The UCI - stung by the strong anti-doping message from ASO president Patrice Clerc during Thursday’s 2006 Tour de France presentation – has cut off ProTour talks with cycling’s most important race.

UCI president Pat McQuaid, who sat uncomfortably through Thursday’s presentation in Paris, notified Tour de France officials Friday that ProTour talks are now tabled.

“You decided to remove the conditions of serenity and without pressure for the ProTour negotiations,” McQuaid wrote in a letter, adding cycling’s governing body was “surprised” and “indignant” about the anti-doping discourse offered up by Clerc to open the 2006 Tour presentation.

The announcement comes as a major set-back in talks between cycling’s new 20-team ProTour racing calendar and the grand tours, which have complained that the new system has been arbitrarily imposed on them.

Before Thursday’s presentation, both McQuaid and Clerc told reporters the UCI and the Tour were close to hammering out a compromise agreement “before the end of the year” that would incorporate the Tour as well as the Giro d’Italia and the Vuelta a España in the 2006 racing schedule.

“Of course the Tour belongs in the ProTour,” McQuaid said earlyThursday. “The future of cycling is the ProTour and the Tour is the most important race in cycling.”

That conciliatory tone quickly evaporated as the lights dimmed in the Palais des Congrès for the presentation.

In a dramatic call to arms, Clerc declared a need for additional out-of-competition testing in the weeks before the Tour and insisted cycling must be even more aggressive to fight doping to regain credibility in the eyes of the general public.

“We hope and pray that we can solve not only the problem of doping, but also the suspicion, which severely damages the sport,” Clerc said. “Doping remains the number one enemy.”

Clerc’s strong anti-doping message, coupled with thevery open snub of seven-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong, rubbed many the wrong way.

Team managers and sport directors complained that the Tour itself was hardly even mentioned. A 10-minute highlight film largely ignored Armstrong, adding further fuel to the growing rift.

“I could tell certain people in the crowd, other directors, almost got up and left,” Discovery Channel Johan Bruyneel said Thursday. “My general feeling was disappointment. It almost felt like it was raining in the room.”

The latest spat seems to have also have evaporated any goodwill between the Tour and newly elected UCI president McQuaid, who took over from the often-confrontational Hein Verbruggen in October.

In a bitter letter written by McQuaid, he said he regretted his decision to attend the Tour presentation and, with irony, “thanked” Clerc for lecturing the cycling community on the lessons of the anti-doping fight ‘in front of public opinion and the world media.”

“In these conditions, it makes no sense to sit down and negotiate,” McQuaid said. “You have offered us an alarmist discourse.”

What happens next remains to be seen, but the gulf between the UCI and the ProTour teams on one side and the three grand tours on another could be reaching a breaking point.

As Clerc threatened on Thursday, the Tour is prepared to “do it ourselves.”

WADA on the other hand…
The World Anti-Doping Agency, said on Friday it welcomed the call of Tour de France organizers for stronger anti-doping efforts during the 2006 event.

"We are encouraged by efforts of the Tour de France organizers to establish an enhanced testing program for cycling's marquis event," said WADA chairman Dick Pound.

"We welcome this opportunity to work with the Tour and UCI to strengthen the testing program to ensure that cheaters are caught and the integrity of both the Tour de France and the sport of cycling are protected."

On Thursday, Tour organizers appealed for random doping controls, which are normally carried out by the UCI, to be multiplied in the weeks leading up to the race when they would perhaps have a bigger chance of catching the cheats.