No surprises expected from UCI meeting

There won't be any big surprises coming out of the UCI's meeting tomorrow with the ProTour team managers and team doctors, UCI spokesman Enrico Carpani has said. "There will be very important decisions made, dealing with the future of cycling, but they won't have anything specifically to do with the Tour de France." He indicated to the dpa press agency that there wasn't time to deal with the 6000 pages of the Operación Puerto documents (read Additional Operación Puerto dossier reveals extensive new evidence) before the start of the Tour de France, thus damping the possibility that riders, teams or management personnel might be excluded from the race.

However, another meeting on the same day might prove more interesting. The International Professional Cycling Teams (IPCT) will debate which members uphold its Code of Ethics, and which members risk expulsion because they do not uphold it. While the IPCT cannot enforce its decision, it could influence the Tour de France organizers who have indicated that they might make exclusions to the race's start list.

"It is time for names to be named," said Gerolsteiner team manager Hans-Michael Holczer to Tagesspiegel.de. "It is an unbearable situation that some 200 blood bags from alleged Fuentes clients are stored in Spain, and with a with a DNA comparison we could find out which rider they belong to. But which we can't do right now under the law."