Floyd Landis, who this week admitted to doping throughout his cycling career, has reportedly moved to get another weight off his conscience with an apology to three-time Tour de France winner Greg LeMond.
Sports Web site ESPN.com reported on Saturday that Landis had apologized to LeMond for an ugly incident during the 2007 hearing at which Landis appealed the cheating charge that saw him stripped of the 2006 Tour de France title.
LeMond was scheduled to testify about a telephone conversation with Landis, in which he believed Landis had tacitly admitted using performance enhancing drugs.
On the night before he was to testify, LeMond received an anonymous call threatening to reveal that he had been sexually molested as a child — something he had told Landis in their earlier conversation as a way of demonstrating the destructive power of secrets.
The call was traced to Landis’ personal manager, Will Geoghegan — a fact that was revealed in a shocking moment during the hearing.
Landis told ESPN.com that he wanted to keep details of his conversation with LeMond private.
Landis didn’t stop short at confessing his own drug use this week. He also pointed the finger at numerous other cyclists, including seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, and said that doping was intrinsic at the elite level of the sport.
Armstrong and others in cycling have dismissed the accusations, challenging Landis’ credibility.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
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