Cycling: Former cyclist Greg LeMond rocked the doping hearing into Tour de France winner Floyd Landis when he revealed he had been sexually abused as a child and that the Landis camp had used that information to try and prevent him testifying.
Triple Tour de France winner LeMond said he received an anonymous menacing phone call the night before he was due to testify and that he later traced the number to Landis's business manager Will Geoghegan.
"Hi Greg, this is your uncle. . . and I'm going to be there tomorrow,'" LeMond told the hearing the caller had said.
"I got the picture right away that there are very few people who know about that. I figured this was intimidation."
"It was a real threat, it was real creepy, and I think it shows the extent of who it is," LeMond later told reporters.
Geoghegan since apologised for making the call, LeMond said.
While LeMond was speaking, Landis's attorney Maurice Suh told the three-man arbitration panel that Geoghegan had been fired by 2006 Tour de France winner Landis "as of this moment".
LeMond said he had shared a private story with Landis in a phone conversation last August.
"I told him I was sexually abused before I got into cycling and that it nearly destroyed me by keeping it secret," the American said.
"I shared this with him with the idea of him seeing what keeping a secret would do."
LeMond said he had urged Landis to "come clean" and that if he had taken testosterone it would come back to haunt him, but Landis replied that doing so "would destroy a lot of friends and hurt a lot of people".
Landis, who has consistently denied using performance enhancing drugs, faces a two-year suspension if he is found guilty of doping and the possibility of becoming the first Tour winner to be stripped of his title.
At the 10-day hearing, three arbitration experts will determine whether the 31-year-old American injected himself with the male hormone testosterone.
Five-time Tour de France winner Eddy Merckx has refused to testify in the doping hearing. Merckx's son Axel is a former team mate of Landis.
"I do not want to be mixed up in this, not from close by nor from afar. I have nothing to say and therefore will not testify," said the 61-year-old.
"I know nothing about this business and I therefore don't see in what way I can help clarify things. I've asked myself why I have been invited to testify." Agencies