Despite having a formal case opened against him by the Cycling Anti-Doping Foundation, Roman Kreuziger is set to ride the Tour de Pologne starting next week and very likely the Vuelta a Espana, as Tinkoff-Saxo have no legal basis to pull the rider out of competition untile the UCU decides to suspend him.

Kreuziger’s case refers to fluctuations in his biological passport during the times he rode for Astana in 2011 and 2014 seasons, and was first brought up last year. Only on the eve of this year’s Tour de France, however, the CADF informed the Tinkoff-Saxo rider about opening a formal case against him, what forced a Russian squad to quickly replace him with reportedly tired Rafał Majka in their roster for the French grand tour.

Nonetheless, the Tinkoff-Saxo sports director Stefano Feltrin insists that the Russian squad have no legal basis to keep Kreuziger out of competition, nor to suspend the rider until the UCI decides to do so, and thus even though they decided to withdraw him from the Tour de France due to an unfortunate timing, the 28-year old Czech will appear in the Tour de Pologne starting next week, and very likely in the Vuelta a Espana as his sole grand tour in 2014 season.

"It's true that Roman is on the roster. He was on it before, and we spoke to him and he said that he’s not had any new information from the UCI in terms of the sanctions so we feel, like we said before, that it’s not up to us to stop him from racing without there being solid concrete evidence," Feltrin told Cyclingnews.

"There's going to be a trial I suppose, or may be not, but as a team we have to apply the contract and that's based on the model created by the UCI and I couldn't see a clause in there that says that we have to suspend him. We have to allow him to race as long as the UCI don’t suspend him.

"We felt that it wasn't appropriate to race him at the Tour due to the timing. There's been a month and he’s had a chance to get organised. If you look at from the legal standpoint he’s innocent until proven guilty."

"If the situation doesn't change he could well do the Vuelta. He has a defence to organise but if he can concentrate on racing and had piece of mind then we'll consider him."