Two giants of American cycling collided in a Malibu courtroom setting Thursday, when former Tour de France champion Greg LeMond testified that reigning champion Floyd Landis implicitly confessed to using illicit testosterone last summer.
And in an additional disclosure that appeared to rock the defense team, LeMond accused Landis' business manager of calling him anonymously Wednesday night in an apparent effort to intimidate him so he would not testify.
LeMond's appearance on the fourth day of Landis' doping hearing injected a sensational element. Until then the hearing had focused on the Paris lab where Landis' urine samples had tested positive for testosterone after he won the 2006 race.
LeMond told the three-member arbitration panel that Landis called him shortly after the lab test results became public in July. LeMond had made public statements to which Landis objected, according to his testimony.
"I was expressing that if he was indeed positive, I hoped he would help the sport and come clean," LeMond said. He described Landis as someone he had met but who was not a close acquaintance.
During the call he told Landis "you could single-handedly change the sport" by admitting guilt "and I believe you to be a good person in a bad sport that needs some cleaning up."
Landis was "very defensive," LeMond recalled. "He said, 'What good would it do? ... If I did, it would destroy a lot of my friends and hurt a lot of people.' "
LeMond said he then told Landis that he had been sexually abused as a child, "and it really destroyed me to keep the secret." He advised Landis, he said, "for your own help and your own future," not to keep any such secret bottled up.
LeMond, 45, has become a controversial figure in cycling circles since testifying last year in an unrelated civil case that seven-time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong had also confessed in his presence to doping.
His testimony Thursday went beyond claims of confessions, however. LeMond cited a cellphone call he received about 7 p.m. Wednesday from an anonymous caller whose number he traced back to Will Geoghegan, Landis' manager.
According to LeMond's testimony, the caller said, "This is your uncle and I'm going to be there tomorrow. We could talk about how we used to hide your weenie."
He said he regarded the call as "a real threat" that his history would be publicly disclosed if he testified. He filed a complaint with law enforcement authorities in Calabasas, where he was lodging Wednesday night.
