Jan Ullrich is OUT of Tour de France

When you would have thought that nothing important could happen until the Tour de France gets under way, the "Saiz affair" strikes again. And this time, we're not talking about another suspended team, but about one of the main contenders for the final win. Yes, you guessed right. It's German cyclist Jan Ullrich. After his name has been linked with the doping scandal in the last week, his team (T-Mobile), decided to suspend him for the Grand Boucle.

The T-Mobile decision comes, surprisingly, only 24 hours before the beginning of the race. Although the information concerning Ullrich's involvement in the scandal was pretty old - about 4 days ago - the German team waited until now to make such a drastic choice.

We are reminding you that, at the beginning of the week, Jan Ullrich's name has been linked with the Spanish investigation concerning the "Saiz affair". More, the police made public that a number of 58 cyclists - whose names are yet to be released - have been involved with Doctor Eufemiano Fuentes' doping procedures. Among them, the code names "Jan" and "Rudicio's son" appeared during the investigations. That clearly showed that Jan Ullrich was, in one way or another, linked with the whole deal.

"The documents forwarded to us by Spanish investigators justified doubts about the truth of the statements made by Ullrich and Sevilla", said the T-Mobile spokesman, Luuc Eisenga. Another team official, Thomes Wagner, added: "The genuine proof of the matter is on the table. We had asked after the initial suspicions to inspect the file. That happened only today, why, we do not know".

So, after the latest information, it seems that Rudy Pevenage, Jan Ullrich and Oscar Sevilla will all have to appear before sporting trials to prove their innocence and avoid a serious ban from cycling. Even if they continuously stated that they are innocent, Wagner concluded: "The facts of the matter contradict the asserted innocence of Ullrich so strongly that we had to act, in order to be able to still follow our principle of a clean sport".