Spanish Cycling Federation (RFEC) president Juan Carlos Castaño has confirmed that triple Tour winner Alberto Contador will be informed of the provisional verdict on his clenbuterol positive case on Thursday.
Speaking on Wednesday, Castaño said "we're not going to delay this any longer. It's gone on for too long."
Castaño was also highly critical of the UCI's prolongued delay in producing any kind of reaction to the documents for the Contador case, which the RFEC sent to Switzerland on December 10.
"There's been a prolongued delay on their part in sending us any kind of opinion," Castaño said, "that's particularly surprising given they've demanded us to be be quick about it."
"First they sit on the case for two months before sending us a request to open up an investigation [on November 8], and then there's been all this delay when we requested their advice."
After weeks of speculation, Castaño's confirmation that the provisional verdict will appear Thursday is the first time a named Spanish Federation official has directly admitted that the case will begin to be resolved.
However, the provisional verdict is supposed to be secret, giving Contador and his lawyers ten days to make any appeals. After that, the official verdict will then appear, almost certainly between February 10-15.
The initial ban is widely expected to be a year, although the final decision will almost certainly be made by CAS, the International Court of Sports Arbritration, at some point later this season.
Contador's defence is said to include 13 different scientific reports on his clenbuterol positive. Opinions amongst WADA officials have been very varied as to whether it can be justified with some saying that the risk of a positive from contaminated meat, whilst others appear to disagree.
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