Yet Best, for all the girls and glamour surrounding him, was a pauper compared to today's multi-millionaires.
Most of the Tour peloton earn meagre wages and even Lance Armstrong, far and away the most successful cyclist ever, is a pauper compared with Tiger Woods or Ronaldinho.
Salaries in professional rugby are going up well beyond the rate of inflation, reflecting the income growth in the major unions, but even its best-paid player, Carter, is a relative pauper compared to footballers of his status.
"Midas is a pauper compared to him".
Donald Trump gets more coverage than the joint chiefs of staff, but with a net worth of $1.8 billion he is a pauper compared with the microchip moguls out West.
The second distinctive feature of pauper apprenticeship compared with its privately negotiated counterpart is that it was directed by officials much more than by parents.
The average family doctor earns $175,000 a year (admittedly hardly a pauper's wage), compared with $385,000 for oncologists, $417,000 for radiologists and $519,000 for orthopaedic surgeons, according to Merritt Hawkins, a physician placement service.
He associates with the paupers of the Earth compared to the people that Blair associates with," he told the magazine.
Compared with the Republican women they are paupers.
That sounds dismissive, but compared to the hoards of Google, Microsoft and Apple, Yahoo is a relative pauper.
