IN this week's Tour de France diary, Fred Atkins looks on in disbelief as 2006 winner Floyd Landis scores a breathtaking own goal in his attempts to prove his innocence of a doping charge.

Pat McQuaid, President of the Union Cycliste Internationale, cycling's governing body, urged reporters covering the Tour of Italy last week to focus on the racing and ignore the ongoing scandals dogging the sport.

The world's second biggest stage race after the Tour de France was elbowed off the sports pages by the Floyd Landis drug hearing and a scene that could have come straight from a Francis Ford Coppola film.

Observers of Landis' trial initially felt the American had made some headway in his attempt to prove his innocence of charges of using testosterone in last year's Tour de France.

Having spent over $1m dollars on legal fees, written a book called "Positively False" and established the "Floyd Fairness Fund", the Landis camp scored points when they forced a lab technician to admit they knew the urine sample she was processing belonged to Landis, violating his anonymity.

But any sense that the tide of popular opinion was swinging behind the 31-year-old was shattered on Thursday, when triple Tour de France winner Greg LeMond addressed the hearing.

LeMond, now 45, might have been a sympathetic witness. Arguably the sport's most outspoken critic of doping, he declined to condemn his compatriot when the testosterone story initially broke last August, feeling that Landis was essentially a good man who had been led astray.

In a telephone conversation LeMond told Landis that if he was indeed guilty he should come clean, both for the good of the sport and because living with this kind of secret could be crippling, before confiding a dark personal secret.

LeMond had been sexually abused as a child and admitted that hiding the truth, "nearly destroyed me."

This was disturbing enough, but what followed has to go down as one of the most spectacular own goals in PR history.

Landis' business manager Will Geoghegan was made aware of Lemond's past and decided to ring him, in his own words, "impulsively, after a beer or two".

Perhaps he'd been watching Godfather 2, specifically the scene when Frank Pantangeli is poised to bring down the Corleone empire with a testimony at Washington, only to change his mind when his long lost brother is flown over from Italy.

Geoghegan rang Lemond, pretending to be his uncle and telling him he would be present when he took the witness stand.

Lemond, who hadn't seen his uncle in two decades, wasn't fooled but he was rattled.

"It was a real threat, it was real creepy," he said, pointing out that Landis' nice-guy image could have been fatally undermined.

"I think there's another side of Floyd that the public hasn't seen. I think they didn't want me coming here. I don't know why. If you didn't do anything wrong, why would you mind me coming?

"I was shocked, absolutely shaking and shocked. I think that the comprehension of his team about sexual abuse and people who were victims is reprehensible. I said it shows the extent of their ignorance, lack of intelligence or who they really are."

Landis admitted he'd been in the room when Geoghegan made the call, but it was the latter who took the fall.

In a doomed damage-limitation exercise, he grovelled: "I apologise to Greg LeMond and his family for the distress I caused by my call.

"I also apologise to the arbitration panel and to Floyd Landis and his legal team for the distraction.

"I have been very angry about how unfair this whole proceeding is to Floyd, a great friend and a greater champion, and stupidly tried to take out my anger on Greg.

"I never thought about keeping Greg from testifying. If I had, I would have concluded that since Greg is such a fierce competitor, my stunt would likely make him more resolved to testify.

"What I did was wrong and very unfair to Greg. I am very sorry about and embarrassed by my conduct."

Landis' hearing continues, as does a fascinating Tour of Italy, live every day on Eurosport, but almost unnoticed by the national press. All of which leaves McQuaid sounding a bit like a White House Press Officer might have done in 1963, urging the media to ask Jackie Kennedy how she enjoyed the first part of her drive through Dallas.

See first entry