Floyd Landis finally got to the witness stand on Saturday to testify — I assume to no one's surprise — that he did not take performance-enhancing agents to win the 2006 Tour de France.
The surprise is that Landis was present, but unaware, when his business manager made that infamous call to Greg LeMond threatening to make public the story that LeMond had been sexually abused as a child.
Apparently they were sitting apart at dinner on Wednesday night, and Landis saw Will Geoghegan make a short phone call. Soon thereafter he got a call back but didn't answer it. Later, Geoghegan appears shaken up and tells Landis what he did.
When the intimidating phone call was made public during LeMond's testimony the next day, Geoghegan was fired on the spot.
As for Landis's startling comeback in Stage 17 of the Tour de France, he said it was a tactical plan hatched over dinner and some whiskey the evening after he'd lost serious time in the mountains.
Testifying to a three-judge panel, Landis is quoted by AP:
“To me, bicycle racing was rewarding for the pure fact that I was proud of myself when I put the work into it. As long as I know I earned what I got, that was satisfactory. Obviously, it's fun to win. It's a matter of who I am. It wouldn't serve any purpose for me to cheat and win the Tour because I wouldn't be proud of it. That wasn't the goal to begin with.”
Landis will face his accusers on Monday when he'll be grilled by the prosecutors for the US Anti-Drug Agency, which brought the charges.
Check the Trust But Verify blog for more dope on the hearing, as well as Rant Your Head Off.
Also, if there are enough connections, you should be able to watch replays of the hearings yourself by checking for the login and passwords at either the Floyd Landis blog or Floyd Fairness Fund; then entering them at Courtroom View Network.
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