When Amgen Tour of California organizer AEG announced a series of strict anti-doping measures for the 2008 event last week, the initiative was hailed as a collaborative effort of riders, teams, sponsors, drug-testing agencies and national and international governing bodies.

The move came after a tough year for cycling and the revelation that controls at the 2007 edition of the race had been relatively narrow, not even involving tests for EPO. Organizers insisted 2008 would be different.

Andrew Messick, president of AEG Sports, proclaimed, “We are proud to be working in partnership with UCI, our national Federation, USADA, our participating teams and riders and our corporate partners to do all that is possible to ensure a race without doping.”

In addition to the administration of blood tests for every rider prior to the event — and increased testing during the race, conducted by USADA laboratories in Salt lake City and Los Angeles — each team will submit its California roster to AEG this week, which will in turn submit those rosters to USA Cycling and the UCI to determine whether any riders have open files with anti-doping agencies.

The implied message was that anti-doping agencies were working in concert with both the federations and the race organization itself.

U.S. Anti-Doping Agency chief executive officer Travis Tygart was not present at that press conference but was quoted in an accompanying press release as saying, “I want to commend AEG for being proactive and reaching out to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency to ensure that best practices are included in this anti-doping initiative.”

However just days later, USADA chief counsel Bill Bock was eager to clarify the agency’s role in providing information regarding ongoing doping cases. Asked if USADA had seen any team rosters for the Tour of California, Bock said there had been a misunderstanding both about which of the race’s stakeholders USADA could share information with, and which groups might be providing information with USADA.

“We don’t have any communications of that sort with AEG or any race organization,” Bock said. “There is some misinformation out there that somehow we have information about who is going to participate [in the Tour of California]. We don’t have that information, and we don’t give out confirmations about investigations or positive test results until after a case has proceeded through our internal process. We are not providing information to any race organizers, in any sport, concerning USADA testing or investigations.”

Last week USADA was named as the defendant in a lawsuit filed anonymously by a rider recently identified by several sources as Rock Racing’s Kayle Leogrande. In the 25-page suit, filed on January 23 in Los Angeles County Superior Court, plaintiff “John Doe” claims that by telling race organizers and the UCLA testing lab that the plaintiff is under investigation, USADA has damaged his reputation and ability to compete in races and secure sponsors.

However without referring to any open investigations, Bock cited section 12 of USADA protocol, on confidentiality, which states that USADA shall only share information on anti-doping violations with international federations, national governing bodies and the U.S. Olympic Committee — until an athlete has either has been found to have committed an anti-doping violation in a hearing, has failed to request a hearing within the time set or has agreed in writing to the sanction sought by USADA.

“There is no way around that protocol,” Bock said. “Unless that changes, we can’t provide information on an investigation publicly. There could be an argument about what ‘publicly’ means, but we construe that to mean we can’t provide it to race organizers.”

Bock said that USADA could not control the outflow of information once it has informed USA Cycling, the UCI and the USOC, though it strongly requests that each keep the information confidential.

“I can’t comment on what other organizations are doing,” Bock said. “We request that they honor our attempt to keep the information confidential, but we cannot control that.”

AEG vice president of communications Michael Roth confirmed that USADA was not involved in the reviewing of Tour of California team rosters, adding that rather the UCI or USA Cycling would give submitted riders a green or red light to compete.

“Every team roster will be submitted to the UCI and USA Cycling this week and we will wait to hear back from them,” Roth said. “They will deal with the rosters through their own internal fact-gathering processes, and it will come back to us. I don’t know the process, how they are vetting this out, but [the UCI and USA Cycling] are the ones who will advise us. I don’t have the ability to disclose how they are vetting riders’ records, but they will disclose to us which riders are and are not under investigation.”

Roth added, “However, you can see from [Tygart’s statement] in the press release that USADA is in full support of this.”

USA Cycling chief executive officer Steve Johnson confirmed that it would be USA Cycling, in conjunction with the UCI, which would review rosters submitted by AEG for approval.

Johnson said if USADA was unhappy with USA Cycling sharing information with AEG, it was the first he had heard of it, adding, “We’ve had several conversations since the Amgen Tour of California first came to us with these ideas. I thought we were all on the same page.”

“USADA protocol hasn’t changed, what has changed is our position,” Johnson said. “It used to be that we would communicate information only with the athlete. But we felt that it was our responsibility in this case when the Amgen Tour of California organizers asked us to help implement this much more selective policy. We were happy to help, and we discussed it with both the UCI and USADA. If USADA doesn’t want to share information with AEG, that is their prerogative, but until someone tells me specifically I cannot share that information I’m happy to help the Amgen Tour of California organizers.”

Bock said USADA “would not condone that process.”

“That is not the way our protocol is set up,” Bock said. “That is not the way we think things should happen. We have to commend any organization trying to get after the doping issue. But someone is not understanding our protocol.”