de France is a difficult experience for anyone interested in sport as it manages to be iconic and off-putting at the same time.

On the one hand, Armstrong's dominance of this event is truly impressive. It manages even to overcome the taint of drugs that hangs over the sport of cycling like an unwanted exhaust emission from a passing diesel truck. On the other hand, when a sportsman or woman dominates their event to this extent, it can actually detract from the occasion and even the achievement.

Think Michael Schumacher in his unbeatable phase in F1. They had to change the rules to get him - and in so doing wrote a wholly unpalatable and lunatic chapter in the sport. Think the Auckland rugby team of the late 80s - so dominant that the Eden Park crowd, often a fickle mob, either stayed away or sat mutely, complaining of boredom at the inevitable result.

We didn't appreciate Tiger Woods' achievement of avoiding the cut 142 consecutive times, from 1998 to 2005, before the cut line eventually got him. During that time, Woods won 37 tournaments, eight majors, changed his swing twice, changed his clubs twice, had to endure media talk about a "slump" and got married. Truly remarkable. There is no doubt that Woods' emergence galvanised golf but similarly that, since the field have begun to catch up, golf has become more interesting when it is more of a contest.

Think Edwin Moses - for my money the best winning streak in sport since I have been taking an interest. Moses, the many-times Olympic and world champion at the 400m hurdles won 122 races over nine years, nine months and nine days. There is an argument that golf is a harder sport at which to be consistent than track and field but think about it. In almost 10 years, there was nobody - nobody - in the entire world who could beat Moses. He won gold at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, was forced to miss the 1980 Moscow Olympics because of the boycott and won in Los Angeles in 1984 when I was privileged to watch him live as a reporter for the New Zealand Herald.

He had a stride that was almost 10 feet long. He could take 13 strides instead of the usual 14 between each hurdle. His streak began after he lost to Germany's Harald Schmid in 1977 - a defeat he avenged the following week. It took 10 years to beat him again when Danny Harris, Olympic silver medallist in 1984, eventually managed it in 1987. On the way, Moses had world records aplenty to go with his quite outstanding winning record.

And yet Moses was not really appreciated. Crowds didn't warm to him. He was regarded as a bit of an automaton. When Moses lined up, the crowd knew the result before it happened. The only race was for the minor money. Boring.

"My slow is better than most athletes' fast," Moses once said. "I guess people think I'm a freak or the other guys aren't any good." When he retired, Moses referred to this lack of acknowledgment and said he hoped people realised one day what he had achieved and that no one would likely ever do it again.

Armstrong is doing it but it is a sad fact that, for many, the Tour de France will be all the more interesting for not containing him. Even cycling legends like Miguel Indurain and Eddy Merckx cannot compete with the sheer and utter dominance that Armstrong has over this event.

I can remember Armstrong attacking the leaders in his most feared domain - the back- and spirit-breaking climbs contained within the Tour de France. In 2003, after a fall caused by a brush with a spectator, Armstrong clunked his bike into a gear that most of us can only dream about and set off after the leaders on a misty day in the Pyrenees mountains - his favourite venue for the cycling assassination which has killed off his opposition six times in a row.

He is tall and skinny and doesn't look like he can blow the dust off a window sill but Armstrong just sat in his saddle and produced a rare display of power. In an object lesson of mastery of a sport, he destroyed the challenge of Jan Ullrich and Alexandre Vinokourov, among his biggest rivals again this year. These were no mugs he was blowing off - they were world class cyclists and he went past them like they were Girl Guides on tricycles.

It reminded me of the time when I was training for the annual 160km race round Taupo. Together with some friends, I was whacking our way up the Albany hill one Sunday morning. I was feeling cocky about this hill-climbing business. Suddenly we were overtaken by a group of female cyclists, climbing steadily, not even breaking a sweat.

Male dignity affronted, I changed into a bigger gear, rose from the saddle and sprinted uphill after them. Four hundred metres later, I was in serious oxygen debt and the women were even further away.

"Who the hell was that?" I asked one of my mates as he drew alongside, also puffing. "That was the NZ women's cycling team," he said. "Don't feel bad. Now you know what the rest of the Tour de France feels like when Armstrong goes past."

- HERALD ON SUNDAY