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Today the Pro-Tour license commission decided that Manolo Saiz, co owner of Active
Bay, the company who owned the former Liberty Seguros team is allowed to keep his Pro-Tour license. Pro-Tour manager
Alain Rumpf confirmed the news in several Belgian newspapers.
Pablo Antón, the other co-owner of Active Bay attended at the meeting in Lausanne,
Switzerland with a Spanish- and Swiss lawyer and threatened to bring the case before the international sports court (CAS)
if the Pro-Tour license commission would refuse to accept that Active Bay has a valid Pro-Tour license for the year 2007.
Anton stated that Active Bay has valid contracts with several riders of the former Liberty Seguros team. Riders like Andrej
Kashechin, Alexander Vinokourov and many other riders who raced for the Liberty Seguros team all have a valid contract with
Active Bay. Antón said that Active Bay paid the salaries for the riders and fullfilled all their obligations.
Active Bay has a valid contract with main sponsor Astana for the 2007 season.
Saiz told reporters today that he wants to decide in the coming days if he wants to continue his work with Astana. According
to saiz there is an oil company interested in a sponsorship deal with the former Liberty seguros manager. To make the chaos
complete Astana also has a deal with Marc Biver for a team with a Swiss license. This team signed contracts with riders
like Andreas Klöden, Matthias Kessler and some other new riders for the 2007 season. This team also applied a pro-Tour license.
In fact it means that Astana is main sponsor of two teams at the moment. It's totally unclear how this problem will be solved,
so the story will continue...
Related stories:
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Massak: "I will license him"
Are the Puerto documents falsified?
Ullrich: "character assassination campaign"
Ullrich: next round
Ivan Basso: CONI dropped charges
Operacion Puerto: evidence seems sparse and quite vage (part 1)
Operacion Puerto: evidence seems sparse and quite vage (part 2)
Operacion Puerto: "The cases have to be dealt with so they are either sanctioned or cleared"
Puerto hearing in Italy : Basso says he will return soon
Puerto: Rocco backs Ivan Basso
Swiss Cycling Federation: no suspension of Ullrich
Maybe in his next life
Swiss cycling federation: Ullrich doping case likely to be tough battle
Jan Ullrich confident
Operation Puerto
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