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Phil Liggert claims Federal investigators paid people to lie about Armstrong

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No, he said it was because of the Livestrong stuff he'd seen done.

"i dont think there can be any doubt ......... BUT he never failed a test and Bruyneel told me he couldn't let teammates train with Lance as he was too strong and would have broken them".

Keys and Gray interviewing didn't give him too much of an easy ride despite both knowing him for years.
 
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I could swear I just heard Phil Liggett say "now that drugs are a no no, it's not possible to win the Giro/tour double" I didn't realise drugs were only recently banned Phil.

Had to turn it off.
 
fat and frantic said:
Liggett on UK Talksport radio admitting that Walsh and Kimmages pursuit of Lance was ultimately good for the sport!

Nearly fell of the sofa.

Did they ask him any tough questions, such as, i dont know - Mr ligget you said you would resign if it turned out Lance doped, does that mean well never have to hear your stupidity on the airwaves ever again.

For example.
 
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Christmas Wish

The Hitch said:
Did they ask him any tough questions, such as, i dont know - Mr ligget you said you would resign if it turned out Lance doped, does that mean well never have to hear your stupidity on the airwaves ever again.

Dear Santa, If you can make this happen I will believe in you again for the rest of my days.

P.S. I'll even stop eating the cookies I'm supposed to be leaving for you.
 

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86TDFWinner said:
Sorry Im a little late to the party here, but how can Phil honestly claim Cadel is clean? I'm not saying he is or isn't, but there is still some doubt from folks about Cadel I'm sure. I hope he was. Phil keeps shooting himself in the foot too, he knew what was going on, dont think for one moment he didn't, he's just trying to save face now.

Holy jebus is Phil just clueless.

There are doubts bout every sportsman, in every sport, because Armstrong-gate blew the whistle on how easy it was for a determined group to beat the testers - Steve Backley, javelin great, was on radio 5live in UK a few days ago talking about how he can't really bear to think about armstrong, because as an athlete he had always put faith in the testing, and Armstrong-gate blew that apart.

He admitted himself his first thoughton reading some of Armstrong-gate was of the people who might have cheated him, but then he said something along the lines of, flawed as it is, he has to continue to believe in the testing, or what's the point in sport at all. More or less willful blindness - and Backley is broadly recognised as one of the good guys (he was clearly pretty upset about the whole thing).

People don't always want the scales removed from their eyes. How much more so Liggitt, whose not a ''good guy'' like Backeley and whose entire career has been cycling, and who has made great profit from Armstrong.

Given the choice between "cycnically in on the whole thing" or "really that stupid", I am coming to believe Liggitt belongs in "really that stupid" - Liggitt is THE voice of the sport for millions across many countries - to find the whole thing is a crock of sh!t, and that you've made a complete fool of yourself, is going to twist your mind into some very odd contortions - in Liggitt's case, the obvious contradition that he seems to now plainly accept LA was doping, but still wants to believe the 'racing' he commentated on was 'real' (the level playing field theory)
 
86TDFWinner said:
Sorry Im a little late to the party here, but how can Phil honestly claim Cadel is clean? I'm not saying he is or isn't, but there is still some doubt from folks about Cadel I'm sure. I hope he was. Phil keeps shooting himself in the foot too, he knew what was going on, dont think for one moment he didn't, he's just trying to save face now.

Holy jebus is Phil just clueless.
Supposedly, it went like this: Phil Liggett says Cadel Evans swore to his face he didn't dope...

That's how he knows. ;)
 
He said he knew some people wanted him to retire and when asked why admitted that i was because he 'was on Lances side'.
He now 'knows Lance lied to his face about cheating' and believes Lance would have got away with it if he hadn't come back in '09.
He said he believes the peloton has been mostly clean for the last 2-3 years and praised young riders from all countries singling out Taylor Phinney and Laura Trott as examples.
He also said he was pretty sure Cadel and Wiggins had won the tour clean and praised Brailsford and British Cycling (it was a British show remember).
Said he understood Froome was unhappy at missing out on the Vuelta last year by having to work for Wiggins, but said he didn't think Froome would rock the boat as he was too polite.
 
martinvickers said:
Steve Backley, javelin great, was on radio 5live in UK a few days ago talking about how he can't really bear to think about armstrong, because as an athlete he had always put faith in the testing, and Armstrong-gate blew that apart.

Don't know who Backley is and I'm not accusing him, but this is the reaction a lot of dopers seem to have have. They rely on the idea that if they don't fail tests, they won't get caught, and now Armstrong-gate has ruined their peace of mind, so they react with anger.

On the other hand if you're a sportsman who's never heard of a non-analytical ruling before Armstrong, you must have had your head about 10 feet deep in the sand.
 

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proffate said:
Don't know who Backley is and I'm not accusing him, but this is the reaction a lot of dopers seem to have have.

You might want to check it out then before just casting about allegations.

Particularly since Backley is easily among best ten ~Javelin throwers who;ve ever lived, and he's not hard to find.

They rely on the idea that if they don't fail tests, they won't get caught, and now Armstrong-gate has ruined their peace of mind, so they react with anger.

Big stretch given you don't know the athlete, and presumably didn't hear the interview - one might even say biased.

It was fairly clear if you'd heard it that Backley was pretty sickened by it - i don't think he was angry so much as disillusioned

On the other hand if you're a sportsman who's never heard of a non-analytical ruling before Armstrong, you must have had your head about 10 feet deep in the sand.

Again, a bit of a stretch - knowing a what a non-analystical is, and finding out that one man made mincemeat of the testers for a decade on a practically industrialised dope programme are two rather different things.

Remember, Athletics has had a steady stream of positives in the past decade or so, including a fair number of high profile us sprinters, and north african middle distance runners - it's not THAt hard to assume that the cheats tend to get caught eventually, unlike, say the East Germans of the eighties. After all, they even, eventually, got tests for the various BALCO drugs, if only by accident/sabotage.
 

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therealtimshady said:
I still think phil is great

Actually, I think Phil was greatat one time - but only at one thing, commentating.

We know now he was full of sh!t, and the races he was describing were full of doped-up sh!t. We know what a small little man he was, now.

But the truth was, many of us grew up hearing him describe the 'modern' greats, Hinault, lemond, roche (i know, i know) and doing it in a fashion that hooked us on the sport.

It's easy to be a revisionist about that now, to say we always saw through him - but that's boll*cks for most of us, if we were honest. He WAS the voice of cycling for years, and a damn fine voice in his day. It's what makes the whole shambles, the inability of Liggitt to realise how low it's all gotten, so much sadder.

For my part, I still remember his commentary on La Plagne in '87. It still gives me goosebumps, even though I know how full of sh!t it all was.

What is they call a cynic? A romantic who has been disappointed by life?
 
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martinvickers said:
Actually, I think Phil was greatat one time - but only at one thing, commentating.

We know now he was full of sh!t, and the races he was describing were full of doped-up sh!t. We know what a small little man he was, now.

But the truth was, many of us grew up hearing him describe the 'modern' greats, Hinault, lemond, roche (i know, i know) and doing it in a fashion that hooked us on the sport.

It's easy to be a revisionist about that now, to say we always saw through him - but that's boll*cks for most of us, if we were honest. He WAS the voice of cycling for years, and a damn fine voice in his day. It's what makes the whole shambles, the inability of Liggitt to realise how low it's all gotten, so much sadder.

For my part, I still remember his commentary on La Plagne in '87. It still gives me goosebumps, even though I know how full of sh!t it all was.

What is they call a cynic? A romantic who has been disappointed by life?
Phil is the non-pedo version of Jimmy Saville. He goes groupies like Rochelle Gilmore. *may, nor may not, be apocryphal.
 
martinvickers said:
For my part, I still remember his commentary on La Plagne in '87.

Yep, thats the event that really got me into cycling. Sad to hear Phil talk now. Think it was his ranting back after a random test on Astana in 2009 that 'they wont find anything, because there is nothing to find' which finished off any faith i had in him.
 
martinvickers said:
You might want to check it out then before just casting about allegations.

I started by stating I'm NOT accusing this random non-cyclist that I've never heard of. I'm not going to bother checking him out because log chucking is not a sport that interests me.

Non-analytical positives generally follow on the heels of (years of) false-negative doping controls. Otherwise, there would be no need for a non-analytical finding, which is always harder to stick in a court of (sports) law. It doesn't take a Mensa-level intelligence to figure that one out. But then your boy probably doesn't toss sticks with his mind...
 

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