The Floyd Landis freak show

Been following the Floyd Landis testosterone doping arbitration hearing? Boy, have you been missing some weird shit.

Let me bring you up to speed.

1) July, 2006: Floyd Landis overcomes a devastating hip injury to win the Tour de France. Days later, one of his blood tests comes up positive for testosterone doping, throwing his victory into question. Landis offers various lame excuses, and a few potentially accurate conspiracy theories involving the French and tainted blood samples.

2) May, 2007: Arbitration hearing begins in Malibu to decide whether to uphold the positive results of the blood test and strip Landis of his 2006 Tour de France medal. Here's where it gets weird.

• American cyclist and three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond alleges blackmail. LeMond had been called by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to testify against Landis. He tells the panel that Landis's manager, Will Geoghegan, warned him not to show up, lest Geoghegan reveal that LeMond had been sexually molested as a child.
• Landis immediately fires Geoghegan, who himself almost immediately...you guessed it... checks into rehab "in an effort to address his problems." (AP via NYT)
  

And thus we have yet another awesome demonstration of the rehab maneuver, now firmly entrenched in the playbooks of PR flacks from every possible realm, it would seem. The childhood sexual abuse thing was sort of a red herring, but also pretty strange. I can't wait to see what happens next.