Isidor Gunsberg wrote:

Lemond's moral victories don't count. Counterfactuals are
hypothetical:

Does Lemond's "Moral Victory" of 1985 entail that Hinault's
actual victory that year ought to be reckoned as a "Moral defeat"?
Should there be an asterisk next to Hinault's 5th win in the TDF?

Moral victory was Lemond's phrase, not mine. It was widely derided
here at the time. I may be a little too tall to be a great climber,
but surely had I grown up in Belgium and known there was such a thing
as bicycle racing when I was a kid, I could have taken it up before
becoming an old fart - thus I consider myself a moral victor of the
Ronde van Vlaanderen. That's why counterfactuals don't count.