Leroy Neiman, Champions, & their names

How is it fair to the rest of the sporting world that professional cyclists have the greatest names of all time. Dean Myer (former teammate) and I would often discuss this exact topic on long road trips traveling across middle America in Rob Parson's van.

I can remember finishing stages of Redlands, Cascade and the like and just tripping out on the names in the top 20. They all seem to have a certain panache about them. Dean is one of the greatest story tellers of all time and when we came across a name that was note worthy, he would say it like Leroy Neiman would say, "RRRockyyy ......Balllboaaaa". Leroy is a famous sports artist and was the announcer in one of the Rocky flicks. Unfortunately it did not work so well for our names.

Some of these guys were just born with Champion names.
Here are a few to try on for size if you use the Leroy Neiman technique.

Greg LeMond
Alvaro Mejia
Olivaro Rincon
Chad Gerlach
Roberto Gaggiolli
Jesper Skibby
David Zabriskie
Juan Antonio Flecha
Dimitri Konychev
Djamolidine Abdoujaparov
Jock Boyer
Fabio Parra
Estabon Fraga
Maritcio Prado
Jacky Duran
Jorgen Gunns
Kevin McGillicuddy
Ole Ritter
Alex Zulle
Laurent Jalabert
Trent Klasna
Chesary Zamana
Guido Bontempi
Giorgio Furlan
Franco Ballerini
Viatcheslav Ekimov

Here is a shot of Leroy Nieman's cycling art. He nailed that cameo in Rocky.