Lance Armstrong won the Tour de France a record seven times, in consecutive years from 1999 to 2005. Someone – I can’t recall who, or what their evidence was – once said that even if Armstrong had ridden a $200 clunker bike from Target, he’d still have come 8th or 9th in the Tour. Which made me wonder if he’d have still won seven consecutive Tours had all the riders ridden identical bikes. I’ll never know – because mega commercial deals will always prevent it happening. But identical equipment for all competitors is a feature of other ‘sports’. One is A1 Grand Prix car racing. And another is texting. Yes, that’s right. There’s a contest to find the fastest text messagers in the world. It’s called the LG Mobile World Cup. And not only do all the contestants use LG brand phones, but the same model, i.e. the ‘LG enV’ (pictured). It has a QWERTY keyboard – which I think’s a copout, but at least it’s the same keyboard for everyone. However each contestant texted in their native language – which re-tilted the playing that the ‘LG enV’ levelled. Me? I’m a 1-finger texter. And I text even slower than I drive. So I’ll never win the LG Mobile World Cup. Or an A1 GP race. Or, for that matter, the Tour de France. Ho hum.
P.S. For the record, two teenaged South Koreans (pictured) won the 2009 LG World Cup.
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