Originally Posted by roadwarrior

Not that close to the race. A couple of years ago when Matt White crashed warming up for the prologue and broke his collarbone, he could not be replaced, even though "technically" the race had not started. For "moral" issues like this, the contracts the teams have with the Pro Tour is that a named rider in an investigation like this has to be removed and cannot be replaced. That was done for a reason...to try to prevent teams from putting riders that might not be clean in the race in the hopes that they might make it through.