Today was a day of translations at the Floyd Landis hearing as the USADA legal team worked to get a translated understanding of the lab procedures of the French laboratory that analyzed the Tour de France champion’s urine samples. The USADA called the laboratory’s analytical chemist, Cynthia Mongongu, as a witness on Tuesday, grinding through all the checks and balances of the lab’s testing system.
The morning was slow going as the testimony given by Belgium-born Mongongu was frequently interrupted because of an unclear translation of her replies in French. At one point, her translator incorrectly interpreted Mongongu as saying it took one-and-a-half hours instead of one-and-a-half days to prepare an ‘A’ sample for IRMS (carbon-isotope ratio testing) analysis. Landis’s attorney Maurice Suh intervened, asking whether there might be a better way to proceed. Lead arbitrator Patrice Brunet, who speaks fluent French, then called for a 90-minute recess so that a replacement translator could be summoned.
Former Tour de France champions Greg LeMond and Eddy Merckx are expected to be called as witnesses later during the hearing being held at Pepperdine University. Three- times winner LeMond is scheduled to testify against fellow American Landis while Belgian Merckx, who won the Tour five times between 1969 and 1974, is set to testify in Landis’s favor.
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