He's really gone and pissed off the French this time...

[knvb]

I thought I would cut and paste this for those, like me, who only get there sports info from TTP.

I've seen a few of these streak lists as of late. I'll see if I can find a better one.

When Lance Armstrong put the finishing touches on his sixth consecutive Tour de France win Sunday, he stood alone atop his sport.

He's broken the five-way deadlock for most Tour wins, and his run of six straight betters Miguel Indurain's (set between 1991 and 1995) by one.
So with Armstrong's place at the pinnacle of the cycling world thus secured, the question becomes where does his streak rank among the greatest championship achievements in sports history?

We've, as in FOX Sports don't let that cnut KNVB take and credit for this, compiled a list of great champions throughout the years. Let us, not KNVB know how you think Armstrong stacks up.


Boston Celtics, 1957-69
The Celtics rosters from this era read like a "Who's Who of Professional Basketball." No fewer than five players from these teams — Bob Cousy, Bill Russell, Bill Sharman, John Havlicek and Sam Jones — were among the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History. That's a full 10 percent of the honorees playing together at one time. There were another four Hall of Famers on those squads, including legendary coach Red Auerbach. No wonder they won eight straight NBA championships and 11 in 13 years. Since that run, no NBA team has managed to win more than three in a row.


UCLA basketball, 1964-75
The top block in John Wooden's Pyramid of Success is competitive greatness. And no college basketball program before or since has demonstrated that as much as Wooden's Bruins. Under the guidance of the Wizard of Westwood, UCLA won seven consecutive titles and 10 in 12 years. In four of those seasons, the Bruins finished a perfect 30-0 and the 88 straight games they won between 1971 and 1974 is an NCAA record that may never be threatened, let alone broken.


New York Yankees, 1949-59
You could pick pretty much any decade in the history of major-league baseball (with the obvious exception of the 1980s) and make an argument for the Yanks as the era's dominant team. But the strongest case can be made for the 1950s, as New York represented the American League in the World Series an astounding eight times in 10 years, winning five of them.


Mark Spitz, 1972
Prior to the 1968 Olympics, Spitz had boldly proclaimed that he would win six gold medals. He ended up with just two, neither of them coming in an individual event. But he would make up for at the 1972 Games in Munich. Spitz competed in seven events in Germany, winning an Olympics-record seven golds and setting seven world records in the process. Sadly, he would not be able to bask in his glory for long. After Palestinian terrorists took nine members of the Israeli delegation hostage, Spitz, an American Jew, left Munich.


Secretariat, 1973
Six times in the last eight years, a horse has won the first two lengths of the Triple Crown, only to see the quest for glory fall apart in the Belmont Stakes. The lesson? Winning the Triple Crown is hard. But back in 1972, Secretariat made it look awfully easy. He became the first Kentucky Derby winner to crack two minutes. Then at the Belmont, he went off as a 1-10 favorite, then showed why, winning by 31 lengths to become the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years.


Oklahoma football, 1950-59
The tradition that is Sooner football began in the 1950s under the guidance of legendary coach Bud Wilkinson, finishing three seasons as the top-ranked team in the Associated Press poll. Oklahoma also won the Big Eight title every year in the decade, going 58-1-1 against conference competition. And that wasn't even the most impressive record set during the team's run. Between 1953 and 1957, Oklahoma won an NCAA-record 47 consecutive games.

Green Bay Packers, 1961-67
Legendary Green Bay coach Vince Lombardi has been credited with the immortal quote, "Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing." And for a stretch there in the 1960s, winning was pretty much the only thing Lombardi's Packers did. Green Bay won five titles in seven years, including the first two Super Bowls — a run of success that has yet to be matched.

Edwin Moses, 1977-87
The only man to keep Moses from winning a 400-meter hurdles race of note during this 11-year stretch? Jimmy Carter. The U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics resulted in Moses' only "loss" in more than a decade. Now, when Moses was actually allowed to race, it was another story. In an event that lends itself to miscues, he was as close to perfect as you can be. He won 122 consecutive races, setting or breaking the world record four times during that span.


Montreal Canadiens, 1956-60
Lots of NHL teams have won back-to-back (or even back-to-back-to-back) Stanley Cups. But the Canadiens of the late 1950s are the only one to ever string together five consecutive championship seasons. Only once during that run did they lose more than one game in the Stanley Cup finals, and they led the league (granted, there were just six teams in the NHL at the time) in both goals scored and goals allowed in each of the five years.


Steffi Graf, 1988
Graf became just the fifth women's player in history to complete the Grand Slam and just the first to do it on four different surfaces (carpet, clay, grass and hardcourt). Then for good measure, Graf won the gold medal at the Seoul Olympics to complete the so-called Golden Slam. There weren't any gimmes, either. Graf beat Chris Evert (Australian Open), Natalie Zvereva (French Open), Martina Navratilova (Wimbledon) and Gabriela Sabatini (U.S. Open and Olympics) in her run.


U.S. basketball, 1936-72
Basketball became an official medal sport at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin. But it didn't officially become a competition in the truest sense of the word until 1972. That's because in the intervening 36 years, the rest of the world was simply no match for the United States. The Americans won the first seven gold medals in the sport, putting together a 62-game winning streak. During that run, there were only five games (one of them a 2-0 forfeit by Spain) where the U.S. didn't win by double digits and it took some, shall we say, creative officiating to help the Soviet Union end the streak with a 51-50 win in the gold medal game at Munich.


Byron Nelson, 1945
Between March and August of that year, nobody beat Lord Byron on the golf course, as Nelson won 11 consecutive PGA Tour events en route to a PGA-record 18 victories. You could argue that the competition was watered down because of World War II recruitment. But you'd better not argue that this record is going to fall any time soon. No one's even won 11 tournaments in a season since 1950 and the closest anyone's come to the mark was Tiger Woods in 2000 ... and he was still five wins shy of matching Nelson.


Rocky Marciano, 1947-56
While Marciano is rarely the first name mentioned in any discussion of the greatest heavyweight champions (perhaps even with good reason), he remains the only one to hang up the gloves without a loss on his record. Back problems forced Marciano into retirement in 1956 after just six title defenses, but before quitting, he amassed a career mark of 49-0 with 43 knockouts and wins over Joe Louis, Jersey Joe Walcott and Archie Moore. Larry Holmes came within one win of matching Marciano's record, but lost to Michael Spinks to fall to 48-1.

 

[Regs]

Didn't the Lakers win 16 straight to win the NBA championship a couple of years ago?

The NFL Dolphins undefeated season should be up there as well.

~Regs.

 

[Captain Shamrock]

Ehhhhh, the Vancouver 86ers 46 game unbeaten streak.......How quickly we forget.

 

[Ralph Wiggum]

I believe Westside went undefeated from the final of the 1993 Imperial cup loss until the following year's Provincial Cup second round or Semi.

4 Provincial Cup games (1993)
16 regular season games (1993 / 94)
4 National Championship games (1993)
4 Imperial Cup games (1994)
one or two Provincial Cup games (1994)


or something like that...

 

[Regs]

Yeah but you guys went something like 11 wins and 8 ties that year in the regular season, not to mention getting some bogus calls going your way in the Imperial Cup quarterfinals up at Cap college... hardly stuff for legendary status

~Regs.

 

[knvb]

Yeah, that ranks right up there with Cal Ripkins Iron man and the Great One's 51 game point. Still though all are only a close second to Captain Shamrocks 34 consecutive years of soccer with-out the ball ever touching his right foot.

 

[Ralph Wiggum]

re: cappy, never needed to...

I still remember reedie getting brought down at Cap, what a disaster that was, but we got the same call against us v. Sapps at UBC in the cup a couple years later.

still the only team to go undefeated in the VMSL regular season - twice.

and we're the last two BC teams to win nationals... until this year.

 

[Dial 9-1-1]

CNUT man, where do the 1991-2004 Young Guns fit into this equation? 7 titles and 3x finalists.

 

[Yoda]

Speaking of pissing off the French, their newspaper is still on the witch hunt for proving that he's been taking performance enhancing drugs. I guess they've hold onto his piss for 6 years now and have been testing it for EPO which they say he had taken years ago.
Not knowing much about cycling except the fact that 7 championships in any sport is quite an accomplishment.
Could it be true that he really did take it?

 

[LucVanLierde]

Speaking of pissing off the French, their newspaper is still on the witch hunt for proving that he's been taking performance enhancing drugs. I guess they've hold onto his piss for 6 years now and have been testing it for EPO which they say he had taken years ago.
Not knowing much about cycling except the fact that 7 championships in any sport is quite an accomplishment.
Could it be true that he really did take it?

God no, but then again he is an American...but they are only claming that he was on epo during his first tour. Trust me, if he was on it his first tour and tried to defend his title without it....he wouldnt have finished in the top 10. EPO creates a stupid amount of red blood cells...9x the amount of altitude blood exchange.

A guy won the hawaiin Ironman in 98 ...blowing away the field as a rookie, smashing every record that exsisted. In 99 he went back to defend his title, the announcement was made 4 days before the race that they would be testing for the little know drug( at the time) EPO. Well he pulled out of the and has been " injured" ever since. His name Luc Van Lierde.

So my point is that Lance was on it during all 7 or none. Seen as he was so heavily tested and monitored. He totally and completely did not take anything even close to resembling EPO.