Since there's a consistent test available that "microbenchmarks" an athlete's measure of endurance across athletic fields (bicyclists, cross country skiers, runners, etc. etc.), we can now compare athletes of different styles against each other and learn from all of them.
Edit: Athletes with high endurance as measured by how much output they can sustain over longer periods will also tend to have high VO2 Max scores, but that's mostly a correlation thing and not a direct causal relationship.
I'm not sure there's any point in comparing VO2 Max scores across sports. It's an interesting factoid but not really actionable.
No microbenchmark is perfect. But maybe some microbenchmarks are useful.
"The measurement of V̇O2 max in the laboratory provides a quantitative value of endurance fitness for comparison of individual training effects and between people in endurance training. Maximal oxygen consumption reflects cardiorespiratory fitness and endurance capacity in exercise performance. Elite athletes, such as competitive distance runners, racing cyclists or Olympic cross-country skiers, can achieve V̇O2 max values exceeding 90 mL/(kg·min), while some endurance animals, such as Alaskan huskies, have V̇O2 max values exceeding 200 mL/(kg·min)."
So maybe it is a measurement of "endurance capacity"...
[edited for clarity]
There is some correlation with endurance capacity. But that relationship gets progressively weaker as you go out to longer efforts.
For instance I measured my ftp, did a training plan and measured again. No change, but still got better results on my rides. Real world cycling is "punchy" with accelerations and hills etc. So my steady state performance hadn't increased, but my ability to endure going over lactate threshold and come back had.
And also the other way. When my friend started cycling, he was already an insane runner with good vo2max (70+). But his ftp on cycling was comparably low, since his muscles couldn't handle that lactate build up from this unknown moving pattern. Of course he quickly improved, but it's another point showing that vo2max doesn't necessarily translate to performance in an event. (One could argue him redoing the vo2max test on a bike would have yielded a different score, though)
It's a big shift, though. As someone mainly cycling I often get it a bit for "free", since it's natural to have rides being a couple of hours long and thus intensity is naturally lower. But when running, it can often feel like a run either needs to be long or fast.