Testing Expert Questions Data in Landis Case; Cyclist's Ex-Manager Enters Rehab

While Floyd Landis's former manager prepared to enter rehab yesterday, a witness for Landis testified he had grave concerns about the evidence being used to prove the Tour de France champion's positive doping test.

"I'm terribly sorry, but if someone's life depends on it, his career depends on it, you don't go on assumptions," said Wolfram Meier-Augenstein, an expert in the kind of testing that produced Landis's positive results for synthetic testosterone.

Landis contends poor testing methods are responsible for unreliable results that call into question the validity of the positive test from last year's Tour.

"Like shooting fish in a barrel," Meier-Augenstein called the process of trying to analyze what he called sloppy data.

Yesterday's proceedings in Malibu, Calif., began at about the same time Landis's new manager released a letter that was posted on the "Trust But Verify" blog, acknowledging former manager Will Geoghegan is "entering a rehabilitation program today in an effort to address his problems."

Geoghegan called Greg LeMond last Wednesday night and, posing as LeMond's uncle, threatened to reveal the secret that LeMond had been sexually abused as a child if LeMond showed up to testify.

-- From News Services