Doping scandal rocks Le Tour
 

Tour de France favored racers Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso were both booted out after being suspended by their teams because their names appear in a doping investigation in Spain.

T-Mobile team leader Ullrich, along with Oscar Sevilla and team manager Rudy Pevenage, and CSC team leader Basso -- the Giro d'Italia winner, are on a 58-name list which Spanish investigators claim have been involved in blood doping.

CSC team manager Bjane Riis, the Tour winner in 1996 when he finished ahead of Ullrich, said: "It's my responsibility to make this decision and suspend Ivan from the race.

"I have to think about the team, that is now the most important thing. I trust Ivan, but now it is up to him and his lawyers to show he has nothing to do with this," added Riis of last year's runner-up

German Ullrich, who won the Tour in 1997 and has been placed five times including third last year, Spaniard Sevilla and Belgian Pevenage were banned by T-Mobile after the German team were notified by race organisers ASO that their names had appeared in the probe.

"At first we had no reason to doubt the riders's statements. Therefore we couldn't make any decision merely based on speculations, rumours and guesses", said Christian Frommert, director of sports communication for T-Mobile International.

"This situation has now changed profoundly. Accordingly we will now live up to our responsibility towards making cycling a clean sport."

"There was clearly contact between the Spanish doctor involved (Eufemiano Fuentes) and Jan Ullrich, Oscar Sevilla and Rudy Pevenage, which all three had previously ruled out as having taken place," said T-Mobile media spokesman Stefan Wagner.

"There was concrete evidence that (what Ullrich, Sevilla and Pevenage said about contacts with the doctor) was not the truth. We said we would take the consequences if that were the case and that is what we did."

Christian Prudhomme, director of the Tour de France, said all 21 teams had decided unanimously to ban all those involved from the race.