For local supporters of Tour de France winner Floyd Landis, the vigil continues.

After sitting through nine days of testimony in Landis' doping hearing, which ended last week, six supporters — including Landis' parents — must wait for as much as two months before a ruling.

The Landis supporters praised Floyd's attorneys and say a strong case was made for the Farmersville native's innocence.

"If there is any fairness in this at all, he would have to be found innocent," said Landis family friend Darlene Umble of New Holland, who attended the California hearing along with her husband, Gerald, Dan and Mary Ann Garrett, and Landis' parents.

But they don't expect a quick ruling in the case.

"The (2007) Tour de France will be over before we get a decision on this," said Dan Garrett, Landis' former economics teacher at Conestoga Valley High School and now a magisterial district judge in Warwick Township.

Meanwhile, many people worldwide have already made up their minds.

Landis was convicted by many media commentators in the weeks following last summer's tour. He grasped for an explanation — blaming the whiskey and beer he consumed the night before among other things — for an abnormally high ratio of testosterone to epitestosterone.

Landis, who has always maintained his innocence, faces a two-year ban from the sport.

Three-time Tour winner Greg LeMond restarted the attacks on Landis' character two weeks ago.

LeMond shattered the dry science of the hearing, at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., with his allegation that Landis' manager had blackmailed him to prevent him from testifying.

The manager, Will Geoghegan, anonymously called LeMond the evening before he was to testify at the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency hearing and threatened to reveal that LeMond had been sexually abused as a youth, LeMond charged.

LeMond revealed the secret himself on the witness stand and accused Geoghegan — traced through his cell phone — of making the call.

Landis immediately fired Geoghegan, but the incident turned the hearing into a celebrity media circus.

On the witness stand, Landis acknowledged that he was in the room when the call was made.

Garrett was also in the room. So was his wife, Mary Ann, the Umbles, and possibly Landis' parents, Paul and Arlene.

The Lancaster County contingent was part of about 15-20 people who were in the room in Geoghegan's parents' home, where they were staying, about 45 minutes from Pepperdine. They gathered in the large room most evenings for dinner and conversation.

"According to the time frame, we must have been in the room when the call was made, but we didn't realize it, because everybody was on their cell phones," said Garrett, who had expected to be called as a character witness for Landis. "It was a very hectic time."

Darlene Umble was sitting across the dinner table from Landis at the time the call would have been made. She said people were coming and going into the room.

"I didn't know about anything that had transpired. I didn't know about it until the next day," she said.

Landis' parents said they were also unaware of the call. They would have left at about the time the call was made, they said.

Garrett said Landis was also unaware of the call.

"I can say positively that Floyd was not a party to that," he said of Geoghegan's alleged phone call.

Paul Landis noted that Geoghegan had been drinking that evening. It was reported that Geoghegan checked into a rehabilitation clinic the next day.

Garrett called the incident "unfortunate," and said it was a distraction from the scientific testimony on doping, testosterone and laboratory urine testing.

Umble agreed. "To me, that didn't have anything to do with what they were trying to find out," she said.

To Paul Landis, the case revolved around the two technicians from the French national anti-doping lab. Landis' witnesses testified that the technicians did not know how to properly operate the analytical equipment they were using.

He said they were manually manipulating the data when testing the urine sample taken from Floyd Landis following his victory on Stage 17 of the three-week bicycle race.

"When you do that, you can get what you want," Paul Landis said of the manual testing. "But the real question is why they started it and stopped it and started it again five hours later," he said of the testing.

The time delay is crucial to Floyd Landis' defense that the abnormal testosterone-to-epitestosterone ratio in the sample was due to contamination.

Landis' supporters praised his lawyers and were confident the case was made for Floyd Landis' innocence.

"If they go by the testimony that we heard, I don't see any way that they can find him guilty of doping," Umble said.

Garrett said he found the hearing educational. The rules of the hearing before the three-member arbitration panel were much different than those in his small-claims courtroom, he said.

"I would have died to have this in front of a jury," Garrett said. "I am totally convinced that a jury of his peers would not convict after hearing that."

Paul Landis said he left the hearing feeling confident that his son will be cleared.

"I thought that things went favorably. Sometimes, when I saw how all three arbiters reacted to things, I think they have a real easy decision to make — not only for Floyd, but for their own integrity," he said.

Floyd also was quite confident, he said.

Garrett, however, was less optimistic. He spent his hours in the courtroom watching the body language of the arbiters and looking for non-verbal clues. He expects a 2-1 ruling against Landis.

One of the three arbiters was selected by Landis. Another was selected by the anti-doping agency. The third is agreed to by both sides, Garrett noted, but all were on a list of arbiters approved by the anti-doping agency.

He said it will likely be more than two months before the transcripts of the proceedings are typed and distributed, the attorneys prepare and submit briefs to the arbiters and the arbiters prepare their ruling.

CONTACT US: bharris@LNPnews.com or 481-6022