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Floyd Landis was cross-examined yesterday. USADA’s lawyers quickly focused on his character, and in particular the character he exhibited relating to Will Geoghegan’s phone call to Greg Lemond. I have to say that, at least to me, more was made of this phone call than was really there. From what I’ve read, it sounded as much like an incredibly stupid prank as it did a real attempt to threaten or intimidate Lemond from testifying. According to Lemond, Geoghegan didn’t say or even suggest in words that Lemond not come to the trial or testify; nor did he say or suggest that if Lemond did come, he would publicize Lemond’s private disclosure that he had been sexually abused. Apparently he said something along the lines of “I’ll see you tomorrow and we can talk about how I used to show you my wiener.” Something tells me there is a junior high school kid or two out there making similar phone calls to people they don’t like in their class. Sure, you could read in a veiled threat, but I don’t take it as a given at all that the true intent of the call was to threaten or intimidate Lemond. “Will” may have had a couple of beers and just decided to bust Lemond’s you-know-whats (kind of like The Sopranos’ Pauly Walnuts busting on Christopher about Christopher’s new baby girl growing up to dance at the Bada Bing).

Anyway, the reason this distinction could matter is that if the call is interpreted as an effort by Floyd to prevent Lemond from testifying against him, USADA gets to argue that if Floyd is willing to cheat to win this trial, he’s also willing to cheat to win the Tour de France. If the call is seen as a stupid prank, however, Floyd may have to answer why he allowed someone so painfully clueless to be such a close adviser, but he does not necessarily look like someone willing to win at all costs. USADA’s lawyer did a great job of setting Floyd up by getting him to agree to the general proposition that “actions speak louder than words.” After having Floyd adopt the proposition, which Floyd had to do, USADA went right after Floyd’s tardy action in firing Will, pointing out that he only did so after Lemond’s testimony exposed the call. Floyd’s answer, that in hindsight he probably should have fired him earlier, seemed truthful. But ask yourself whether Floyd would have fired him had the conversation not been exposed?

I continue to think that Lemond’s testimony and Geoghegan’s call are mostly a side show. I also think that Lemond not having been fully cross-examined is going to leave at least some people (including me) wondering what motivated him to testify in the first place. Speaking of side shows, how much time spent on Floyd’s having worn a black tie on the day he knew Lemond was going to testify against him was really necessary? I would have preferred some follow-up questions to Floyd’s testimony that he joined Phonak, a team seemingly plagued with doping problems, after the team had eliminated certain people in order to clean house. I would love to know who and where those people are. Floyd obviously has some knowledge about doping in the peloton, and USADA had a witness on the stand and under oath who might have been able to open locked doors to some dark places. We also might have learned a whole lot more about Floyd’s “character” by how he answered those questions. Then again, we really didn’t get to hear testimony about what color underwear Floyd wore on Tuesday either, or whether his socks matched Lemond’s tie. I know, very disappointing, but there’s just not time for everything.

Yesterday ended with testimony from an expert on the operation of the testing equipment used on Floyd’s samples. The upshot of that testimony was that the lab technicians who tested those samples did not fully understand how to operate the equipment. I’m not sure how much you have to know about the machines to obtain accurate measurements, but it certainly doesn’t look good to have the lab that has more positive tests than any other be the same lab that trains its technicians in the shortest amount of time. It also looks pretty bad that this same lab used technicians that aren’t exceptionally well qualified to test any Tour de France rider’s urine — and yes, I’m assuming that the lab knew the urine samples they tested were from Tour riders.

I keep having to remind myself that this trial is primarily about whether one athlete, Floyd Landis, actually cheated to win the Tour de France by taking exogenous testosterone. The answer to that question has to turn on the scientific evidence, and in particular, whether the testing done yielded the correct answer. I mean, even if the lab’s technicians are incompetent and the testing horribly flawed, if they got it right even by accident does it matter? What we all really want to know is whether the guy cheated? I’m guessing that we’ll likely never know. But there are other questions whose answers seems to be emerging from this trial: are the rules for detecting and proving that an athlete used a banned substance sufficiently uniform and reliable? And are we comfortable that enforcement of the current rules only end the careers of athletes who actually violate our trust and cheat? At this point, I’m going with “no” to both of these.

The more I read and hear about this case, the more concern I have for any athlete faced with a positive drug test result. Test me at UCLA and I’m clean. Test me at LNDD and I’m dirty. If Floyd cheated, strip him of his yellow jersey and kick him out of the sport. If a lab doesn’t follow scientifically agreed upon protocols for testing but announces a positive test result, strip them of their right to ever test again. We don’t ask whether the particular substance an athlete took actually aided their performance? Should we care whether a lab’s failure to follow the testing rules actually resulted in an inaccurate conclusion?

Finally, as both a cyclist and a lawyer I, was waiting to hear some evidence about whether Floyd’s ride on Stage 17 was anything special in terms of his actual performance. I was hoping we’d get to see his power files from the stage and compare them to his power output on training and other rides over a long period of time. If the evidence showed that Floyd never pushed the watts he did during the tour on a regular basis in training — or the reverse, that did so routinely — it would at least shed some light on whether he might have taken performance enhancing drugs. I also thought we’d hear about some of the team tactics that contributed to his pulling back all the time he did on Stage 17. Now none of this is direct evidence of whether he violated the rules by taking testosterone, but either is the color of his stupid tie.

Two scientific experts testified yesterday that the lab work done on Floyd Landis’ urine samples taken after Stage 17 of the Tour de France was sloppy and unreliable. One of the experts testified that the LNDD lab’s work was so bad that its conclusions were nothing more than “speculation,” which is just a fancy word for a wild guess. Finally, one of those same experts testified that the testing done on Floyd’s sample actually violated WADA standards, which, if accepted by the arbitrators, would mean that Landis’ positive result will be presumed to flow from the improper testing, not from doping. As I understand it, USADA would then have the burden of rebutting this presumption.

Cutting to the chase, in a trial that has at its heart supposedly irrefutable “scientific” evidence that Landis had exogenous testosterone in his urine, the testimony was astounding.

If this were a criminal case where the “prosecutor” (here USADA) had to prove its case “beyond a reasonable doubt,” we just heard “reasonable doubt.” Of course, expert opinions are only as good as the qualifications of the expert, the work done to form his or her opinions and the lack of any bias in favor of one party or the other.

I didn’t read or hear anything challenging the qualifications or work done, but I found it at least a little interesting that one of the experts apparently was working for free. One of the most common “biases” a lawyer tries to expose on cross-examination are the usually substantial fees paid to experts for their opinions and testimony.

Well, not this guy. But I am asking myself, “why did he do this for free?” Is he really just looking out for the truth? That seems pretty out of place in this here carnival.

In school, whenever you put two parts hydrogen with one part oxygen, you always got water. And whenever you added one plus one, it always came up two. That was science, and that was math — black and white. Two experts testified yesterday, and what I got from it was that the science being used to determine whether or not Floyd cheated is a mush of gray.

If Floyd really did dope and he escapes punishment because the testing lab was incompetent, tell me who wins. Or, tell me who wins if Floyd didn’t cheat but because of the lab’s incompetence (or worse), the winner of nothing less than the freaking Tour de France pulled on his yellow jersey just in time to be dragged through the streets in disgrace.

I’ll insert here that I know we live in an imperfect world, and the doping regulations exist in an imperfect system. Anybody got a fix?

In a typical case, one of the most difficult decisions a defense lawyer can face at a trial is whether to call your own client.

If your client can’t really add anything to the facts necessary to decide the case — and this case is based primarily on scientific evidence that Floyd can’t speak to personally — the lawyer has to weigh whatever his or her client may say helps his case, on the one hand, against the damage that can be done on cross-examination on the other. The lawyers in a public case like this one also have to factor in the arbitrators’ and the public’s strong desire to hear Floyd take the oath and say the words, “I didn’t do it.”

As a lover of the sport, I want to believe that Floyd raced and won clean, and I wanted — no, I needed — to hear him say those words. Well he did just that, and it will be up to the arbitrators to judge his credibility, which cannot be done until he is cross-examined.

Most any witness can get on the stand, take the oath and say what they want to say when they’re thrown softball questions by their own lawyer. The real test of credibility for Floyd and his testimony will be given when he has to answer USADA’s lawyers.

On the heels of Greg LeMond’s testimony, any thought that Floyd’s lawyers may have had about not calling him as a witness almost surely ended. LeMond’s testimony, if believed, was very damaging as it amounted to a virtual confession. And because there were only two people on that phone conversation, the only person on the planet in a position to refute LeMond’s tesimony is Floyd. He simply had to take the stand and refute the testimony.

The other interesting piece of testimony was that of USADA’s witness, Dr. Don Catlin, who recently retired as director of the UCLA Olympic lab, one of the leading WADA-accredited labs. Usually, when a lawyer calls a witness, he/she wants them as invulnerable as possible to giving helpful testimony for the other side. That didn’t seem to be the case with Catlin — at least so far.

He answered the easy questions by USADA that there was clear evidence of doping. But he was also forced to make some rather remarkable admissions. One was that under UCLA’s testing standards, the standard for finding the sample positive was not met.

Wow, if one lab can find you positive and another negative, doesn’t it make you wonder whether this “scientific” evidence is really so cut and dry? He also testified that some of the testing work done by the Paris lab was “mediocre,” or even “poor.”

We’re talking about taking away a man’s livelihood, not to mention stripping him of his Tour de France title. If that happens, I’d like to be pretty sure that this test was really positive and that the testing done to find it so was done properly.

We’re a long way from the end, and hopefully questions about the lab’s work and the true results of Landis’ test will emerge. But from where I sit, we’re not there yet.

If you thought this trial was about whether Floyd used testosterone to help win the Tour de France, or whether the testing rules and protocols are fair or adhered to, or whether the famous French dope testing laboratory is incompetent or worse, you were wrong. And so was I. The trial now has what we all crave: some good old-fashioned dirt. That’s right, a tabloid-style scandal. What took so long? This thing is four days old already.

Somewhere buried in Greg LeMond’s testimony Thursday was his assertion that Floyd all but confessed to doping, but justified not coming clean by claiming that it would hurt more people (including his friends) than it would ever help. But plainly upstaging that testimony was our getting to learn that the first true Tour de France hero from the United States, Greg LeMond, says he was molested as a child. We also got to hear that one of Floyd Landis’ managers might have forgotten how to turn on his caller I.D. blocker. Are you kidding? He called and let his caller I.D. register on LeMond’s cell phone? Floyd fired his business manager of six months, Will Geoghegan, and I’m devastated. Can you imagine the gold that might come from this guy if he stuck around for another couple weeks?

Oh, yeah, the trial. After attention turned to cross-examining LeMond on whether he had any bias against Landis, by going into his public and private feud with Lance Armstrong, things came to a halt. LeMond’s lawyers wouldn’t let him answer those questions, and Landis’ lawyers properly complained that if they couldn’t examine his biases, his other testimony should be thrown out.

That testimony was pretty bad for Floyd. OK, OK it was awful for Floyd. But before we believe it we at least need to hear and consider evidence about whether LeMond has some other private agenda with Floyd like he appears to have had with Lance. Hopefully, the arbitrators will let Greg be fully cross-examined on all issues that may show any bias. Given LeMond’s testimony about his childhood, no one knows better than he does that keeping secrets, in this case about any possible bias he may have against Floyd, just isn’t right.

So, are you still waiting to hear about carbon isotopes and all that stuff? Maybe tomorrow I can talk about the boring factual and legal issues. But this is pretty fun too.

Zia Modabber is a partner in the Los Angeles legal office of Katten Muchin Rosenman, LLP. He is a trial lawyer and co-head of the office’s Litigation Department. Modabber, 45, races with the Team Helens bicycling club in Santa Monica.