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.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 12:23 pm and is filed under ziamodabber. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.