LeMond makes charge
Landis's manager accused of threat
The doping hearing involving American cyclist Floyd Landis took a bizarre turn yesterday when countryman and fellow Tour de France victor Greg LeMond charged that Landis's manager tried to keep him from testifying by suggesting that he would reveal that LeMond had been sexually abused as a child.
"He said, 'This is your uncle and I'm going to be there tomorrow . . . and we can talk about how we used to [perform a sexual act],' " said LeMond, who said he traced a Wednesday evening call to Will Geoghegan's cellphone and subsequently filed a police report, which was submitted as evidence in the case. "I thought this was intimidation to keep me from coming here."
Geoghegan, informed yesterday by Landis's attorney, Maurice Suh, that he was fired, apologized to LeMond in the hearing room and admitted that he'd made the call. "It was a real threat, it was real creepy, and it shows the extent of who it is," LeMond said afterward. "I think there's another side of Floyd that the public hasn't seen."
The testimony by LeMond, a three-time winner of the world's most prestigious cycling race, was a stunning moment after several days of soporific scientific evidence and procedural squabbling in a high-stakes case that could result in a two-year ban for Landis, who tested positive for synthetic testosterone last summer after an astounding comeback that set up his surprise Tour victory.
Earlier in the day, the cyclist's attorneys had scored a major coup by getting laboratory technician Claire Frelat to acknowledge that she knew that she was testing Landis's backup "B" sample during the confirmation process last August. That would be a serious breach of the global anti-doping rules, which guarantee confidentiality.
Landis, who would be the first champion in the Tour's 104-year history to lose his title for doping, has mounted an aggressive campaign to clear his name, taking the unprecedented step of demanding that his hearing before three arbitrators at Pepperdine's law school in Malibu, Calif., be public.
The thrust of Landis's defense is that the French lab in the Paris suburb of Chatenay-Malabry botched the testing of his urine sample and that the positive finding should be thrown out. His attorneys pointed out that Frelat, an analytical chemist who admitted to making mechanical mistakes that accounted for time gaps and overwritten results, had worked for only six months with the crucial carbon-isotope procedure that determines the ratio between natural and artificial testosterone.
The US Anti-Doping Agency, which never has lost a drug case, alleges that Landis's ratio was nearly triple the allowable 4-1. The agency, which recently was allowed to test Landis's other seven backup samples from the Tour, said that four of them showed abnormal testosterone profiles.
LeMond, who was testifying on the USADA's behalf, said he had spoken by phone to Landis on the day after his positive result had been disclosed and advised him to admit that he'd used the banned drug if his "B" sample confirmed the analysis, saying that Landis would help both his sport and himself.
"I told him I was sexually abused before I got into cycling and that it nearly destroyed me by keeping it secret," LeMond said.
" 'What good would it do?' " LeMond said Landis had replied. " 'If I did, it would destroy a lot of my friends and hurt a lot of people.' "
Landis, who has vehemently denied using banned drugs, has yet to testify in a hearing that is expected to continue into next week. Besides the loss of his Tour title and the two-year ban, he also faces a four-year suspension from the professional circuit.
Material from wire services was used in this report. 