Landis’ former manager apologizes for phone call

Floyd Landis’ former business manager apologized Friday for making an anonymous phone call to former Tour de France champion Greg LeMond the night before LeMond testified against Landis in a doping appeal hearing. LeMond had claimed that he regarded the call, which alluded to LeMond’s having been sexually abused as a child, to be a threat intended to keep him from testifying.

Will Geoghegan, the Landis aide, was fired by the American cyclist Thursday afternoon, soon after the call was disclosed by LeMond on the witness stand.

“I apologize to Greg LeMond and his family for the distress I caused by my call,” Geoghegan said in a statement released by a Los Angeles law firm. He added, “I acted on my own, impulsively, after a beer or two.”

LeMond said Thursday that he intended to seek criminal charges against Geoghegan, although it was unclear what laws may have been violated.

Disclosure of the call raised fears in Landis’ camp that contributors to his defense fund might be scared off. His fund-raising organization, the Floyd Fairness Fund, sent a letter to contributors Friday labeling the call “distressing and deeply abhorrent” to the defense team. It also said Geoghegan “had no formal role” with the fund and had not been paid out of donors’ funds.

In testimony Thursday, LeMond said Landis had implicitly confessed to using drugs during a phone conversation last summer, shortly after the Tour.

Landis has denied using any performance-enhancing drugs and is appealing the findings of a Paris lab that reported he tested positive for illicit testosterone.

-- Michael A. Hiltzik