It seems the time has come for the UCI Biological Passport hammer to come down. In a conversation with the news agency, Bloomberg, at the end of February, UCI President Pat McQuaid, said there was still a "handful of riders" with abnormal values, who had been picked up by the Biological Passport.
At the time, McQuaid had said, "With what we now know, we can conclude provisionally that the cause is doping. But of course, we do not know the full medical background of all of the riders, so we will give the riders in question 30 days to provide a valid explanation."
According to tuttobiciweb, the riders and not the teams were alerted to the suspect values. The riders were then given a month's time to present some sort of justification for the abnormalities. The reports that the riders returned were then subject to review by an independent commission.
The commission received the reports, and rulings were made. Two months have come and gone, and now it looks like the names will be made public within the next two days, if not Monday morning in Europe.
According to sources close to tuttobiciweb, a high-level Italian athlete, who is expected to play a leading role in next week's Giro d'Italia will be named.
Last year, five riders were nabbed in the first round of Passport findings: Igor Astarloa, Ruben Lobato, Ricardo Serrano, Pietro Caucchioli, and Francesco De Bonis.