The new Tour de France director, Christian Prudhomme, is in Qatar (the same organization runs both the Tour de France and the Tour of Qatar). That doesn’t keep him from thinking ahead to July, though, and speculating about whether certain riders will be taking part in the Grande Boucle.

The Italian sports daily, La Gazetta dello Sport, has Prudhomme as saying that “all Italians are interested” in whether Ivan Basso will race in this year’s Tour, that “it is a valid question but now I am not able to responde. We will see. Operación Puerto is not closed. I don’t have the pieces to confirm it, but I have the feeling that there will more revelations.”

Prudhomme also says that in the official 2007 guide, he’s thinking they’ll need to leave a blank space for the outcome of the 2006 race, as Floyd Landis’ case is still in limbo.

So, I have to wonder - will the book ever be closed on the doping cases of 2006? Or will we still be talking about this years from now? With cases like that of David Millar, he dropped off the radar for awhile during his suspension, but now that he’s back it’s almost as if taking EPO and being punished for it is a mere footnote in his bio. I’d prefer things to go that way, but it seems like the two sides in the latest arguments are never going to be able to put it behind them. If people like Basso and Landis are cleared by their racing federations, race organizers probably won’t believe the results and could still ban them from individual races. If Basso and/or Landis is proved to be guilty of doping, the race organizers will think justice has been done but it doesn’t look like the riders will admit to anything. I just don’t see how this all ends, though I really hope someday it does.