Phil Liggett: Cycling is bigger than Lance Armstrong - it's time to move forward

THE Lance Armstrong reaction, I' m sort of prepared for it because it's been pretty much coming.

THE Lance Armstrong reaction, I' m sort of prepared for it because it's been pretty much coming.

There were no surprises in the end. I think it wasn't a deep and sincere apology that I was really looking forward to. He has to name names.

He doesn't seem to realise the incredulous crime he has committed.Its the biggest fraud the sport has ever seen and after Lance had said ''this will go on for the rest of his life.'' We need to know how and why.

I look at it this way. Lance chose cycling and he chose to cheat his way through the sport.

As far as I'm concerned with Lance Armstrong, the sport has to gone on.

He admits that he stopped taking drugs in 2005 when he retired with his seven Tour de France wins.

The fact is that cycling has gone forward. The testing has got better and its apparent there's more people taking tests.

The youth is there and I absolutely believe that Cadel Evans won the Tour de France clean. I absolutely believe Alberto Contador won it clean even though he was sanctioned.

So we've gone forward and we will continue to go forward.

The first big race of the year is here in Australia.

We'll see here in the coming week the Santos Tour Down Under.

It's the new era now and it's going in one direction.

I think the best thing to come out of the whole business of Armstrong is that it's all in the open now.

But a lot of the fans feel as though they've been robbed.

There are some fans who say 'I don't care what Lance did', and 'I will always support him because he gave me a lot of pleasure watching him' and those feelings won't go away.

If Lance leaves a legacy it's that throughout his career in his ultimate hindsight he introduced tens of thousands to bike racing either for fun or to try and become professional cyclists themselves.

And that can't be taken away. That legacy remains.

As a credible person, well we've seen the interview.

He's a bully, he's arrogant, he's a cheat and people can form their own opinions from now on in.

I once presented Lance an award when he was going through his cancer treatment.

I introduced him as a fresh young cyclist in Colorado and the crowd were saying ''take your hat off Lance'' and he had no hair at the time. So I said 'if you want to take your hat off do it.'

So he took it off in front of the audience came up to me and shook my hand and that's the way that he was.

But now I honestly don't think he realises the enormity of what he has done.