Angel Vicioso will return to competition tomorrow in the Italian one-day race GP Camaiore.
Last week the Russian Katusha team suspended their Spanish rider Angel Vicioso. Vicioso was implicated in the Spanish Operacion Puerto affair and was asked to give testimony in front of the Madrid court which handles the case against doctor Eufemiano Fuentes, former Liberty Seguros manager Manolo Saiz and a number of others for crimes against public health.
However, Vicioso failed to turn up - citing back problems - and afterwards the court was unable to contact the rider. Judge Julia Santamaria expressed concern and said that police would be involved if Vicioso would not testify at a new hearing set for February 22.
Having lost its ProTeam license due to ethical failures, Katusha reacted swiftly to the uncertainty over Vicioso's availability and suspended him immediately. Team manager Vyacheslav Ekimov even accused Vicioso for lying about the fact that he had been summoned.
The suspension came as an unpleasant surprise to Vicioso who told that his unavailability to the court was due to the fact that he now lived in Andorra and that the court had tried to contact him at his former house. He testified last Friday - telling the court that his relations to Fuentes were restricted to treatment for a knee injury - and as a result the suspension has now been lifted by his team. However, the short suspension forced him to miss Vuelta a Andalucia which was held last week.
Vicioso will return to competition tomorrow in the one-day race GP Camaiore where he will be part of a strong Katusha team. He will be joined by Maxim Belkov, Pavel Brutt, Giampaolo Caruso, Sergey Chernetckii, Dmitry Kozontchuk, Denis Menchov and Yuriy Trofimov on the start line in the Italian race.
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