December 9, 2005 – In the ongoing saga of the haggard ProTour, the Grand Tour trifectate – The Tour de France, The Tour of Italy, and the Tour of Spain – has announced it will remove itself from the ProTour.

This comes after much debate and concern over financial and organizational autonomy of the races, after coming under the jurisdiction of the UCI’s ProTour. Furthermore, with the removal of the three Tours, eight other races – Paris Nice, Tirreno-Adriatico, Milan-San Remo, Paris-Roubaix, Flèche Wallonne, Liège-Bastogne-Liège, Paris-Tours and the Tour of Lombardy – will come off the list as they are controlled by the same organizers.