Colm.Murphy said:
Fair enough, I was under the impression that there was a UCI provision and/or a provision to be a ProTour team that covered this. If you know differently, I stand corrected.
Nope, otherwise Footon would have been turfed in July 2008 when they were still Saunier Duval.
The withdrawals of the Puerto people from the 2006 Tour was more to do with the ASO because, although it was part of the ProTour, it is still an invitational event. The ASO continued to wield their strength last year, where they declined Valverde's request to start and threatened to turf Caisse if they started him, knowing he couldn't complete the race. Because the Tour is invitational, they can tell Caisse to go to hell if they bring Valverde, claiming 'extenuating circumstances' like they did to uninvite Fuji last year. The UCI ProTour, however, has no such provisions, and the teams in the ProTour
must attend ProTour races, so there's little the UCI could do about Valverde until CAS upheld the CONI ban if Caisse d'Epargne wouldn't take him off the road. And as Valverde's perceived crimes predated his signing for Illes Balears (bag #18 apparently dates from 2004), they chose to side with their rider, saying that he'd not been doing anything while with them (hmmm) and had never tested positive, so they'd stand by him. So he's basically been standing on the other side of the Italian border for the last 11 months doing his MC Hammer impersonation.