Lampre-Merida have provisionally suspended one of their star riders, Diego Ulissi, after an adverse analytical finding in relation to a doping test taken at the Giro d'Italia has shown abnormal salbutamol values. The Italian won't line up in the national championships on Saturday and has cancelled his participation in a training camp with the Italian national team.

Diego Ulissi had a highly successful Giro d'Italia, winning two stages and finishing second in the long time trial, but now his performances have been blighted by the fact that he has returned a doping test that showed abnormal salbutamol values. As a consequence, Lampre-Merida have provisionally suspended one of their star riders.

The test was taken after stage 11 where Ulissi suffered a bad crash that saw him drop out of the top 10 in the overall standings. The results of the test from the UCI report the presence of an abnormal amount of salbutamol (1900 ng/ml), higher than the limit of 1000 ng/ml allowed by the regulations.

Lampre-Merida have issued a press release where they explain the circumstances relating to the test result.

"It is important to point out that Diego Ulissi, accompanied by Dr. Carlo Guardascione (head team doctor), had declared in his statement taken prior to the anti-doping control, the ingestion before the race of Ventolin (2 puffs, equivalent to 100 ng of salbutamol each) and paracetamol during the race, the latter given by the race doctor due to the crash which occurred during the stage in which he had been involved with many other athletes," the team states.

"The assumption of Ventolin is permitted and was necessary because Ulissi was suffering from bronchospasm. As usual, all previous assumptions of Ventolin had been correctly declared."

Ulissi was not set to ride the Tour de France but had made the Italian championships a big goal. He had been selected to participate in a training camp with the Italian national team later this month and was expected to be one of the Italian leaders for the Worlds.

"The rider, as per internal team sanitary code, will be provisionally suspended, consequently he will not be attending the national team training camp, and he requests the opening and analysis of sample B," the team continues.

"The athlete himself and the medical staff of the team will continue to explore the reasons why the urine has been identified as having an abnormal and high presence of salbutamol, compared to only two inhalations performed. Ulissi strongly rejects the presence of such a large amount of salbutamol and decided to make use of the possibility provided for by the WADA and UCI regulations to undergo a controlled excretion study in relation to the substance salbutamol."

Ulissi won stages 5 and 8 of the Italian grand tour.