Phil Liggett believes Lance Armstrong would have won the Tour without drugs

froze wrote:

Lance was absolutely correct, he would have won if everyone else wasn't doping, all he did by doping was to level the playing field back then.

I think that's a very naive perspective.

You're saying Lance was also "absolutely correct" from 1998 until 2011 when he said that he never doped?

No, he is a extremely convincing liar.

It has been widely acknowledged that the use of EPO in cycling during the late 90s and 2000s produced anything but a level playing field while plenty of observers far better informed than you and me have said categorically that he was not anywhere near the best athlete of his era.

However, I do feel that he did win those races, whether we like it or not, and it seems bizarre to have simply 'no winner' (though it does of course acknowledge that the other bastards in 2nd, 3rd etc were all cheating as well).

Wow, did you ever misread what I wrote, here let me write it again: Lance was absolutely correct, he would have won if everyone else wasn't doping, all he did by doping was to level the playing field back then. Let me rephrase it, Lance would have won had he not doped and everyone else did not dope either.  In other words, Lance would have won all 7 of those races like he did doping against a peloton of dopers, had he not doped and the peloton did not dope.  Can I make that any clearer?  I never said he was correct that he never doped, he even admitted to doping a long time ago.

I belive the phrase you are looking for is 'Innocent until PROVEN guilty'. 

yup the denial around Armstrong and Indurain is crazy. THese are not races a rider should ever dominate for 5-7 years...the number of miles, days, and riders is too much probability in a clean race to dominate for 7 years. Obviously the use and deployment of EPO team to team was not even. 

There's Froome of course in the 8 years from 2011-2018.  Apart from crashing in the TDF in 2014, so its only 6 TDF's, but in mitigation he still came 2nd in the Vuelta that year.  Without that crash its likely he would have finished the TDF in the top 10 easily.

He was the closest I could think of as well.

I completely agree that he would have been competitive if he hadn't crashed in 2014.

The dominant GC rider of his generation, in the most dominant grand tour team and he couldn't manage 7 competitive TdF finishes in a row.

It wasn't just the doping that made Armstrong successful.

Rich_cb wrote:

It wasn't just the doping that made Armstrong successful.

That is obviously true ... particularly if you assume (as appears to be the case) that everyone was doping, therefore it was a level playing field. 

I just always have an issue with an attitude like "he/she wasn't successful only because he/she cheated". The second part of that renders the first part irrelevant as far as I am concerned. 

That's fair enough.

It does rather limit the amount of riders who you can actually admire though!

In a no drugs world Armstrong would have won it once and it would have looked like it was killing him like Cadel Evans.

bobrayner wrote:

.. does anybody still think that generation is 100% clean?

Times on major climbs of the tours would be quite revealing, with a period where times were significantly lower than before or after. There shopuld be a general downward trend driven by training and equipment weight improvement, and then a significant anomolous period driven by drugs.

Nowhere does Phil condone the behaviour. He simply believes LA  was the best athlete and competitor of his generation . Lots and lots agree, myself included. I think you should give PL more credit!

No need for the quotation marks, he was a journalist trained on Fleet Street and wrote for cycling publications as well as mainstream news media. Then moving into commentary for numerous TV broadcasters. And he was pretty good at it too.

There's no contradiction in assessing  Armstrong's ability as good enough to win without drugs while rejecting his use of them. That you try to disparage Liggett on the basis of guilt by association says more about your bias than his judgement. A good journalist can separate emotion from opinion and it's clear that is what he has done in his comments.

"A good journalist can separate emotion from opinion and it's clear that is what he has done in his comments."

No he hasn't. He was always a Lance Armstrong fanboy, and he is still defending him now. It's pathetic.

I don't mind your ad hominem attacks, but it would be much better to stick to the substance of the debate.

You shouldn't use words you don't understand the meaning of, it's embarrassing. There's a number of interviews with Phil Liggett where he condemns the drug use, that hasn't changed since Armstrong admitted to doping. Such as this one from 2013, on the national broadcaster ABC when he was here for the TDU in 2013.

PHILIP LIGGETT: "He hasn't got any sporting achievements as far as I can see, although he's categorically said also in the program that he has never taken any drugs since 2005 which means that his third place in the Tour de France after his comeback would still stand.

But you know, you can't believe him now because he has sworn and perjured himself to say he never took drugs and yet- but the same words were used in the interview, when he was saying he did take drugs. You can't no longer believe a word he says I'm afraid."

In an interview with Gary Maddox of the Sydney Morning Herald published on 20 Feb 2021 he said "I'm glad they got him". It's not like he's softened his stance on Lance's doping over 8 years. Is that what you call "being a fanboy" and "defending him"? 

There were some more quotes from the interview in the Mail, whilst Liggett doesnt condone drug use,it seems clear he still admires Armstrong,not just for his charity stuff,but as to the very traits which made him that TdF winner.

And it's that admiration part which I dont believe alot of cycling sport fans do share on Armstrong because of the drug use and the way Armstrong treated people.

I think Phil Liggett is giving some much needed nuance to the debate. Enough water has passed under the bridge, for us to wonder, was he the best? 
Yes he was one of the greatest athletes of all time, certainly the preeminent cyclist of his generation. And he topped up all his prodigious genetic gifts with drugs. 
Who is able to understand that there is no paradox here?

Well, it's very generous of you that you can read Liggett's comments as 'nuance' rather than demeaning credulous bootlicking. To paraphrase Armstrong, it was never just about the drugs, it was also the obscene bullying of anyone who he viewed as a threat to his status and reputation. That bullying played a significant role in making it harder for clean cyclists to get any sort of foothold in the sport (c.f. Christophe Bassons), and it mystifies me that anyone can even partially absolve Armstrong because 'everyone else was doing it' when his drug-taking was only one aspect of what made him such a malign influence on the sport.

IanMK wrote:

We'll never know and we were robbed of the opportunity to find out. Too few journalists questioned what was going on and were, therefore, complicit in the con.

And anyone who did felt the furious wrath of Armstrong and his lawyers.

Greg LeMond paid a heavy price for voicing his opinion but he was adamant that Armstrong could not have ever been a Grand Tour winner without being on EPO. Although many other riders were also using EPO it certainly wasn't a level playing field.

I hope the documentary doesn't spend too much time on the Armstrong era; there's so much more depth to the sport than one man, regardless of how many times he won in Paris.