May 18, 2007 (Malibu, CA) — Yesterday saw surprising testimony at day four of the Floyd Landis hearing from Greg LeMond, a three-time Tour de France winner, regarding a telephone conversation he had with Landis on August 6, 2006. In that conversation, LeMond urged Landis to come clean to which Landis allegedly replied, “‘What good would it do?” Landis then allegedly added, “If I did, it would destroy a lot of my friends and hurt a lot of people.”

LeMond also testified that at that time he confided in Landis that he had been sexually abused as a child as an example of why it is harmful to keep things secret. He also revealed that he had received a harassing telephone call on Wednesday, the day before he was to testify, from someone with knowledge of this abuse who threatened to make the information public if LeMond testified. LeMond had the call traced to Landis’ business manager, Will Geoghegan and filed a police report about the incident. Landis responded to this news by firing Geoghegan while still in the courtroom.

Before this, things were going well for the Landis team. Claire Ferlat, an analytical chemist at the Chantenay-Malabry (LNDD) anti-doping lab in Paris took the stand. Defence lawyer Maurice Suh’s cross examination of Ferlat revealed that the chemist knew whose B samples she was analyzing, that she overrode isotope ratio mass spectrometer (IRMS) computer software in obtaining results, and that evidence was destroyed while the tests were done.

There was also a lack of documentation about how the tests were conducted. All of the points raised by Suh are contraventions of World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) laboratory procedures. Nonetheless, another witness, Christiane Ayotte – director of Montreal’s Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique anti-doping laboratory – declared that such errors did not invalidate the test results. Ayotte continues her testimony today (Friday).

Also scheduled to testify on Friday are: Dr. Corinne Buisson, (IRMS Supervisor) LNDD; Joseph Papp, Professional cyclist and journalist; and Dr. Bruce Goldberger, a Professor and Director of Toxicology at the University of Florida in Gainesville.

Meanwhile, according to AP, cycling legend and multiple Tour de France winner, Eddy Merckx, told Belgian news sources yesterday that he would not testify in Landis’ favour. “I don’t know what light I could shed (on the situation). I don’t even know why (the Landis side) asked me to testify,” he is reported as saying.