Wiggins and Cavendish Denied Place in Giro

The Olympic pursuit champion, Bradley Wiggins, and his potential team-mate in the Madison relay in Beijing, Mark Cavendish, face a major change in their build-up to the Games in August after their professional team, High Road Sports, were refused a place in the Tour of Italy stage race, which had formed a key part of both riders' plans.

A three-week stage event such as the Giro is viewed as ideal to build a fitness base for the brief intense events, the men's individual and team pursuits as well as for the longer Madison, in which Wiggins will try to take a hat-trick of gold medals. It is likely that he and Cavendish will have to opt either for the shorter Tour of Switzerland or part of the Tour de France.

"It's a surprise," said Wiggins' coach, Matt Parker, yesterday. "It's the biggest race in both their calendars." Parker was keen to emphasize that the riders will manage to make up the racing in other events. "From an Olympic point of view it's nothing that we can't handle," he said. " We have back-up plans in place. We will see what racing High Road come up with. A three-week tour is a convenient way of getting a lot of conditioning but, if it's not there, we can do something else."

High Road's failure to make the Giro cut was a surprise given the team's current high-profile attempts to ensure their cyclists race without resorting to drugs. The Giro organizers stated that their decision was made according to "ethics, quality, international character and the historical relationship with RCS Sport".

It is probably the latter that cost High Road their place; the Giro organizers are keen to assert their independence from the International Cycling Union's ProTour circuit - of which the Giro does not form a part - and they have done so by selecting seven teams from outside the ProTour, mainly Italian but including David Millar's Slipstream-Chipotle.

The other major teams to be rejected by RCS Sport are Astana, which is led by the Tour de France winner, Alberto Contador - but which had a positive test for the Italian Eddy Mazzoleni in last year's Giro - and the French squad Credit Agricole.